Cooler Master RTX 5080 OC Review
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we said in our introduction, a bit of a change of scenery today. You can’t buy this card, and the only reason we know it exists is that it will form the centrepiece of an upcoming Cooler Master case build.
What we love about it is how well the two worlds mix. You have a foundation of the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080, about the fastest of the bunch. That means you’ve got bags of performance for one. But also that you have the reliability of the Republic of Gamers build quality. And of course that extra HDMI port on the back.
On top of this Cooler Master have done something we’ve been crying out for. Instead of building big coolers that have proprietary fans and will cost a fortune to replace, why not go slightly bigger and eliminate all those issues? We know we can’t be the only people who’ve loved a card’s design but hated that the manufacturer went with clear fans. Or white ones. Or boring black ones. Why not extend the life span of the card, the ease of replacement and improve the cooling at the same time?
It is such an obvious solution. Ignore 100mm fans and go 120mm. It will fit in your case because that’s the standard case fan size. Additionally everyone sells 120mm fans, not least Cooler Master themselves. This frees you up to customise it to your liking should you wish, or just takes away any worries that in four years time a fan will die and be EOL and unreplaceable. That’s why, if this was a regular review, we’re awarding the Cooler Master RTX 5080 OC our OC3D Innovation Award.
What that award might hopefully do is show Cooler Master that this card should be more than a skunkworks project, but instead become a real thing. Or, if that’s impossible, that a future card might use this most obvious of solutions to the cooling problem. It’s like a one-off rebodied Ferrari. Take a blisteringly fast platform, and give it a bespoke body. The best of both worlds.
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