The NVIDIA PG136C board was spotted on the EEC(Eurasian Economic Commission) website.
We know that the NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics card is present with two reference board designs: either PG136 or PG132. The variation among the two is actually quite simple, the PG136 is only to be used by NVIDIA’s own Founders Edition cards, while PG132 is a reference design for all NVIDIA partners. Moreover, the PG136 PCB was a much more compact board having a v-shaped design and had the latest 12-pin power connector. Whereas the PG132 was only available with dual 8-pin power connectors.
PG136C board number appearing like mentioned above, indicates that RTX 3090 might be getting updated. On the contrary, this can also be a subvariant for the RTX 3090 Ti. The company showcased the Founders Edition card at CES 2022, one possibility is that the PG136C will fit this large 3-slot cooling design too.
As NVIDIA has already introduced 2GB GDDR6X memory modules, there is no need to use both sides of the PCB for the memory. Moreover, the 12-pin power cable is expected to be updated to a 12+4-pin design, matching PCI-SIG specs for the Gen5 power connector.
This shows that the company is done with the design stage of the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition PCB. As the board has gone through the certification process. However, some production problems are still to be solved. As per some reports, BIOS and power issues have been observed, while some other sources mention memory issues.
The company has requested all board partners to halt the production of RTX 3090 Ti cards, all the production problems might be due to the secondary reference board design, the PG136C board for Founders Edition might not be the culprit.
Via EEC, VideoCardz