ASUS RTX 4080 ROG Strix Review
Up Close
Nvidia might have dispensed with their green branding on their Founders Edition cards but it’s still present on the Strix box. The change in card design – with blue and red accents – is shown off here, but perhaps most surprisingly of all is the gradiant on the box. Regular readers will know ASUS moved their ROG packaging to black with red text a while ago, but the top right corner of the Strix has the old familiar red with silver lettering. We got all misty eyed.
The Strix cooler has undergone a huge redesign with the latest generation and it was sorely needed. We understand most people see one or two graphics cards every five years, but we’ve seen them all and every new architecture had the same cooler and it grew tiresome. Also the world has moved on and the popularity of the curvaceous XFX Merc cards showed that we were all ready for a less-square, more carefully thought of cooler and ASUS delivered in spades. It’s got a splash of colour on it. The lighting is on the end rather than the typical “light up the name” choice. It’s huge but incredibly capable.
If you doubt the words above, just look at the back. Contrasting lines, reflective ROG logo, even a ROG Eye embossed onto the pass-through section. The attention to detail is excellent.
High fin density is just half the cooling equation, but the Strix has them by the bucketload. The shroud also doesn’t cover them off, allowing air to be expelled more freely. This not only keeps the card cool, but because the air hasn’t been sat in the shroud for as long it’s also not as hot when it gets dumped into your case, helping keep the rest of your rig cool too.
A closer look at the ROG Eye on the airflow vent, as well as the GPS coordinates for the ASUS headquarters that is found somewhere on all their ROG products.
Although we’re still annoyed that ASUS haven’t given us a triple-peg backplate for added stability, the addition of another HDMI port above the single one found on the other RTX 4080s is a nice touch for those of you who prefer HDMI to DisplayPort.
The RTX 4080 on top of the RTX 4090. Those of you with small case internals might need to grab your tape measure, but those of us without space issues can be confident that if the Strix cooler could keep the RTX 4090 cool it will have no issues here at all. Spoiler, it is issue free.
