ASUS Releases GeForce RTX 3080 Noctua OC Edition 10 GB GDDR6X

[TheLostSwede]

Only a week ago the first pictures of the ASUS x Noctua GeForce RTX 3080 card turned up on the web and now the card has been officially announced as the ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 Noctua OC Edition 10 GB GDDR6X. The card will have an OC and a Gaming mode with different boost clocks, where the Gaming mode allows the GPU to boost to 1785 MHz and the OC mode takes this further to 1815 MHz. The memory remains at stock clocks and uses 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory. ASUS claims it's the quietest card in its class, but doesn't mention any actual noise levels, although the card comes with a 0dB fan stop mode. It should be noted that the card takes up 4.1 slots and as such, it might not fit in all builds. No official pricing was provided.



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[Ruru]

Just so weird that they released a premium model of the 10GB and not 12GB version (or Ti).

 

[P4-630]

At least it's easy to replace the fans when needed.

 

[Chaitanya]

Since Asus engineers are lazy and love to slap solid slabs of metal on VRM, they should do some motherboards with Noctua designed heatsinks for cooling would be a good for a themed build.

 

[TheLostSwede]

At least it's easy to replace the fans when needed.

Are you sure they will have the same wire headers as the retail fans?

 

[ppn]

it's all about getting a special deal for the stockpile of gimped GA102 soon to be discontinued and no longer in production obsoleted inferior to RTX 4060 and the colored noctua fans, that probably not many people like. instead of black swap fans.

 

[P4-630]

Are you sure they will have the same wire headers as the retail fans?

Fan size-wise, you could replace them with any 120mm (RGB) fans you like.
Little bit of soldering maybe or you could connect them to motherboard fan-headers.

 

[ARF]

10 GB is too little, it would be a good fit for an RTX 4060 10 GB but not for that high-performance-tier that the RTX 3080 belongs in.

 

[SL2]

Are you sure they will have the same wire headers as the retail fans?

At least the 3070 model have it. TPU mentioned it, but derbauer had a good pic.

 

[GerKNG]

completely wasted potential... why is this not the strix PCB with the 450W Powerlimit?

 

[Ruru]

completely wasted potential... why is this not the strix PCB with the 450W Powerlimit?

The most stupid thing is that it's the 10GB model, not 12GB or Ti.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Are you sure they will have the same wire headers as the retail fans?

IIRC it was either JayzTwoCents or Linus that took a look at the first noctua card they released, and it was a bit different and you couldnt just replace the fans with standard noctua fans.

Edit: It appears to have been Linus.
Edit 2: It's not wanting to start from the timestamp so that is at 12:48.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

IIRC it was either JayzTwoCents or Linus that took a look at the first noctua card they released, and it was a bit different and you couldnt just replace the fans with standard noctua fans.

Edit: It appears to have been Linus.
Edit 2: It's not wanting to start from the timestamp so that is at 12:48.

JayzTwoCents did one as well, but he went with much higher RPM fans and ran them off the mobo headers.

 

[Prima.Vera]

4 slot card?? WTF??

 

[Ruru]

4 slot card?? WTF??

Well, at least for ATX builds, it's not that huge problem as a typical gamer has only a graphics card as an expansion card.

 

[TheLostSwede]

4 slot card?? WTF??

4.1 to be precise.

 

[progste]

4 slot card?? WTF??

Worth it.

 

[mechtech]

Make it 20GB of HBM3 with a black leather fan shroud and I’ll think about it.

 

[Chrispy_]

So much wrong with this.

• It's just a slightly-modified TUF heatsink and PCB which doesn't draw enough power to really warrant the upgraded fans.
• It's the 10GB model, which is a 2020 card, not a 2022 card.
• It's so chonky for a measly 3080. 4.1 slots?!! There are 3090/3090Ti cards that are much smaller than this.
• Weight. This card needs to come with an anti-sag bracket but it doesn't even come with RGB lighting.

I'd actually like to see if this is any better than the TUF it's based on - the TUF is already a very quiet card, and at 31dBA as tested by W1zzard two years ago and with idle fan stop feature, it's hard to imagine anyone having reason to complain about the noise of the cheaper, older, prettier, smaller, lighter 3080 TUF.

Edit:
The coil whine on the TUF (and presumably this card too) was always audible over the fans, so there's practically zero point in making a quiet fan version of this card.

At least it's easy to replace the fans when needed.

Outside of 24/7/365 ETH mining rigs, how many times have modern FDB-bearing fans on premium GPUs failed you before the card became obsolete?
I mean, you're not wrong but I've not replaced a GPU fan in years, close to a decade in fact.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I found one of these floating in my toilet bowl today, then i put my glasses on and just flushed it.


However, if this gimmick, and it is a gimmick just to inflate prices, we will likely see other brands going the same configuration route. Like a MSI 3080 with Phanteks PH-140SP fans?

Next up, Noctua ARGB fans clap hard for the Asus 3080RGB model!

 

[SL2]

Next up, Noctua ARGB fans clap hard for the Asus 3080RGB model!

You're missing the most obvious variant: BLACK EDITION. For just $80 more you'll get black fans.

The higher price is because black plastic is very expensive due to the spanish flu pandemic in 1918 - 1920. However, the specifics behind the correlation is still unknown.

 

[Chrispy_]

For me the biggest flaw with most GPUs is not the cooler but the way it's mounted in the motherboard:

Fans push air through the fin stack and it exhausts out of the top/bottom edge of the heatsink (looking directly at the card, fans facing you). The problem is that in a motherboard slot, chonky coolers like this gets so close to the motherboard that the bottom edge of the heatsink is entirely blocked off. See here:

Sure, the top of the fin stack is unobstructed, but the entire bottom edge is completely blocked off by the motherboard. If I'm being generous there is maybe a 2mm gap there at most. That means that the finstack is only half as effective as it could and should be. Heatsinks on GPUs have become so big that they are quite literally suffocating themselves with their obesity. Yes, they're quiet because they're over-engineered, but they could also be quiet if they were more efficiently engineered to use all of the heatsink surface area more effectively - and that would also let them be considerably smaller.

 

[TheDeeGee]

At least it's easy to replace the fans when needed.

Then you still have a brown card, because the entire shroud and backplate have a brown tint.

 

[SL2]

That means that the finstack is only half as effective as it could and should be.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. The heatsink under the right fan obviously blocks the exhaust, but that's not half of all the exhausts. On the left side there's space between the slots.
Also, don't forget the vent hole in the PCB.

Even if a MB heatsink blocks the fins like in this pic (red), there's possibly room just above (below in this pic), in front of the PCIE slot, leaving room for the air (blue) to go towards the RAM.

This pic shows the extra space between the heatsink and the PCB, which also helps the airflow, meaning that the exhaust air could go in various directions, including towards the front of the case.

I guess one way of checking whether this is an issue is to test with an ITX board, or a vertical mount.

 

[trsttte]

However, if this gimmick, and it is a gimmick just to inflate prices, we will likely see other brands going the same configuration route. Like a MSI 3080 with Phanteks PH-140SP fans?

140mm are unlikely to happen because you start to create problems with the card fitting in some cases (including the power cables), but otherwise I'd very much like this to become more common. Isn't any different than brands selling 3 or 4 "binned" (well not really, most stuff is already pushed to the brink unless yields are terrible) - like tuf, strix, duo, turbo, etc.

Instead of the silly 92mm proprietary fans with proprietary connectors, 120mm regular off the shelf fans sound pretty sweet to me regardless if I'll have to replace them or not during the useful life of the card, the fans can then be reused for something else, or you can run a splitter to hard wire some case cans to the gpu, or whatever you want. I see it as a very interesting option - just not 4.1 slots , there are slimmer fans and slimmer ways to mount them (this noctua collab is 4 slots because they made it so, the heatsink is extra tall and even the shroud gets that extra to that 0.1 to guarantee you won't suffocate the card