Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua Edition launches with ridiculous price and 4.3-slot profile

The Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua Edition was announced back in January at CES, but now we get an official MSRP and some additional details regarding the improved heatsink.

First of all, the price is quite ridiculous at US$1,649. The regular TUF edition costs US$1,199, so Asus and Noctua are asking US$450 for two NF-A12x25 fans that retail at around US$60 and a redesigned heatsink with shroud. On top of that, this card occupies 4.3 slots, therefore it will not really fit DIY small form-factor mini-ITX builds oriented towards silent operation. It might even posse problems for some mini-ATX builds. Secondly, the color scheme again comes with Noctua’s cream - beige tinting, which might not appeal to many. Why not include a version with black fans? Noctua does have black versions for the NF-A12x25 fans.

There are positive aspects here, still. The redesigned heatsink with larger vapour chamber is shorter than the original TUF version, making the Noctua card actually shorter. Moreover, the heatsink now includes 5x 8 mm  heatpipes + 3x 6 mm heatpipes instead of the 2x + 6x configuration from the TUF version. This allows the cooling solution to work at inaudibly 12.5 dB at low speeds, and only reach 33.7 dB at maximum speeds, which is barely audible compared to the 48.6 dB on the TUF version. The fans do not kick in under 50°C, so the card is silent during light loads.

As far as GPU specs are concerned, the Noctua edition card is essentially the same with an RTX 4080 Founders Edition, except it has a boost clock of 2625 instead of 2505 MHz, which increases FP16 TFLOPS to 409 (817). The improved cooling also allows for better undervolting potential.

Looking at the limited availability of the RTX 3000 Noctua versions, we could see a repeated scenario for the RTX 4080 version too. That means MSRP will probably be thrown out the window at most retailers and actual prices could be jacked to match an RTX 4090.

Buy the Asus GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC Editio on Amazon