Packaging

The Card

Even at a first glance, this card screams "Noctua." Both companies were wise to keep the tan-and-brown color theme of the Noctua brand on the fans, although I'm sure a lot of people will hate on the color. Visually, the card looks identical to the previous-generation GeForce 30 ASUS x Noctua graphics cards. On the back, you'll find a metal backplate with a cutout to let airflow through.


Dimensions of the card are 31.0 x 14.5 cm, and it weighs 1917 g.


Installation requires four slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4a ports and two HDMI 2.1a (same as Ampere).

NVIDIA introduced the concept of dual NVDEC and NVENC Codecs with the Ada Lovelace architecture. This means there are two independent sets of hardware-accelerators; so you can encode and decode two streams of video in parallel or one stream at double the FPS rate. The new 8th Gen NVENC now accelerates AV1 encoding, besides HEVC. You also get an "optical flow accelerator" unit that is able to calculate intermediate frames for videos, to smooth playback. The same hardware unit is used for frame generation in DLSS 3.


The card uses the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR connector, which is rated for up to 600 W of power draw. An adapter cable from 3x PCIe 8-pin is included (which is rated for up to 450 W). Of course the 4x 8-pin to 16-pin adapter cables from RTX 4090 will also work with the RTX 4080, but the card won't need that much power.


This dual BIOS switch lets you toggle between the default "Performance" BIOS and the "Quiet" BIOS, which runs the fans at very slow speeds, for the ultimate low-noise experience.

Teardown

You can remove the top cooler shroud very easily, as a single piece. Underneath we find a big metal heatsink.


The fans are standard full-size NF-A12x25 120 mm fans. This makes swapping out the fans in the future for different models or replacing a broken fan incredibly easy; they even use standard 4-pin connectors.


The heatsink uses a vapor-chamber baseplate paired with eight heatpipes that transport heat away quickly. Here you can also see thermal pads to provide cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


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