ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 Ti STRIX LC Liquid Cooled

[W1zzard]

With the ASUS STRIX LC, ASUS is betting big on their liquid-cooled thermal solution. The card itself is more compact than other RTX 3090 Ti models because the cooling magic happens in the radiator. A large factory overclock is included, too, and the power limit adjustment range goes up to 525 watts.

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[Shatun_Bear]

Dear god 457W consumed while gaming...that's getting close to my small 500W office heater in terms of heat output.

 

[defaultluser]

Like any other factory-overclocked card (when the original card was already factory-overclocked):

10% higher performance for 50% more power!

 

[Ferrum Master]

EVGA X570 Dark lol...

W1z... you couldn't resist, ain't it?

I can't see using this card on air. Only custom loop with both sides water cooled... if the climate is hot, I can't see a 240mm AIO handle 500W on long gaming sessions.

 

[Ruru]

Reminds me of OG Titan.
1) Make an expensive flagship with gimped GPU
2) Make an another card with full GPU
3) ?
4) Profit

Though back then not many people bought the 999EUR Titan, now looks like 2000-3000EUR is okay.

 

[ppn]

I can't see using this card on air. Only custom loop with both sides water cooled... if the climate is hot, I can't see a 240mm AIO handle 500W on long gaming sessions.

How is this even possible. it is a different part but I struggle to cool my 199W 12700K with 280AIO under 95C, of course my airflow is the worst case front intake and reverse blow but still 30C lower for 300W more is unfathomable.

 

[Agent_D]

How is this even possible. it is a different part but I struggle to cool my 199W 12700K with 280AIO under 95C, of course my airflow is the worst case front intake and reverse blow but still 30C lower for 300W more is unfathomable.

More surface area to spread the heat to and direct die to cooler contact.

Can't wait to see how undervolting benefits these 3090Ti cards in terms of heat and power consumption.
I have a 3070Ti in one of the kids computers that runs 1930MHz @862mv, dropped the wattage down to the 215-230w area and performance only dropped by 1-3%.

 

[jesdals]

I think they should have chosen af 360 rad - damn thats a beast

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Look at all those caps

 

[Jism]

And this is why AMD chooses for multi-chip configuration in the future. You cant keep building big monolithic chips without a huge power consumption.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

• SLI useless without implicit multi-GPU

Great Job w1zzard I see you done your homework on multi-GPU in DX12
This is very annoying with Nvidia cards.

 

[Flydommo]

Hot, noisy and power-hungry but fast. Technological anachronism in my eyes. Maybe the upcoming RTX 4070/60 series will deliver more balanced products.

 

[thelawnet]

> we find the ASUS RTX 3090 Ti STRIX LC to be a whopping 12% faster than the RTX 3090, which is very impressive

lol at whopping.

you'd not even notice the difference

lol at using 30% more power on a soon-to-be-superceded architecture and costing thousands of dollars being impressive.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Hot, noisy and power-hungry but fast. Technological anachronism in my eyes. Maybe the upcoming RTX 4070/60 series will deliver more balanced products.

According to all the leaks, the 4000 series will have even more ridiculous power usage

On another note, I'm a bit confused, every other review I've read/seen, especially Hardware Unboxed made the 3090 ti seem like a ridiculous card and a terrible value, and highlighted the fact that it's using 33% more power for 10% more performance, yet this review uses phrases like "a whopping 12% faster".....is 12% faster for 47% more money a good thing? I'm seriously asking, because this review is making this seem like a good product.

 

[Butanding1987]

LOL.

 

[Space Lynx]

516 watts, yikes

twice the price for only 10 fps more than 6900 xt in a few games... hmm doesn't seem good to me.

 

[Butanding1987]

Are you sure it's "considerably" slower?

 

[Minus Infinity]

The look on buyer's faces when even a 4070 demolishes this for about 1/4 the cost, priceless.

 

[Space Lynx]

The look on buyer's faces when even a 4070 demolishes this for about 1/4 the cost, priceless.

miners and bots will buy all of the 4070's, ETH is skyrocketing in price, and the whole idea its "only a few months away" for it to go PoS is a joke.

i got a 6700 xt for msrp 479. im happy with that, rest of the world can go to chaos if it wishes.

 

[Flydommo]

According to all the leaks, the 4000 series will have even more ridiculous power usage

I know that the high-end graphics cards such as the RTX 4080 or 4090 are likely to have an extremely high TDP but my hope is that specifically the RTX 4060 or 4070 might be a diffetent breed. Whether this is a realistic approach is up to debate of course.

 

[watzupken]

> we find the ASUS RTX 3090 Ti STRIX LC to be a whopping 12% faster than the RTX 3090, which is very impressive

lol at whopping.

you'd not even notice the difference

lol at using 30% more power on a soon-to-be-superceded architecture and costing thousands of dollars being impressive.

I agree. The increase in performance comes at a steep cost in terms of $ and also power. Everything went up exponentially, except for performance. And considering we are at the tail end of the Ampere cycle, releasing a 2 grand and more card is simply unattractive. Under normal circumstances, we should be seeing prices dip below MSRP across the range, but still not the case. Instead, we get a “new” flagship that’s probably good for the next 6 months before you can write off half its value if the prices continue to trend downwards.

 

[thelawnet]

I agree. The increase in performance comes at a steep cost in terms of $ and also power. Everything went up exponentially, except for performance. And considering we are at the tail end of the Ampere cycle, releasing a 2 grand and more card is simply unattractive. Under normal circumstances, we should be seeing prices dip below MSRP across the range, but still not the case. Instead, we get a “new” flagship that’s probably good for the next 6 months before you can write off half its value if the prices continue to trend downwards.

Yes September 2020 saw the 3080 and the 3090 released, where even though the 3090 wasn't twice as good at least well it was 'the best', the full card, double RAM, top dog for two years, and the 3080 Ti wouldn't exist for another 9 months.

Now this is the sort of 3090 'Prescott edition', clocked too high, no more RAM or other compelling feature, and instead of, as you would expect the same price or an extra $50 on the RRP as would normally be the case for late-cycle 'Ti' models to reflect the age of the hardware being refreshed with better speed, they've put $500 on the price.

 

[kapone32]

Wow this is crazy. I know that this card is fast but really? How can Ngreedia have a consumer Graphics card (Mainly for Gaming) for the cost of a decent Gaming PC much less an Uber Enterprise card? The most glaring issue though is the Power draw. It will be interesting to see how a 2 KG (Asus Strix 3090 TI) will fit in a vertical case. I also fear that you may get sag with a card of that weight on even a horizontal orientation. I have to come back to 480 to 517 Watts of Power Draw which is more than double what I see from my 6800XT. As of right now I could buy 2 6800XTs for the price of one of these. It too bad they fooled us into believing that Multi GPU was somehow a bad idea.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I want to point out that the analysis of the benefits of 24GB of VRAM, there is one important argument that is missing - multitasking. I have 3 4k monitors, and at desktop with a web browser open with a few tabs, my GPU is using just under 3GB of memory. I don't want to have to close everything on my PC to be able to have enough free VRAM to launch a game. I have already run into games (Halo Infinite) where even though TPU said that my 11GB GPU would be more than enough for the game even at max settings, I was getting stuttering as the VRAM hit 100% use and data began to be swapped in an out. I had to lower settings to use less VRAM and the problem went away.

The chart and explanations about game VRAM use is misleading because you need extra capacity above that just for Windows and other programs. A game that uses 8.5GB of VRAM on an 11GB card is going to be VRAM limited is everything else is already using 3GB. I know that the next GPU I buy will have at least 16GB of VRAM just so I don't have to worry about turning down settings or closing idle applications.

 

[W1zzard]

The chart and explanations about game VRAM use

All VRAM measurements are actually whole system, but of course reviewers have nothing else running, i.e. no browsers with 3894739847 tabs, and other apps