Packaging

The Card

The ASUS Radeon RX 6800 STRIX OC shares the same impressive looks and cooler shroud with other STRIX cards from the GeForce 30 and Radeon RX 6000 Series. I really like the new look ASUS created; it's clean, yet powerful with its metal highlights on the front and back of the card.


Dimensions of the card are 32 x 14 cm, and it weighs 1709 g.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1.


The card has two 8-pin power inputs. This configuration is rated for up to 375 W of power draw.


Two fan headers near the back of the card can be used to connect case fans to the graphics card. These fans will now run in sync with the graphics card fans—stopped when idle and at increasing speed depending on the GPU temperature. Since the graphics card is the primary heat source in most computers, this makes a lot of sense and helps keep noise levels down.


The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU. Here, you see the BIOS switch, which lets you toggle between the default (Performance) BIOS and a "quiet" BIOS that runs the fans quieter, at slower speeds with higher temperature.

Teardown

ASUS designed a huge heatsink, which does a great job keeping the card cool. Seven heatpipes quickly move any heat away from the GPU core and to a large array of fins, where it is dissipated in the airflow of the three fans. This is the same cooler assembly as on the ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 STRIX OC, only with minor adjustments for the different GPU and PCB geometry.


Once the main heatsink is removed, a metal reinforcement frame becomes visible. It helps prevent sagging and provides some extra cooling for the VRMs.


The backplate is one of the thickest I ever had in my hands and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. There's also several thermal pads, which help reduce temperatures a little bit.