MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio Review
Up Close
The Gaming X Trio straddles that fine line between attention grabbing and subtle. A nice clear product image sits on an otherwise Nvidia enforced design.
The Tri Frozr 2 cooler is yet another evolution of the famous Twin Frozr cooler which was dominating the market when this site began. With so much performance from the new Ampere GPU and the increase in the amount of cores on board that require cooling it makes a lot of sense to go with the three fan solution, particularly given how good it worked on the previous generation of RTX cards.
We’ve always liked a backplate here at OC3D, partly because it covers up all those unsightly solder spots and gives a smooth flow to your internals. Mainly though for the rather obvious thing that it helps spread the thermal load across the PCB and keep the card rigid. Extra points to MSI for resisting the temptation to stuff it full of gaudy RGB lighting.
There is no denying that the heatsink is a hefty piece of kit. The whole card weights 1.5kg and most of this is the amount of metal on the heatsink working to keep things frosty.
After the totally out-there Nvidia RTX 3080 Founders Edition the design of the Gaming X Trio is much more like the cards we’ve seen before. Big backplate, heavy on the heatsinks, middle placement for the branding. We’ll get to the PCIe power inputs in a minute.
It’s larger than the twin slot cooler on the Founders Edition, but has some thick heatpipes and high fin density sitting underneath the triple fans that give the Gaming X Trio its name.
We weren’t overly convinced about the 12 pin power on the Founders Edition. It required adaptor cables, something we’re not keen on, but also it’s central position made cable routing a headache. The Gaming X Trio is a more standard setup with 3 8-pin PCIe cables in their usual right edge placement.
Around the back we have the regular Nvidia arrangement of three DisplayPort 1.4a sitting alongside a big upgrade to the HDMI ports, now in v2.1. This has a seriously large amount of bandwidth available now letting you run 8K60 via HDMI, instead of being limited in resolution vs refresh rate as we’ve been up to now.
It’s not really unique to the Gaming X Trio, but if you just take a moment to look closely at this image you can see how robotic manufacturing has significantly broadened the design possibilities. Imagine having to solder all this on manually. We started to count them all but lost track. Intense.
Lastly a peek beneath the fans show off the fin density on the cooler, and in particular the wavy design which is a considerable departure from the standard straight lines most heatsinks have.
