Card Layout and Photos
I always love that Zotac has gone their own way with card designs even going back to when we first were introduced to them when they would integrate orange accents into their card designs. The RTX 4070 Amp Airo is no different and not only is it nothing like the 4070 Founders Edition that I already took a look at, but they are also completely avoiding the almost stereotypical “angular” designs that most gaming cards have these days. The RTX 4070 Amp Airo instead has its triple fan cooler designed with the fan shroud being rounded on the ends and for accents between the fans they have small curved lines. The shroud has a dark grey finish which is the norm these days along with the black fans, but the gold metal center caps on the fans are completely different and while gold isn’t my first choice it does go well with the black and grey. The card itself is much larger than the Founders Edition and while similar in length to the MSI Ventus the RTX 4070 Amp Airo is thicker at 58.5 mm which they list as 2.5 slot but is nearly a full 3-slot design. For length, the card is 12.1 inches or 307.7 mm and is 4.9 inches tall or 125.2 mm which puts it up over the standard PCI height.
The RTX 4070 Amp Airo has three matching fans which are all 90 mm in width. Each fan is an axial design that blows down into the heatsink below and has 11 blades. They have printed accent stripes on the blades but otherwise, they have a simple design and don’t utilize any of the newer tricks you see like a ring around the outside to give the blades more strength. For the center caps, each is metal and has a gold finish. The two outer fans have the Zotac Gaming wings logo and then the center fan has the text Zotac logo. Zotacs fans have what they call Freeze Stop which is active fan control to turn them off when under low load to keep noise silent. They then call their cooler design the IceStorm 2.0 which sticks to that same ice/cold theme. Looking through the fans we can see that the heatsink has a vertical layout to the fins which means the air being pushed in will go up towards the top and out the bottom, except for the third fan which blows through the heatsink and out the back.
The heatsink design is a lot more impressive once you start looking from the top and bottom edges of the card where the fan shroud still uses a cool curved shape to allow for a big airflow space on the bottom and slightly less on the top but still a large open area. Both give us a great look at how thick the heatsink is along with the heatplate at the bottom that contacts the GPU and memory. Zotac then uses thick heatpipes to pull heat out from there across the heatsink which is more like two different heatsinks with one half over the GPU and the other half on the other end with a gap between the two where the heatpipes rise up. The end of the card lets us see that there are five heatpipes in total and the end also has an open design even though airflow won't be going in this direction. The end of the card also has a thin translucent section around the edge for RGB lighting which ties in with the much larger curved lightbar across the top which has a unique purple holographic-like finish. They have GeForce RTX branding printed on the top of the card as well. Then just before the end of the PCB, the RTX 4070 Amp Airo has its power connection which like the Founders Edition is a 12VHPWR plug. The connection isn’t recessed at all or at an angle so with the extra card height you will need to account for needing to plug that in with your case, especially if you are using the adapter.
The PCI bracket end of the RTX 4070 Amp Airo has the Zotac Gaming winged logo printed in the center. That sits with a design made of ventilation holes around it. Then on the one edge, all of the display connections are lined up. The RTX 4070 Amp Airo has three DisplayPort plus and then one HDMI with the HDMI down at the bottom, not mixed into the middle of the DIsplayPorts like normal.
The back of the RTX 4070 Amp Airo has a backplate that runs the length of the card. Like with the fan shroud design the backplate has a unique rounded design with both ends completely rounded off. It also has a textured black finish and a smooth silver around all of the black for contrast. Zotac then has printed their winged logo on the fan right, GeForce RTX on the bottom edge, and you can faintly see the Live To Game motto printed in a dark grey on the back finish. The backplate also has the serial number sticker on it which have the full model information as well as a barcode for your serial number. I’m not a big fan of that sticker being up near the top where it will be right in your face when the card is installed in most cases, but it will be easy to find if you have any issues. The PCB for the RTX 4070 Amp Airo doesn’t run the full length of the card but you can see it through the ventilation design cut into the backplate on the left side which helps blow air through.
I also have pictures of the RTX 4070 Amp Airo sitting next to the stock-clocked Nvidia RTX 4070 Founders Edition for a size comparison. The extra length of the RTX 4070 Amp Airo is easy to see with almost the entire third fan sticking out past the end of the Founders Edition. The same goes for the extra height where the holographic-like purple accent across the top edge sticks out above the Founders Edition. Then for the thickness you can see that the RTX 4070 Amp Airo is a full triple slot card next to the Founders Edition which keeps everything within two slots.
Before getting into testing I did check out the lighting and the two accents that the Zotac RTX 4070 Amp Airo has along the top and on the end of the card. When looking at the Amp Airo when turned off you would never expect there to be a design under the purple lightbar across the top. But once you get the lighting on that does have thin lines going the length of the lightbar with the Zotac Gaming branding on one end and their winged log on the other end. I’m never a fan of backlit branding, but this is a little different and still looks great.
