ASUS ROG Ares III Review

Up Close

It wouldn’t be a £1400 graphics card, or indeed an Ares, if it didn’t come in some of most awe-inspiring packaging around. We don’t care what you might feel about the Ares III as a concept, when you’ve got that metal case in your hands and open it to reveal the beautifully crafted innards, it’s hard not to swoon.

      

      

Obviously the Ares card itself is the main event here, but the included water-cooling barbs are good quality too and everything is laid out with the kind of precision that we’d expect at this end of the market. 

      

There is very little to say about the looks because everything is covered by that EK waterblock. It would be easy to enjoy the number showing which of the 500 pieces you’ve obtained, but given the shouting that ASUS are doing about “hand carved waterblock” we’d hope they could hand carve a number into it too.

The leading edge is semitransparent which lets you see the extreme quality of the power components, which is good because with three 8pin PCIe power inputs the Ares III definitely isn’t light on your electricity bill. Let’s be honest though, if you can afford one of these you probably don’t care about another 50p in the meter. It does however highlight the greatly improved power phases ASUS have crammed onto the PCB.