EVGA RTX 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra Review
Up Close
With a triple fan cooler the packaging for the EVGA FTW3 Ultra is certainly big and bold. The bevelled corner might be a small detail but for reasons we can’t fully explain it does add to the sense of a premium product.
That is a factor which definitely stands out in full when you get the FTW3 Ultra out of the box. It’s a chunky card and instantly recognisable. Sometimes these modern cards tend to blend together because of the cooling needs, but the translucent shroud and EVGA embossed fans leave you in no doubt as to which exact card you have.
The backplate has plenty of vents to help heat dissipate from the PCB whilst also allowing a little of your case airflow to do its job. Combined with the thick fins, clear ‘banner’ pointing through your case window, and 8+8pin PCIe power inputs, it’s a premium product in every regard.
Speaking of the thick fins you can see from both sides of the card that the iCX2 cooling system is committed to ensuring your TU102 GPU has the most thermal headroom possible to get those stratospheric clock speeds and consistent levels of boost clocks that are so important to smooth frame rates.
It isn’t only the fin density that is working hard for you but the heatpipes themselves are thick enough with which to bludgeon someone to death. The eagle-eyed amongst you will note – just under our logo – the connector that enables you to add RGB light strips and a fan header to your EVGA Precision X1 software in a similar manner to the ROG setup.
Without a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics we couldn’t state if the EVGA logo embossed on the fan blades will have any effect upon the stability of the airflow, but they unquestionably look the business and add a unique flair to an otherwise functional aspect of every cooler we see. Often fans are so similar that our brains pay them little heed, but here you’d have to make a conscious effort to ignore them.
If you feel a 2 and 3 quarter slot cooler isn’t large enough then you can add this optional front to the FTW3 Ultra to really make it your own. It’s only available in black but the white trim behind it is available in red, white or black. Perhaps most importantly because it is optional we can see a lot of people taking it down their local paint booth and customising it to their own desires. Certainly it’s the easiest way of changing a cards colour scheme we’ve seen in a long time that didn’t involve disassembling it.
Lastly the business end of the card has the usual collection of DisplayPort and HDMI outputs, as well as a USB Type-C connector for all your VR demands.
