ASUS Strix RTX 3080 Ti LC Watercooled Review

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The RTX 3080 Ti Strix returns to the giant multi-hued eye packaging we've all grown to love in the years that the Strix range has been on the market. Considering you have a radiator as well the box is surprisingly compact, which is useful for those of you who like to hoard your packaging. No you've got a garage full of boxes... *whistles innocently*.

We know why ASUS have gone with the blower idea for their VRM cooling, we just aren't ever going to be big fans - ha - of it. When you're spending this much money and they've already gone to all the trouble of a custom copper block it surely can't be much extra work to extend that heatsink across the VRMs too and save the need for a rather cheap looking blower fan and shroud.

The business end of the Strix is the 240mm radiator that will - and indeed does as you'll see later on - keep your temperatures low and allow the card to run at the peak of cool and quiet we all strive for. Nothing worse than starting a game and your PC suddenly turns into a vacuum cleaner sounding thing.

Sorting out the cables for an AIO that isn't mounted anywhere near the graphics card will always be a difficult procedure as anyone who has tried to tidy up their CPU AIO will know. GPU ones are more cable happy, particularly with RGB as well, although at least ASUS have used ROG branded connectors so you feel you are getting good value from your purchase.

The Strix RTX 3080 Ti has 24 pins of PCIe power input! Certainly you wont find power draw an issue that limits your overclocking efforts on this particular card, and with a serious amount of liquid cooling too the Strix should be very fast indeed.

If you're a regular peruser of the ASUS Strix range of products you'll be aware that they come with fan headers allowing the graphics card to bring extra cold air into your system if necessary. A handy feature normally but somewhat less useful on an AIO equipped card.