One of the hallmarks of top-end graphics cards is that they tend to be rather large. Not only do they need a lot of PCB space for all of that additional memory and PWM hardware, but they need big, chunky coolers too to keep things nice and chilled. Not so with the GTX 1080 though it seems. Gigabyte has performed some clever construction to create a GTX 1080 in a package that is no more than 6.7 inches long, with a single cooling fan and a low-profile heatsink.
Echoing previously miniature cards like the AMD R9 Nano or Asus GTX 970 Mini (thanks Ars), the Gigabyte GTX 1080 Mini is a small form factor card with a lot of power. It is slightly taller than your average card, to make room for some of the additional cooling needed with such hardware, but it's still a pretty minuscule footprint for so much graphical horsepower.
To keep it cool there's a single, 90mm fan, which we're told occasionally shuts down during idle mode if everything's cool enough. It's backed up by a heatpipe design to funnel as much heat away from the core as possible.
That core runs at a base clock of 1632MHz, boosting up to 1771MHz when required.
This represents that fastest card that you're likely to be able to fit into most micro-ITX systems, though there has been a rumbling of a miniature AMD Vega card in the near future.
