Single-slot NVIDIA RTX cards compared: which workstation GPUs take one slot or two

Which NVIDIA RTX cards are single slot

Five of the eleven NVIDIA professional cards compared on this page take a single slot: the NVIDIA RTX A400 with 4 GB, the NVIDIA RTX A1000 with 8 GB, the NVIDIA RTX 2000E Ada Generation with 16 GB, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell with 24 GB and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition with 32 GB. The other six are dual-slot cards. Four of those six are regularly searched with the words "single slot": the NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Workstation Edition and the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation. The NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell complete the dual-slot side.

The table gives the slot width as NVIDIA's datasheets print it. Each card name leads to its spec page.

NVIDIA datasheets 3279761 (May 2024), RTX A1000 (April 2024), 4328932 (October 2025), 5323450 (June 2026), 5192801 (April 2026), 2999417 (January 2024), 5322351 (June 2026), 2895216 (October 2023), 5108623 (April 2026), 2898211 (August 2023) and 5349550 (June 2026), in the order of the rows.

NVIDIA states slots and inches. It publishes no millimetre figure for the ten workstation cards; for the Server Edition its product brief gives 312 mm for the card with its extender.

Four names searched as single slot that are dual slot

RTX 2000 Ada. The datasheet reads "Dual Slot" behind the dimensions of 2.7 by 6.6 in. The card that people have in mind is its sibling, the RTX 2000E Ada: the same height and length, the same 16 GB of GDDR6 with ECC and the same 2,816 CUDA cores in one slot, at 50 W of total board power instead of 70 W and with 8.9 instead of 12.0 TFLOPS in single precision. The two are separate products with separate datasheets, and RTX 2000 Ada vs RTX 2000E Ada compares them row by row.

RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell. Dual slot as well, at 2.7 by 6.6 in. NVIDIA's desktop line-up page of 8 September 2026 lists one RTX PRO Blackwell card as single slot, and that is the full-height RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell. Whoever needs an actively cooled Blackwell card in one slot therefore moves from 16 GB to 24 GB and from 2.7 in to 4.4 in of height; whoever needs 16 GB in one half-height slot moves to the Ada generation and the RTX 2000E Ada.

RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell. Two cards carry this name, and the answer differs. The Workstation Edition is a dual-slot card with active cooling, 200 W and four DisplayPort outputs. The Server Edition is single slot, passive and rated at 165 W, and NVIDIA's documents state no display output for it. A search for a single-slot RTX PRO 4500 finds the server card, which a later section explains; our page RTX PRO 4500 or RTX PRO 4500 Server Edition covers the pair.

RTX 5000 Ada. Dual slot at 4.4 by 10.5 in, with 32 GB and 250 W. Among the eleven cards there is no actively cooled single-slot card with 32 GB: the actively cooled single-slot card with the most memory is the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell with 24 GB, and 32 GB in one slot exists only as the passive Server Edition.

The RTX 4500 Ada (24 GB, 210 W) and the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell (48 GB, 300 W) are dual-slot cards of the same 4.4 by 10.5 in. We supply every card in the table across the EU; tell us the chassis, the free slots and the quantity and we reply with a written quote within one business day.

Memory per slot width

Slot width becomes a number when memory is divided by it. The division is ours; the inputs are NVIDIA's. In this table each card name leads to its buy page.

memory, slot width and board power from the NVIDIA datasheets named under the first table; GB per slot is our division of the two.

Two readings of the table matter in practice. In four adjacent slots, four RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell hold 96 GB at 580 W of board power, and two RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell with 48 GB each hold the same 96 GB at 600 W. The total is equal and the shape is not: four GPUs of 24 GB each in one case, two of 48 GB in the other. Memory per slot is a density figure and no sum: every card is a GPU of its own, and NVIDIA's datasheets list no NVLink for any of the eleven. How software distributes work across several cards is described for the RTX PRO 4000 in our article on four RTX PRO 4000 in one workstation.

The second reading concerns the small end. With one free slot, 16 GB is the ceiling at half height (RTX 2000E Ada) and 24 GB at full height in a workstation (RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell). The direct comparison of the 24 GB single-slot card with the 32 GB dual-slot card above it is RTX PRO 4000 vs RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell.

Active or passive decides where a single-slot card can run

Four of the five single-slot cards cool themselves. The datasheets of the RTX A400, the RTX A1000, the RTX 2000E Ada and the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell list the thermal solution as active; NVIDIA publishes no fan type. That includes the RTX 2000E Ada, which is sometimes described as a passive card. Its datasheet says active.

The RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition is the exception. Its datasheet says passive. NVIDIA's product brief of 20 April 2026 describes a bidirectional heat sink that accepts airflow from left to right or from right to left, gives an ambient range of 10 °C to 45 °C and states no figure for the airflow the card requires. The air has to come from the chassis, so the list of supported cards that the server maker publishes is the document to check before an order. The brief names driver branch R595 or later for Linux and Windows; the card's default and maximum power is 165 W, and it can be set down to 100 W.

In return the Server Edition is the only one of the five for which NVIDIA documents a split. Its datasheet states up to two MIG instances of 16 GB each, and NVIDIA's vGPU list includes it from release 20.0. NVIDIA's MIG guide of 4 November 2026 has a row for an RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell without naming the edition. The four active single-slot cards are in neither the MIG guide nor the vGPU list, so NVIDIA documents no way to split any of them into instances. Servers built around the passive card are described on our pages for four and eight RTX PRO 4500 Server Edition cards, and the choice between the two full-height single-slot cards for AI work is the subject of single-slot GPU for AI: RTX PRO 4000 or RTX PRO 4500 Server Edition. If the card is meant for a rack server, send us the server model and the number of free slots, and the quote is written for the card that server takes.

Half height or full height, cable or no cable

The five single-slot cards fall into two sizes, and the size also sorts them by power.

the NVIDIA datasheets named under the first table and product brief PB-12790-001_02 (20 April 2026) for the Server Edition.

The three cards of 2.7 in are half-height, the format usually called low profile, and stay at 50 W. For the RTX A1000 and the RTX A400, NVIDIA's datasheet gives a maximum power consumption of 50 W and names no auxiliary power connector; Lenovo's product guide for the RTX 2000E Ada (LP2207, updated 6 October 2025) states that the card does not require an auxiliary power cable. The page on low-profile NVIDIA RTX cards compares them with the dual-slot cards of the same height.

The two full-height cards need a cable. The RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell has one PCIe CEM5 16-pin connector, and NVIDIA's quick start guide lists an adapter from one 8-pin PCIe cable in the box. The Server Edition has the same connector type and the letters FHFL in its datasheet, full height and full length, at 4.4 by 10.5 in. Cables, adapters and the question of the power supply are collected in NVIDIA RTX power connectors.

A single slot costs no outputs. Each of the four active single-slot cards drives up to four displays, the same number as the dual-slot cards. The video engines grow with the card: one encoder and one decoder on the RTX A400 and the RTX 2000E Ada, one encoder and two decoders on the RTX A1000, two of each on the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell and three of each on the Server Edition. On the RTX A400 and the RTX A1000, NVIDIA's support matrix of 16 October 2026 lists at most 8 concurrent NVENC sessions and no AV1 encode.

Earlier single-slot cards, RTX 4000 Ada and RTX A4000

The full-height single-slot format has a history, and two earlier cards share the 4.4 by 9.5 in of the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell.

NVIDIA product pages of the RTX A4000 and the RTX 4000 Ada Generation and NVIDIA's line card of March 2025; NVIDIA datasheet 5323450 (June 2026).

A workstation that holds an RTX A4000 or an RTX 4000 Ada today has the slot for the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell; what changes is the power cable, because NVIDIA's documents give the RTX A4000 a 6-pin PCIe connector and the RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell the 16-pin one. The upgrade is worked through in RTX A4000 upgrade: RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell or Ada and in the existing comparison RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell vs RTX 4000 Ada.

For all eleven cards sorted by memory, see our guide to NVIDIA RTX workstation GPUs from 4 GB to 48 GB. When a system has a fixed number of slots and a memory target, write to us with both figures, and we answer with the combination of cards that reaches it.

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