Gaming: Upcoming Asus Geforce Rtx 5080 Noctua Oc Edition Review

An extremely well put together graphics card that could make cheaper models blush. It's cool, quiet and the overclocking headroom is wild. Thing is, it's not a good time to buy any RTX 5080, especially not a super-premium one such as this.

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The Asus GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua Edition is claimed to be the "quietest graphics card in its class" and I don't doubt it's in the running. Though upon first removing it from its box, I was sure it had earned itself at least one accolade: it's easily the largest graphics card I've ever tested. Just a year or two ago, I would have laughed at sheer heft of the RTX 4080 Founders Edition—it looks practically pint-sized next to the Noctua Edition.

This colossus is the product of a partnership between Asus and Noctua. The cooling company is providing three of its NF-A12x25 120 mm fans for the shroud here, including a splash of brown that we don't see on a GPU too often. I think it looks great, with an almost steampunk appearance on account of its massive heft and unusual colourway. It even sparkles a little in the light, which is a nice touch.

Though its powerful look is a limit on what you can pair with it. It's very easy to clash given it's sporting Noctua's telltale brown, unless you pair it with more Noctua brown.

So that's what I did. I paired the RTX 5080 Noctua Edition with the only kit I could think to: the Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler and a couple NF-A14x25 G2 fans. All loaded into the Havn BF 360. A gorgeous combination, if I dare say myself.

GPU: GB203CUDA cores: 10752Memory: 16 GB GDDR7GPU clock speed: 2700 MHz / 2655 MHz (Extreme profile)Memory speed: 30 GbpsDimensions: 303 x 121 x 49 mmWeight: 2.607 kg / 5.74 lbsPrice: $1700/£1560

But it's also extremely easy to build an ugly PC with this card. I moved it over to our MSI/Cyberpower test system for benchmarking, which is all-white and bathed in RGB lights, and the RTX 5080 looks absolutely horrid. I had to avert my eyes for the remainder of the tests.

Weighing in at 2.607 kg—enough that I weighed it on my human scales, not my kitchen scales—this card features a huge heatsink riddled with heat pipes. Four of these heat pipes run the length of the card, which, at 385 mm, is only able to fit inside very spacious cases. The rest culminate near the vapour chamber that si

Source: PC Gamer