If awful RTX 50-series prices aren't enough to get you consider an RTX 40-series card, maybe this dinky single-fan RTX 4070 will be

Zephyr RTX 4070 Sakura Snow X graphics card — (Image credit: Zephyr, Billibilli)

If there's one thing this GPU generation has done thus far, it's turn me into a lover of all things previous-gen. Oh, to be living in early 2024 when prices were only somewhat expensive and stocks at least existed. So, I can't help but being more excited at seeing a lovely-looking little RTX 40-series card like this one than the next new RTX 50-series or RX 9060-series card.

This is the Zephyr GeForce RTX 4070 Sakura Snow X, as shown off on BilliBilli (via VideoCardz). And yes, that's a Chinese video site because, unfortunately, it looks like this might be a China-only card, for now at least.

It comes in at just 178 mm x 128 mm, and what's especially nice about it—to my eyes, at least—is that the I/O bracket forms a cohesive part of the shroud, which is another difference between this version and the first. It looks incredibly smart.

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The card is, of course, designed to fit in Mini-ITX builds, even though it's actually a dual-slot card. And I suppose you wouldn't have to shrink a card down to a single-fan form factor for that to be the case, but every little helps when you have little space to work with in your build.

The slight increase in shroud and fan size from last year's version, judging from the screenshots shown in the company's Billibilli video, shows a slight reduction of temperature during a FurMark stress test compared to last year's version.

Every little helps with a card so… little, I suppose. If this card makes its way to the western market, it looks like a solid choice for SFF system builders, and the RTX 4070 is still a pretty decent performer in today's games. There certainly aren't many RTX 50-series alternatives for SFF builds outside of the impossible to find FE cards right now, and with prices as they are, opting for a previous-gen card might not be an awful idea anyway.

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Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob's led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world's #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It's definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.

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