The ASUS GeForce GTX 1650 Super STRIX OC is the company's premium custom design for the GTX 1650 Super lineup. The card ticks all feature checkboxes: you get a high-quality heatsink, a metal backplate, dual BIOS, excellent thermals and great noise levels. Out of the box, the card is overclocked to a rated boost of 1785 MHz, which is higher than any other GTX 1650 Super we've reviewed so far, and the highest factory OC available on the GTX 1650 Super from all vendors. This yields the card a 3% performance improvement over the NVIDIA reference—not a lot, but other cards are similar. Compared to the plain GTX 1650, the ASUS GTX 1650 Super is 39% faster, a huge difference. AMD's recently released RX 5500 is 8% slower. The Radeon RX 5500 XT is releasing very soon and should gain a little bit thanks to improved drivers and higher clocks, but I doubt it will be enough to beat the ASUS GTX 1650 Super STRIX OC; the differences will probably end up being tiny. The AMD RX 590 is 4% faster than the GTX 1650 Super, and the GTX 1660 is 10% faster at higher pricing. Overall, we can easily recommend the GTX 1650 Super as a great choice for gaming at Full HD 1080p in all titles.

ASUS is including an excellent cooler with their STRIX OC. It seems to be based on the heatsink for the GTX 1660 Super, which puts out much more heat of course. Even though it "only" has two heatpipes, temperatures are outstanding. Especially the default "performance" BIOS reaches super-low values of only 57°C, in gaming, not idle. That's better than any other GTX 1650 Super we've reviewed so far. Gaming noise levels go down to 32 dBA, whichvis "good", but not good enough. Fan stop isn't available, but the fan profile is quiet enough to make the card nearly inaudible in idle. If you prefer lower noise, ASUS has you covered. A dual-BIOS feature is included with the card, and switching is quick and easy. With the "quiet" BIOS, noise levels are outstanding as fan stop is activate now, which completely shuts down the graphics card fans in idle, desktop work, and light gaming. With only 28 dBA, gaming noise levels are excellent, too, making the card nearly inaudible during gaming. Pretty impressive for a card able to handle 1080p gaming. MSI's Gaming X is a tiny bit quieter, but the differences are minimal.

Unlike a lot of other vendors, ASUS is including a metal backplate on their STRIX OC, which I consider a mandatory feature for any graphics card nowadays as it significantly improves the product's look and feel. Our teardown showed that memory chip cooling could be solved better, but since additional memory overclocking potential was fine, I doubt it's a problem. What's nice is that ASUS is including an empty PWM fan header on their graphics, to which you can connect a case fan which will run at the same speed as the graphics card. Considering that the GPU is the biggest source of heat in most gaming systems, this can be a useful approach to reduce overall system noise levels.

Overclocking worked very well, and we achieved a 12% real-life performance gain, which is very impressive and brings the card close to GTX 1660 levels. Unfortunately, ASUS increased their power limit by only 10 W, which complicates overclocking because with the card hitting its power limit all the time, it's no longer possible to exactly dial in your desired OC frequency. Considering the excellent cooler on the card I'm sure ASUS could have been more generous with the power limit. The manual power limit adjustment range is good though, reaching up to 132 W, which could make the card interesting for the more serious overclockers.

Video memory size of 4 GB might sound low at first, but you have to consider that pricing matters a lot in this segment. Adding more memory would make the card more expensive with little or no performance difference at 1080p Full HD. Looking at our performance numbers, we can definitely see reduced FPS at 4K resolution compared to cards with more memory, but I'm not seeing anything in our data that would suggest these cards are memory-bound at 1080p. We're running maximum details, including optional HD texture packs when available, so there are lots of options to reduce memory requirements should it come to that. I rather buy a more affordable card now than waste money on future-proofing, at least in this segment.

NVIDIA has positioned their new GTX 1650 Super very aggressively. With an MSRP of $160, the card is priced similarly to AMD's aging Radeon RX 580, yet offers better performance, noise, and thermals. The Radeon RX 590 is $190 at the moment, down from its launch price of $280—I'd rather buy the GTX 1650 Super. AMD has announced the Radeon RX 5500 a while ago, and the XT variant for the DIY market is supposed to launch soon, but nobody knows its pricing. ASUS is charging quite a hefty premium of $40 for their GTX 1650 Super STRIX OC, bringing the price to $200, which I think is simply too much. For $210, you can get the GTX 1660 with much more performance, and the GTX 1660 Super is close enough to become an option for some willing to spend a few more bucks. On the other hand, ASUS gives you a lot of extra features, like the improved cooler, dual BIOS, and the case fan header. Still, considering MSI's Gaming X is $180 with better noise levels and similar performance, I think the ASUS card will be a tough sell at its current price point. I'm sure a lot of people will also consider cards like the EVGA GTX 1650 Super SC Ultra that retails at MSRP, making it $40 cheaper, but with similar performance, a backplate, but higher temperatures and noise.