ASUS Unveils GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua Edition, A Quiet Giant With A Huge Cooler
After teasing another collaboration with Noctua during Computex earlier this year, ASUS has officially launched its GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Edition and it's quite the chonker. As in, the burly, brown-themed cooling solution makes this a quad-slot graphics slot. Time to ditch that AdLib sound card for your motherboard's built-in audio chip, eh?
Kudos to you if happen to remember AdLib (hey, it's throwback Thursday, so excuse the reference). These days, any PCI Express slot that isn't occupied by a graphics card is likely to either sit empty or host a capture card for streaming duties. It might also house a NIC for faster wireless connectivity than what your motherboard is equipped with, or if you're like me, a Sound Blaster card (because I'm old school and stubborn).
Whatever the case, this collaboration between ASUS and Noctua isn't intended for cramped builds like a small form factor (SFF) gaming PC, but for enthusiasts who are fans (pun intended) of both outfits and have the necessary space to slot in an ultra-thick GPU.
While it's physically big, it's not boisterous. Just the opposite, ASUS claims its new Noctua OC Edition part is the "quietest air-cooled graphics in its class." It's the same claim ASUS made when it joined forces with Noctua on a GeForce RTX 4080 Super.
What that translates to in terms of the cooling hardware is a three-fan cooling solution that employs Noctua's 120mm NF-A12x25 G2 fans. It also features an "optimized" vapor chamber to wick heat into a large array of aluminum fins.
A dual BIOS configuration lets you toggle between Quiet and Performance profiles. Additionally, the GPU boosts to 2,700MHz in default mode and 2,730MHz in OC mode, both of which are higher than NVIDIA's 2,617MHz boost clock for its Founders Edition model (reference specs).
Connectivity options include two HDMI 2.1b ports and three DisplayPort 2.1b ports. Elsewhere, the base specs are the same for any other GeForce RTX 5080 GPU (10,725 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR7, 256-bit memory bus, and so forth).
ASUS did not say when its GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Edition will be available or how much it will cost. For a point of reference, the baseline MSRP for a 5080 is $999, so this will undoubtedly land somewhere north of that.
Also worth noting are rumors that NVIDIA is prepping a Super refresh of the GeForce RTX 50 series, and that sweeping price cuts for existing models could be on the way.
