ASUS’s Concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GPU Comes With An Onboard M.2 Gen 4 SSD Slots

wccftech.com:

ASUS has showcased a concept of integrating an M.2 SSD slot into a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card with the aim of utilizing the unused PCIe lanes inside the GPU.

Tony Yu, ASUS's General Manager, displayed the idea of having an actual Gen 4 M.2 SSD running alongside the GPU on the same PCB. They used a Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD which was attached to the backside of the graphics card through a cut-out that was made. This cut-out is easy-access & the backplate acts as a heatsink for the storage device.

You may be wondering why an SSD is installed inside a GPU; the answer is simple: this is done to utilize the unused PCIe lanes. You see, cards such as NVIDIA's RTX 4060 series feature just PCIe x8 lanes which means that AIBs using a full x16 slot have an additional x8 lane. M.2 SSDs utilize the PCIe x4 interface and that makes perfect sense to put up to two SSD slots on the PCB of the card.

Moreover, one of the benfits highlighted by ASUS of having an M.2 slot on the graphics card is the easiness of changing an SSD inside your computer. Typically, mounting an SSD requires us to go through many complicated steps, which may annoy consumers who frequently swap out their SSDs. Well, if the GPU has an M.2 slot, that will simplify things.

Having an SSD mounted on a GPU could lead to temperature issues however, this factor was kept in mind, which is why the company had modified the PCB of the GPU in a way that the cooling for the GPU could also reach the SSD. Since GPUs are equipped with much larger heatsinks than what we have seen with SSDs, initial testing revealed a drop in 10°C of the SSD temperature. Power will also be a little concern since Gen 4 SSDs don't pull that much from the wall and the RTX 4060s are equipped with a single