Colorful’s Vulcan line of graphics cards are some of the most premium and biggest graphics cards that I have ever tested. We have already tested their RTX 20 and RTX 30 Vulcan graphics cards and those were impressive for their time. With the RTX 40 series cards, Colorful has gone with a brand new Cyberpunk theme that utilizes their Vortex Radiator and Scythe blades. The card measures at 348.5 x 159.5 x 70.4 mm and weighs in at 2446 grams, respectively. The card requires 3.5 slot worth of space.
The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.
The back of the card features a solid backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.
In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Vulcan heatsink which utilizes the aforementioned Cyberpunk “Vulcan” design. The card looks futuristic and also very clean with the glossy metal frames on the front of the shroud and large open spaces on the sides for the fans to vent air out of.
The new heatsink is enveloped with the Flare RGB Ambilight system that runs on the sides of the cards.
Coming to the fans, the card features three of the latest fans that utilize Hurricane Scythe blades. Each fan has 9 blades and each fan measures 104mm. The fans spin to offer a vortex-based air concentration to the heatsink. The fans are also equipped with a dual-ball bearing design that can allow for longer operational lifespan.
Colorful’s latest fans also deploy the Auto Stop Technology which makes sure that the fans don’t spin under a certain temperature. You can also adjust this by changing from the standard profile to the Turbo profile.
In the case of the Vulcan OC-V heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.
I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The brushed matte-silver finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic. The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The third fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate.
There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the iGame logo on the back. The whole V-shaped cut-out is definitely a unique aesthetic & will allow the third fan to push air out of the heatsink efficiently.
With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what’s beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that’s part of the beefy heatsink that the cards utilize.
The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with a guided fin design and makes use of two large aluminum fin arrays that feature nine 8mm thermal heat pipes. The main cold plate is made up of iGame’s brand-new Vacuum Copper Plate Technology.
The Colorful iGame Vacuum Copper Plate technology features enclosed flat pieces that are filled with condensate liquid. This helps dissipate heat through phase transitions after absorbing it from the GPU and nearby components (VRAM, VRM).
The base itself is a solid copper-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. To top it all off,
Colorful adds extra protection to its impressive PCB by including an all-aluminum frame. This also acts as a memory and MOSFET cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions.
I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port.
There’s also a dual-BIOS switch on the front of the card which comes pre-configured with Normal & Turbo modes. The Turbo profile allows the card to run at a higher power limit & also a higher clock speed.
Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V Teardown:
Colorful’s iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V makes use of a 24+4 (GPU+VRAM) phase PWM design that is made up of high-quality components such as the UPI uP9512U controller. The card also uses the latest GDDR6X DRAM from Micron which operates at 21.0 Gbps alongside a 384-bit wide memory interface.
2 of 9
The Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V is a very power-hungry graphics card as showcased by its custom design. Being so, the card utilizes a single 16-pin connector which can deliver up to 600 Watts of power to the graphics card. The card is rated at 480W.
Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V RGB Lighting Gallery:
Colorful’s iGame GeForce RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V comes with two side panels that can be plugged into the magnetic side plate. One of them is an LCD which looks great but if users want to put that aside, they can also use the standard RGB plate too.
There are a total of 5 different RGB effects that you can choose from and the cards have 3 RGB accent points on the front, one on the back, and one lightbar surrounding the side of the card which looks really good. Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.
2 of 9
