The Card

The ASUS GTX 1650 STRIX follows the visual theme ASUS has been using on their other "Turing" based graphics cards. It is 24.5 cm long and 13.0 cm tall. Unlike other GTX 1650 models, ASUS is including a backplate.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two standard-sized DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0b.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz with a single cable, or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.

Since earlier this year, NVIDIA has enabled support for VESA Adaptive Sync (aka FreeSync) on all of their cards. While only a small number of FreeSync monitors have been fully qualified for G-SYNC, users can enable the feature in NVIDIA's control panel regardless of whether the monitor is certified or not.


The board uses a single 6-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 150 watts of power draw.


GeForce GTX 1650 does not support SLI.


A switch has been placed near the power connector, which lets you turn off the card's lighting—no software installation necessary.


This header near the back of the card lets you synchronize a case fan's speed with the graphics card fans, which is quite useful as it allows the case fans to stop when not gaming and spin up only when needed, as temperatures go up.

Disassembly

The ASUS cooler uses two heatpipes to keep the GPU cool.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.


A metal brace provides additional support for the card and prevents sagging.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.