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The Asus ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC [See it on Amazon] / [See it on Amazon UK]is the company's flagship GPU at this moment in time, and like other 1080 Tis it's a monstrous GPU designed for 4k gaming, VR, and quiet operation. As a super high-end GPU it comes loaded with a decadent list of features including a massive 2.5 slot design, one-click overclocking, VR Ready HDMI ports, case fan headers that sync your case’s cooling to the GPU, and Asus's Aura Sync RGB lighting system. It's got every little bit of technology in Asus's arsenal, in other words, and it's priced to match at a whopping $779 MSRP compared to $699 for the Founder's Edition.
label=Design%20and%20Features
Right out of the box I was pretty surprised at the size of this GPU as it's absolutely massive. It's 11.7 inches long, 5.2 inches across and two inches thick, so it takes up 2.5 PCIe slots. This one is bigger 1080 Tis by a hair, including the also girthy EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2. Asus includes a DVI port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and two DisplayPorts. The two HDMI ports support VR headsets as well as 4k resolution at 60Hz. Nvidia had removed the DVI port on the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition to allow for better cooling, but Asus made significant cooling improvements and was able to add the DVI port back to the card, but it can only run at 2560x1600.
The ROG Strix 1080 Ti occupies 2.5 PCIe slots due to its massive heatsink.
Asus completely redesigned thermal management for the Asus ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition. It offers a thing called MaxContact cooling technology, which replaces the previous Direct Touch heat pipe technology, giving the card six heat pipes connected to a copper heat spreader instead of directly to the GPU. According to Asus this is better as it allows for twice as much contact with the GPU as its previous design, and since it's a 2.5" cooler the heatsink area is 40 percent larger too.
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The fan blades are also redesigned. The patented "wing-blade" delivers maximum airflow with more air pressure than the Founder's Edition, according to Asus, and they’re also IP5X dust resistant certified so they won't collect fur bunnies. Even more interesting is that the card offers a feature called Asus FanConnect II, which provides two 4-pin fan headers on the GPU for you to connect two case fans. The included GPU Tweak II software will then tell the fans to operate according to the temperature of the GPU or CPU to provide optimal system cooling.
All that sounds great, but does it work? Yes, it does, quite well in fact. The Asus ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition ran exceedingly cool during my testing. For the most part, temperatures hovered in the upper 50s to mid 60s. During heavy benchmarking, running Heaven at 4K resolution for 15 minutes or more, I saw the GPU temp go up to 68 degrees, far below the 84 degree cut off point. Most of the time fan noise was silent or minimal, and never obtrusive. It's practically silent, despite its horsepower.
label=Pretty%20lights
Asus Aura Sync RGB LED synchronization makes it easy to customize the lighting on the shroud and backplate of the card. The LEDs can display millions of colors using different effects like static, breathing, strobing, color cycle, music effect, and GPU temperature. I found GPU temperature to be the most helpful and music effect, where the colors pulse to the beat of the music, the most entertaining. I also thought it was fun to tweak the colors to match the red case lighting of IGN’s test machine. Keep in mind though, that customizable on-card lighting is a fun and interesting extra but hardly a requirement for a graphics card. If I had to categorize the card's lighting, compared to other GTX 1080 Ti cards I've seen, it's easily the card with the most lights, meaning the entire card basically glows due to the presence of LEDs all over the GPU. This is a bit of a contrast to the lighting schemes from EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte and others that offer more localized lighting at certain areas on the GPU.
label=Benchmarks
I tested the Asus ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition on IGN’s gaming rig equipped with an Intel 4.2GHz Core i7-7700K, 8GB RAM, a 512GB Intel SSD and an Asus Prime Z270-A motherboard running Windows 10 Home 64-bit. I ran all benchmarks at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 [4K] with all quality settings maxed out but with no anti-aliasing.
Overall, performance is outstanding, as you'd expect, and it's not surprising that it's both cooler and more powerful than the less expensive Founder's Edition. So far the only other GTX 1080 Ti we've tested that since the Founder's Edition is the EVGA SC2 card, and as you can see the Asus card is just a smidgen faster thanks to its slightly higher clocks. The EVGA card would hover around 1,890MHz or so under load while the Asus card stayed at about 1,949MHz or so, giving it a teeny, tiny advantage. Overall though the two GPUs are essentially tied in performance with only minor differences in specific titles. We were pretty sure going into this review that performance would be approximately the same as EVGA's best, since the two use the same GPU and both are cooled enough to allow for roughly the same clock speeds.
label=Overclocking
I used Asus’s GPU Tweak II software to overclock the Asus ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition. GPU Tweak II is feature rich, although the interface itself can be confusing and hard to read. Turning on “OC Mode” was the easiest way to get a very slight performance boost. The software lets you overclock either via the one-click interface or do it manually, and you can also monitor readouts for clock speed, temps, etc.
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The review sample we received for this card didn't allow for much overclocking beyond what we got with the one-click setup. Clicking "OC mode" got us up to 1,949MHz, and we couldn't get beyond 1,974Mhz when all was said and done. Running it at 1,99MHz with Heaven 4.0 would cause the benchmark to crash every time, eventually. Overall, having a 1080 Ti that runs at 1,949MHz is about average and expected, so it's not a huge loss. Still, with all that cooling power we were hoping for another 100MHz or so.
The Asus software gives you three one-click overclock options: OC, Gaming, and Silent.
The Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition has an MSRP of $779, and is often out of stock due to high demand, according to Asus. This situation allows 3rd parties to sell it for a higher price, with the card often climbing to $800 or more. When it is in stock and sold by Amazon or Newegg it's offered for MSRP however, so if you want to buy one wait until they are in stock.
Is the GTX 1080 good for gaming?
Faster than both the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and GeForce GTX TITAN X, the GeForce GTX 1080 is built with the very latest technology to deliver unprecedented performance and efficiency, giving gamers the horsepower to play the newest games with settings maxed out. Whether they're on your monitor or in Virtual Reality.
Are Asus Strix cards good?
ROG Strix is in the top 3 for best performing GPU's on the market for sure. It's made from high quality components. Mine runs nice and quiet with no coil whine, and the temps are great. I've never really seen mine get past 65c and that's while pushing the card.
What PSU do I need for GTX 1080 Strix?
Minimum 500 W or greater system power supply with one 8-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors.
What is the max temp for 1080 Strix?
You should definitely try to lower it but 82C won't damage your hardware. Around 85C-90C I would start getting worried.