Why it issues: Some individuals who love the efficiency and silent buzzing noise of Noctua followers have been strapping them to their GPUs for years. For individuals who need to improve to an RTX 30 card, Asus and Noctua now haven’t one however two Noctua’d fashions.
Last 12 months, Asus partnered with Noctua to supply a customized design for Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card. The outcome was precisely what you’d count on — a graphics card with a beefy heatsink, a minimalistic shroud, and two of Noctua’s greatest followers.
This week, the 2 firms revealed they’ve prolonged their partnership to make a GeForce RTX 3080 Noctua Edition graphics card. The transfer was probably in response to lovers who’ve been asking the apparent query — why apply Noctua’s experience to a mid-range Ampere card however not any of its higher-end siblings?
The RTX 3080 is not at all the best possible in efficiency phrases — that title would go to the extra power-hungry and costly RTX 3090 Ti. However, it does come shut, and now it will probably accomplish that with out sounding like a small jet engine. Like the RTX 3070 Noctua Edition, it comes with a pair of NF-A12x25 120mm followers and a bigger heatsink than the Asus TUF mannequin.
Noctua says the RTX 3080 was an even bigger problem than the RTX 3070 given the 340-watt energy envelope (versus 290 watts within the case of the latter card). While it will not shave various levels Celsius throughout load for the GPU core, the largest distinction might be within the VRAM division the place high-end Ampere playing cards are likely to run fairly sizzling. Noctua claims as much as 14 levels decrease VRAM temperatures, however that can rely upon what fan settings you employ.
Where Noctua’s followers shine the brightest is in having a decrease noise signature than the standard fan setup on most graphics playing cards, together with the comparatively quiet Asus TUF fashions. The RTX 3080 Noctua Edition supposedly runs 4.5 dB(A) quieter on common, and nearly 9 dB(A) quieter when followers run at most velocity.
Otherwise, the specs of the Noctua’d card are unchanged from the TUF mannequin — a GA102 GPU (8,704 CUDA cores) with a base clock of 1,440 MHz, increase clocks of 1,785 MHz (gaming mode), and 1,815 MHz (OC mode), paired with 10 gigabytes of GDDR6X operating at 19 Gbps.
There are three disappointing details about this new card. The first is that Asus has chosen to make use of the ten gigabyte mannequin of the RTX 3080 as a substitute of the newer variant outfitted with 12 gigabytes of GDDR6X reminiscence. The firm has but to disclose the worth of the RTX 3080 Noctua Edition, and it’ll solely be out there in restricted portions beginning subsequent month.
