ELSA has announced a new graphics card with a single-slot cooling system. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB SP can fit into tightly packed PCs and does not require any auxiliary power connectors. The product will be available only in Japan so far and it is unknown whether it will ever make it to other markets.

Over the past few months, we have seen multiple modern graphics cards designed for Mini-ITX and even low profile PCs. However, single-slot consumer add-in-boards (AIBs) these days tend to be rare, possibly because the vast majority of contemporary motherboards and chassis are designed to have enough space for installation of mainstream adapters that are two slots wide. Both AMD and NVIDIA offer professional graphics adapters (e.g., Quadro M4000, Radeon Pro WX7100 and so on) with single-slot coolers assuming that workstations could be packed very densely. Back in December, GALAX demonstrated a GeForce GTX 1070-based AIB with a single-slot cooling system, but that card was intended only for China. This week ELSA announced a slim GeForce GTX 1050 Ti-based product for Japan.

The ELSA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB SP graphics card is powered by NVIDIA’s fully-fledged GP107 GPU (768 stream processors, 48 texture units, 32 ROPs) and uses a PCB with the NVIDIA name on it. The latter may indicate that the AIB is based on a reference design of the GPU developer and ELSA sources the PCB from an NVIDIA-approved manufacturer (or buys both GPU and PCB from the Santa Clara-based company). The card runs at frequencies recommended by NVIDIA (1290/1392 MHz base/boost) and is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory operating at 7000 MT/s. Just like numerous other GeForce GTX 1050 Ti cards, the model from ELSA consumes no more than 75 W and does not need auxiliary PCIe power connector.

Apart from being thin, the cooling system of the device is nothing out of the ordinary. It uses an aluminum heatsink (possibly with a base made of copper), one large fan and is encased in a metallic enclosure. The rotating speed of the fan is unknown, so no word on loudness. As for connectivity, despite its single-slot form factor, the ELSA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB SP offers all three essential outputs: an HDMI 2.0b, a DisplayPort 1.4 as well as a dual-link DVI-D.

ELSA plans to start sales of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB SP graphics adapter on February 24, 2017. The company did not announce price, but it is likely that it will be close to NVIDIA’s recommendations for Japan. As for availability of the product in other countries, it might be possible that other manufacturers which use NVIDIA-designed PCBs for their GeForce GTX 1050 Ti products might adopt single-slot coolers as well. If not, Amazon.co.jp can ship the ELSA card worldwide (make note of import taxes).

Related Reading:

Source: ELSA

Comments Locked

24 Comments

View All Comments

  • Chaitanya - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link

    its been years since good single slot cards were available for pc builders. I hope this trend returns.
  • Charlie22911 - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link

    Agreed!
  • StevoLincolnite - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link

    Needs to be low profile though.

    There are no decent low-profile, single slot GPU's on the market.

    AMD needs to bring some 14nm lower-end chips to market I think.
  • bill.rookard - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link

    Just looking around, you could almost get a 1050ti, then pick up a used Quadro 2000. They run about a 65w TDP (so - close to 1050ti), and they have a small single slot cooler. If you could get the mounting to fit, you could theoretically fit it. Then, if it does run a stitch hot, the automatic throttling will let it run to the capability of the cooler.
  • Samus - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link

    That's the problem. Even with a sophisticated vapor chamber, without enough air movement, it's just going to throttle. A card can only be so small when trying to dissipate 75w of heat.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link

    The Quadro 2000 is an elderly Fermi generation card. You'd be better off either spending a bit more for a significantly faster K620 or waiting for the Pascal based P400-1000 series cards to become available. As native 30-45W parts they have TDPs low enough to run effectively and quietly in a half height single thickness configuration. Alternately, at some point nVidia will finally launch replacements for the GT 945 and GT 705-730 series cards that make up their consumer 20-45W lineup.

    Alternately some of AMDs previous generation half height single slot R5 3xx OEM cards can be found on ebay.
  • StevoLincolnite - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link

    Something around the 40-50w TDP would be better.

    I upgraded from a Radeon 6570 to a Radeon R5 240 just so I could get more performance and use the latest AMD drivers.

    And if I could, I would get something faster.
    Cut down a Radeon 460 by 30-50% would be ideal.
    Still get the better GCN 4 architecture as well that way... And would handle Overwatch well.
  • Samus - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link

    This is awesome. I wish ELSA was still marketed in the USA. One of the best cards I ever owned was a ELSA GLoria II, and right after that a Guillemot (ELSA purchased Hercules and Guillemot) TNT2 Ultra. Both built exceptionally well.
  • Valantar - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link

    A single slot card with an axial fan? That's... weird. Wonder how well it works.
  • DanNeely - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link

    From the gallery images I'd guess it works like a blower but vents in the case above/below the logo. OTOH if they're not making any provision to vent out of the case I'm surprised they didn't go with an open air style layout with the fan in the center. It could be that there's no heatsink on the case front side of the fan and they wanted to make it as thick as possible to limit noise I guess.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now