Wednesday, September 26th 2018

ASUS Clears the Air on Missing Fan Connect Case-Fan Headers on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti STRIX

ASUS ROG Fan Connect is a feature that allows you to connect up to two of your case-fans to two standard 4-pin PWM fan headers present on an ASUS ROG Strix series graphics card, letting you synchronize your case's front intake and rear exhaust fans to the temperature of the GPU, and control them using the GPUTweak software. ASUS has introduced the feature with the Pascal and Vega architecture, and has since included it with its ROG Strix series graphics cards.

When we published our reviews of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its sibling based on the RTX 2080, we noticed something curious, and our readers were quick to spot it as well. ASUS did not add the Fan Connect 4-pin PWM case-fan headers on its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Strix card, while the company's RTX 2080 card had them. Adding to the confusion, the PCB of our review sample had blank traces where the headers are supposed to be. This got our readers asking if the final product has those headers. The box doesn't advertise those headers anywhere, neither does the ASUS website, so it isn't a case of false-marketing yet.

We reached out to ASUS to clarify about this issue. ASUS, in its response, stated that while the RTX 2080 Ti Strix PCB does feature traces for these headers and related SMT components, they decided not to implement the feature in the initial RTX 2080 Ti production batch, because the designers ran into "technical problems." The company stated that all future production batches will include this feature. To avoid having to mark the cards with headers in future batches leading to consumer-confusion, ASUS decided to omit mentions of fan headers throughout its marketing material for the cards. You won't find any mention of the headers (or lack thereof) on either the boxes, or the product-pages on ASUS website, or any other marketing material.
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35 Comments on ASUS Clears the Air on Missing Fan Connect Case-Fan Headers on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti STRIX

#26
Hood
Vayra86Crystal ball or common sense, you decide.
Either way, good call. I also had a bad feeling about Turing - just the way NVIDIA was acting about reviews and such, something smelled bad.
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#27
DeathtoGnomes
Vayra86Crystal ball or common sense, you decide
Magic 8-ball?
Posted on Reply
#28
MEC-777
No need for all this anyways. Just use Speedfan and have each designated motherboard header on an individual fan curve based on CPU/GPU temps (or both). Can even turn your fans right off when the system is idle, or under low loads. Speedfan is such a hidden gem and so underrated.
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#29
GvonTech
DarkHillnope, syncing a case fan with the gpu fans makes a lot of sense. for example one front intale front fan and one intale bottom or one intake and one output fan synced with the GPU header. Due to fan-stop technology neither will run of the gpu is idle ensuring you can run your more silently if ie only the cpu is under load. I have the 1070 strix with the same feature and its very nice to have this.
I have a Silverstone fortress inverted Mobo case and it's unnecessary.
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#30
R-T-B
GasarakiStop watching LinuxTechTips, you'll get brain cancer.
Funny. Linuxtechtips.com might actually be a good idea for a parody site, where Linus actually does something useful and is incredibly boring.
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#31
hat
Enthusiast
Rushed launch and technical problems? I'm no hardware engineer, but I still can't fathom what technical problems would occur which result in the fan header, and the fan header alone, being absent, while the traces and "related SMT components" remain present.
HoodEither way, good call. I also had a bad feeling about Turing - just the way NVIDIA was acting about reviews and such, something smelled bad.
This whole launch seemed... unusual to me. Never before have I seen a product hyped so much... and then came the delays and outcry over things like the review guidelines and language in the NDA (while others posited that such was the norm, I don't follow that kind of thing to know).
R-T-BFunny. Linuxtechtips.com might actually be a good idea for a parody site, where Linus actually does something useful and is incredibly boring.
lol, good catch
Posted on Reply
#32
Caring1
MEC-777No need for all this anyways. Just use Speedfan and have each designated motherboard header on an individual fan curve based on CPU/GPU temps (or both). Can even turn your fans right off when the system is idle, or under low loads. Speedfan is such a hidden gem and so underrated.
Pretty sure the idea behind the fan headers is to sync RGB LEDs not sure why a GPUs temps should determine case fans speed.
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#33
londiste
Caring1Pretty sure the idea behind the fan headers is to sync RGB LEDs not sure why a GPUs temps should determine case fans speed.
GPU is one of the two biggest contributors - if not the biggest - to the air temperature inside the case. Controlling case airflow based on GPU heat is a good way to address that.
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#34
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
MEC-777No need for all this anyways. Just use Speedfan and have each designated motherboard header on an individual fan curve based on CPU/GPU temps (or both). Can even turn your fans right off when the system is idle, or under low loads. Speedfan is such a hidden gem and so underrated.
I have yet to have a motherboard that it worked with properly. But then again, the motherboards have all had the ability to set fan curves in the BIOS so it wasn't really a loss.
Posted on Reply
#35
Undertoker
The RTX 2080ti is the only card worth buying if your running a 10 series and want a genuine upgrade.
The Ray tracing was bullshit, lets all be honest, but the speed of the card itself is great and having jumped from a Strix 1080ti to a Strix 2080ti I am seeing between 25-35% increases depending on the application/game.
The bitterest most toxic posts come from those who simply cannot afford the card, that is the reality, because anyone who can afford one and has bought one will be happy with them, the odd early batch artefact issue aside - all of whom would have had new cards.

My card overclocks to 1815mhz and 14800 on the memory, just shy of the level the Matrix version does (slightly higher) the Strix is a blistering card, looks nicer than the matrix I think and oozes quality - though it should for the price.
Nvidia do have a case to answer for the lack of ray tracing titles and my guess is the 3000 series will be the cards that shine with ray tracing.
Time will tell
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