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The Inno3D RTX 4090 OC ships in a black box, with an eye-catching piece of box art depicting some sort of aggressive-looking robot. On the back, various key features and specifications are highlighted.
Inside, we find two small bits of documentation – one is a quick-start guide, and the other a PSU guide which details what wattage you need depending on the exact GPU in question.
Speaking of wattage, it's interesting that Inno3D includes a 3x 8-pin to 12VHPWR adapter, instead of the 4x 8-pin adapter that ships with the Founders Edition. This has direct implications for overclocking, as we will see later in the review, but the 3x 8-pin adapter is still sufficient for the card's default 450W power limit, so this doesn't affect out of the box performance.
As for the overall design, the X3 OC is a pretty conventional-looking graphics card, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is perhaps a touch disappointing that the shroud is made entirely of plastic considering the price, but it still feels reasonably solid in the hand and I like the visual contrast between the black and grey brushed-finished sections.
The three fans each measure 98mm in diameter, with a total of seven fan blades, so they’re a decent size – if not quite as large as the 120mm spinners on the Founders Edition. Inno3D also emphasises the fact that the central fan spins in reverse, relative to the outer two fans, something we’ve seen before from various Gigabyte graphics cards, and this should reduce overall airflow turbulence, increasing the airflow pressure down onto the heatsink itself.
As for overall dimensions, this is a big card – but we'd expect the same from any RTX 4090. The X3 OC is a touch longer than the Founders Edition, measuring in at 336 x 145mm, while it’s also triple-slot thickness. It is just a touch lighter than the Founders though, weighing in just under 1.8KG, compared to about 2.18KG of the FE.
The side of the card is home to the GeForce RTX branding, as well as an Inno3D logo towards the I/O bracket. This is illuminated by white LEDs once powered on, but note there is no RGB lighting on this card. The white LEDs can't even be turned off, though whether or not that is a problem is going to be personal preference.
It’s good to see a full-length metal backplate here, which is mostly black but with a dark grey pattern that runs around the edge of the card. It’s impossible to miss the absolutely massive cut-out in the backplate as well, a common feature that simply allows better heat dissipation from the cooler.
I also noticed a small cut-out in the backplate towards the I/O bracket, something that makes me wonder if Inno3D is reusing the backplate on this card from somewhere else. I say that as we’d typically expect a dual-BIOS switch to be positioned here, but that is sadly lacking from the X3 OC, which is probably my biggest complaint with this card.
For the power connector, we of course find the new 12VHPWR – or PCIe Gen 5 – connector, with the supplied adapter pictured at the top of this page.
Display outputs are as expected too, with three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1.
Removing the cooler gives us a look at the PCB. As far as I can tell this looks like a reference board, providing a 14-phase VRM for the GPU and a 3-phase VRM for the memory.
Alpha and Omega Semiconductor AOZ5311NQI MOSFETs are used, rated for 55A continuous output current. On the back of the PCB we find three controllers – two UPI uP9512 and one UPI uS5650Q.
We can also get a look at the GDDR6X memory modules, manufactured by Micron – model number 2MU57D8BZC. We also can't ignore the AD102-300-A1 silicon, measuring 608mm2 and packing 76.3 billion transistors.
As for the cooler itself, Inno3D is using a vapour chamber, with a shared coldplate for the GPU die and GDDR6X memory. Inno3D claims this offers ‘2x' better thermal conductivity than a copper base. This sits on top of a hefty aluminium finstack, with a total of nine 8mm heatpipes.
