ASUS TUF RTX 4080 Gaming OC Ed. O16G in the test: a high-end card at a terrible price – 17

Conclusion

If you have looked at the inventory levels for RTX 4080you probably didn’t miss that it was TUF RTX 4080 OC Edition once the only model left in stock. The main reason will probably be the high price. Compared to the RTX 4080’s already high MSRP, it’s up another seven thousand. There’s nothing on that card that makes sense to pay $7,000 more, and there’s nothing on it that makes it cost $7,000 more. Maybe it’s just that in terms of fire safety, thanks to the massive metal cooling cover, it is better than cards with a plastic cover, but this also applies to the Founders Edition.

Paradoxically, the three thousand most expensive Strix sold out immediately. While fewer units were probably stocked, I can’t imagine why it would make sense to pay an extra three grand for the Strix over the excellent TUF. In silent mode, the cooler can hardly be quieter, the performance increase due to higher clock rates is at most one percent. It really is better to pay a few thousand more for an RTX 4090. Three and a half thousand for a few more aRGB LEDs and a slightly sleeker design is probably not worth anyone. He may be right in overclocking competitions. So yeah, if you need an Asus card for some reason, then the TUF might make sense.

I have no idea how expensive cooler manufacturers can put on a board at MSRP, but I can’t imagine that a TUF is a vapor chamber cooler that could cost more than two and a half thousand when you buy a cooler. 360mm water cooling for similar money . From that perspective, the roughly 39,000 price tag would probably seem bearable, even so, I’d tell you you won’t improve enough over the Founders Edition or other manufacturers’ cheaper models to make it worth the extra three grand. But buying an RTX 4080 for forty thousand and more no longer makes sense.

When it comes to Asus’ design and build, the board really can’t be faulted except for one thing: the power coils. The cooler itself with the fans at the speeds at which they spin under load (in silent mode) reaches a noise level of about 30.5 dBA on the sound meter, but when loading the graphics chip, the power cascade coils are added to the fans and the sound level meter already measures values ​​of around 33 dBA. So the coils are heard much more clearly than the fans. It’s no worse or better than most 300W cards, but if you want a quiet computer, coils will ruin it.

One minor complication is that the massive cooler won’t fit in smaller cabinets. Not only in terms of length, when using a power supply, you need about 8cm of space under the side panel to the edge of the expansion slot gaps so you don’t break the adapter too much. Less common is the use of a two-slot empty space – it has the disadvantage that the board cannot rest against the back wall of the case as well as with a three-slot one, but on the other hand it is one of the few models that can be installed in an enclosure in a post, where vertical positions are often for two-slot plug only.

And that’s all there is to complain about. In terms of construction, it is a flagship product. The cooler is brutally oversized. Even in silent mode, it will keep temperatures low and off the temperature limit, running the fans at such a low speed that you won’t hear them next to the other fans on your computer. Power consumption is higher, but you can’t tell from the card’s temperatures or noise, and it offers higher performance than the RTX 3090 Ti at around 150W lower power consumption. It simply offers a mix of high performance and features of top functioning, but the result is totally destroyed by the current price.