Question Why are some GPUs unnecessarily large

[ArchRooster]

Recently i bought a very small 3060, this one reviewed here to be exact. As you can see in the review, there are many benchmarks against a same but triple fan behemoth gpu and the difference is like 2-5% at most even when overclocking. A bit lower temps seem to matter only if you are building a SFF system with poorer airflow but the huge one again isn't really an option here because of the size (i know there are triple fan SFF builds but you get me). Before buying the card i thought its gotta be louder because single fan working hard, right? But now when i have it irl there is no noticeable difference between it and the dual fan 1650S it replaced. I am genuinely interested why are same GPUs from some vendors so unnecessarily huge, am i missing something?

 

[hotaru.hino]

My guess is manufacturers don't want to design 20 different heat sinks for a generation. So instead they design like 2-3 and machine different mounting brackets for it if necessary.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

why are same GPUs from some vendors so unnecessarily huge, am i missing something?

more powerful GPUs use much more power
so generate much more heat.
so larger heat pipes, heatsinks, having more of the larger fans
can make a huge difference in cooling and noise due to the lower speeds that their fans may need to run.

the same goes even for lower power GPUs like your RTX 3060.
a small single fan blower-style will still normally make much more noise than a larger dual fan setup with larger fans.

even if your current model seems quiet and cool enough, it would be even better with more fans of higher quality which would take more space.

i would guess that the reason larger 3x fan lower-end GPUs come with such large cooling is either
for someone looking for cool yet silent as possible with larger fans at lower RPMs.
and/or just playing off of buyers emotions by having them see a giant impressive looking model and thinking that for some reason it would just be a better option.

 

[Colif]

emphasis of the palit website for the card is on silence - https://www.palit.com/palit/vgapro.php?id=4098&lang=en
empahsis of the Gigabyte one for their card is cooling and it probably runs faster as well, because of it - https://www.msi.com/Graphics-Card/GeForce-RTX-3060-GAMING-X-TRIO-12G/Overview

different target audience.