In his latest PCB breakdown video we find Buildzoid taking a peek at a stripped down graphics card from Zotac, a Macau-based company that is famous for creating smaller components for Mini-ITX and SFF builds. One such product is the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Mini, a graphics card that attempts to take all the performance you’d expect from a Pascal-based 1080 Ti card, presented in a much smaller design that is gonna fin inside a Mini-IX build. Buildzoid takes a look at the PCB to discover exactly what the Zotac engineers did to reduce the size of the card.

As you would expect, reducing the size of a high-performance component involves making certain compromises. For example he notes how there is a complete lack of input filtering chokes for the pair of 8-pin power inputs. A fact that could become a problem when GPU power draw suddenly causes current spikes, especially when overclocking without a top quality PSU. The vcore VRM features an 8 stage design that uses a uP9511 buck controller from uPI, a pretty much standard controller chip for a high-end Pascal card. The uP9511 is a true 8-phase controller (which means the VRM uses no doubling) with a switching frequency of 600KHz. The VRM is calculated to be capable of 200A at 35W, which as Buildzoid explains is way off what you would see on most hi-end, full length cards.

Buildzoid points out several other key design features that have been made in order to shrink the PCB down to Mini-ITX compatible levels. None of these decisions help make the card real contender for extreme overclocking, which I’m sure is not a huge surprise. You can catch the video from Buildzoid here on the Actually Hardcore Overclocking YouTube channel.