Asus GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Ed. 16GB Review: Silent Monster

When Asus, Noctua, and Nvidia team up, it’s clear the result won’t be a compromise. For those who find the RTX 5090 already too expensive, the GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Edition offers a unique combination of a massive heatsink and three top-tier Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 120 mm fans. An air cooler capable of keeping a powerful 360 W card at low temperatures with the fans spinning at just under 700 RPM is something you rarely encounter.

I guess don’t need to introduce the GeForce RTX 5080 anymore. A detailed description of the new technologies brought by Nvidia’s new graphics cards has been compiled by Jan Olšan in the article Blackwell: GeForce RTX 5000 architecture and innovations. It introduces the individual graphics chips Nvidia is using in the new cards, the new GDDR7 memory type, and also covers changes in cache memory, GPU compute units, updates to shaders and tensor cores, as well as improved compute units for ray tracing. The new generation of GeForce also brings support for new standards such as DisplayPort 2.1b and PCI Express 5.0.

With the new generation of cards, DLSS capabilities are evolving as well. It now supports Multi Frame Generation, which allows the generation of up to three intermediate frames, and introduces Nvidia Reflex 2, the second generation of its latency-reduction technology. This includes Frame Warp, which adjusts object and camera motion in rendered frames based on the player’s most recent input device movement data received just before the already rendered frame is displayed. A more detailed explanation can be found in the aforementioned article.

The GeForce RTX 5080 is not new; we have already tested several models on HWCooling:

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 FE
• Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 OC Ed.
• Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5080 Gaming OC
• MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Suprim SOC

Let me recap the basic parameters—the RTX 5080 is the second most powerful model in the GeForce RTX 50 series. It uses the second largest chip, the GB203, with an area of 387 mm² and 45.6 billion transistors. The chip has 10,752 active stream processors, 336 texturing units, and 112 rasterization units. For accelerating ray tracing computations, 84 cores are available, and for tensor computations, 336 cores. The chip has a base clock of 2295 MHz, a boost clock of 2617 MHz, and the stated card power limit is 360 W. The RTX 5080 is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR7 memory at 30 Gb/s, communicating with the chip via a 256-bit bus for a total bandwidth of 960 GB/s.

I’ll add more detailed specifications just in the form of a table comparing it with the nearest models.

Wordpress Table Plugin

And now we’ll focus on the Asus card itself.

Testing the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7 Noctua OC Edition

(RTX5080-O16G-NOCTUA)

Asus had the GeForce RTX 5080 in four model series—Prime, ProART, TUF, and ROG Astral. Prime is the cheapest, TUF is in the middle of the offering, and ROG Astral models are premium. A few months ago, they added a specialty created in collaboration with Noctua—the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7 Noctua OC Edition.

It sits somewhat apart from Asus’s existing model series. Aside from the cooler, in terms of features, it is similar to the TUF GeForce RTX 5080. However, it has a slightly larger heatsink than the TUF. It lacks some functions offered by the premium ROG Astral series. But when it comes to features in terms of cooler dimensions, its performance, and operational characteristics, it is the best-equipped RTX 5080 in Asus’s lineup.

Prices currently start at around 1520 EUR. Thus, the price sits just a bit below the level of the highest model, the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC.

From the model designation, it’s clear that the card is factory overclocked. The manufacturer slightly increased the stated typical clock in the BIOS from the reference 2617 MHz to 2700 MHz. It is thus clocked a bit lower than the ROG Astral with its stated typical GPU Boost clock of 2760 MHz.

The power limit is at the reference 360 W; it can be reduced by up to 31 % to 250 W, or increased by up to 25 % to 450 W. In terms of the maximum power limit, it gives you more headroom for overclocking than the original ROG Astral with its 400 W limit. At least with the BIOS available at launch.

The card has two BIOSes—Quiet and Performance. Unusually, the quieter Quiet mode is set as the default. As usual, both BIOSes don’t differ dramatically in terms of parameters. They have the same chip and memory clocks, as well as preset power limits. The difference is only in the cooling control settings.

In Quiet mode, the fans run at lower speeds at the same temperatures than in Performance mode. Slightly lower clocks and performance are a side effect of the differently set fan control curve. With higher temperature, the card’s power consumption increases slightly, and with rising power consumption under the same power limit, the GPU clocks decrease marginally.

The monitoring in GPU-Z shows only the usual data as on other models. No additional sensors. What probably disappointed me the most was the lack of monitoring for current on the individual pins of the power connector, as is the case with cards from the ROG Astral series.

GeForce cards typically have two headers reserved for fans, with separate control and speed monitoring. In the case of three fans on a card, manufacturers usually (but not always) solve this by connecting two fans to one header via a splitter.

On the tested model, the fans at the edges are connected via a splitter to the Fan 1 header, and the middle fan is connected to the Fan 2 header.

The next set of images shows the values stored in the Quiet BIOS. In GPU-Z, the only apparent difference is the BIOS version label. The differences in performance are smaller than in noise, so we will test performance in the quiet mode. However, we will measure the operating characteristics in detail on both BIOSes.

The application HWiNFO can obtain the most information from the monitoring of most cards. The list of sensors available for the tested card in the latest version of the application can be seen in the image below.

On the back of the packaging, the manufacturer presents the features and technologies utilized by the card. Because the card is built on a similar foundation as the TUF RTX 5080, it lacks some of the premium elements offered by the ROG Astral.

First mentioned is the cooler with a trio of 120mm NF-A12x25 G2 fans, support for 0dB cooling technology, and a ventilated backplate. It further mentions the cooler with an optimized vapor chamber, a phase-change thermal interface material, and MaxContact technology for improving the contact between the chip and the base.

Longer lifespan is ensured by Auto-Extreme technology with one-pass soldering and GPU Guard for more stable mounting of the GPU on the PCB.

And finally, it mentions the GPU Tweak III software for monitoring and configuring the card, MuseTree, and a free one-month trial version of Adobe Creative Cloud.

In the accessories, you will find a brief installation guide, leaflets with other manuals, a thank you card, a cable tie made of dual-sided hook-and-loop fastener, and a power adapter from three 8-pin connectors to a 12V-2×6 connector. And an anti-sag bracket, which prevents excessive stress on the PCB.

Asus includes an adjustable support bracket with its heavier cards, which you can use to prop up the card in cases with a PSU shroud.

However, in standard ATX cases with seven expansion slots and a shroud right below the motherboard, there is less space under a four-slot card. A standard-length bracket doesn’t fit under a four-slot card, so a special shortened variant is also included in the accessories. Just like the original one, a PH screwdriver bit for the screws also fits inside it.

We’ll take a look at the card’s design in the following chapter

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