ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 Overview
The ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 is a large and heavy card, definitely one of the largest RTX 5080’s out there. The official dimensions are 357.6 x 149.3 x 76 mm. When it comes to design I would call this a more sleek and sophisticated design compared to Strix. It is going to be less flashy and you won’t see as much RGB lighting.
The weight of the card has a lot to do with the actual shroud itself as it is made of metal. This is actually an entire CNC-machined piece, which is really impressive. The outer part of the shroud is black with the inner part being a dark grey or gunmetal color. I think ASUS pulls off the more sleek look here.
Mounted in the shroud are our 3 cooling fans. These are ASUS’s Axial tech fans which are designed with the blades actually connecting to an outer frame that spins with the fan. The center fan actually will spin in the opposite direction of the two outer fans. On each fan you’ll find an ROG logo.
Looking at the card from the side we can see just how thick it is and the massive heatsink that sits on top of the GPU. One thing I did notice about the heatsink is that it is coated black. Even on the previous Strix we did not see that and it really changes the overall look of the card (for the better). ASUS is making use of a vapor chamber base and eight heatpipes that extend into the heatsink itself. If you are wondering about what is under the hood ASUS is making use of 80-amp MOSFETs, which provide 35% more headroom than the standard design.
The side of the card that will show if you have a case window has a small ROG eye and says “GEFORCE RTX” while it says “Republic of Gamers” a bit smaller. Also on this side you will find your 12VHPWR power connection and two 4-pin fan headers. What is nice is that ASUS has covered these if you don’t plan to use them. Connecting case fans to these headers allows you to have a fan curve that is based on both the CPU and GPU. Right next to the fan headers is a small switch. This switch is for the BIOS and you can select between Performance and Quiet mode. These are simply fan curves and by default the card will ship in performance mode.
ASUS has added a dedicated thermal pad for the 12VHPWR power connection. This helps eliminate a lot of the “thermal soak” that happens here. You are also going to get a protective PCB coating, which protects against short-circuits caused by moisture, dust or debris. We’ve seen this used on things like mice with holes in them and it is great to see it come to graphics cards.
Flipping over to the back we have a full coverage metal backplate that simply says “Astral” in the center. The big change here is at the end we have a 4th axial tech fan. ASUS tells is this 4th fan creates a powerful vertical airflow channel that boosts air pressure by up to 20%.
When it comes to connections on the card there are three DisplayPort 2.1b and two HDMI 2.1b. We can see that this card is slotted for 2 slots, but it is much thicker at 3.8-slots so keep that in mind!
