ASUS RTX 3080 X Noctua OC Edition Review

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The ASUS X Noctua RTX 3080 OC Edition has one of those boxes that gives you a clear product shot and no extraneous fluff. Our only area of query is the right hand side above the green Nvidia box that all packages must have looks a little empty, as if something else was meant to be there.

  

This is a very sneaky photograph that doesn’t really show off the true size of the ASUS X Noctua RTX 3080. You could be forgiven for thinking that it’s just a normal thickness. *evil laugh*.

  

As befits a product from ASUS that has been designed in conjunction with the cooling gurus at Noctua, the backplate is robust with a large hole that has become a familiar idea in recent months. Helping to move hot air up to your exhaust fan whilst also pushing some air to the top half of your case that normally doesn’t have as much cooling intake as the lower half in a lot of chassis designs. 

  

When we first took the card out of the box the size is the first thing that hits you, but it’s worth noting that the build quality is excellent too. Visually the fan containing shroud looks a bit like it’s balanced precariously on the top, but it’s as solid as any design that uses the frameless fans more commonly found on a graphics card.

  

From the other side, the side that will be facing you, it’s remarkable how much extra shroud there is keep the fans in situ. No, we’re not a massive fan of the Noctua brown and we never have been, but we understand how vital it is to their branding. If you see a black fan it could be anyone, but a fan in that brown and beige combo can only be a Noctua.

  
  

We know it’s not really showing you anything new, but photographs do not remotely do justice to how beefy this card is.

  

The ASUS X Noctua offers both Performance and Quiet modes. We’ll be running in Performance mode for our testing, and as you’ll see later on the card isn’t hot or noisy in this mode either.

  

If a four slot card doesn’t sound much bigger than other thick cards we’ve seen, then perhaps this shot of it will give you a better idea of just how chunky the ASUS X Noctua is.