A Closer Look
The first thing you notice when handling this card is that it is freaking heavy. That’s hardly surprising though when you look at the size of it, as it’s relatively long and wide, and aside from the three large fans on the top, the bulk of it is made up from the almost industrial sized heatsink that spans the full size of the card.
Massive size aside, it’s also a fantastic looking bit of it, with a uniquely shaped shroud that comes finished in matte black, making it easy to match up with any colour scheme. Of course, there’s RGB lighting built-in, but we’ll see that in action in a moment.
Around the back, you’ll find 2 x HDMI, 2 x DP, and 1 x DVI, so multiple displays will no be a problem here.
Tucked under the card, you’ll find two 4-pin PWM fan connectors, allowing you to hook up your system fans to be controlled by the graphics card. This means that card can pull in more airflow when it needs it, rather than just trying to spin its own fans faster to get the job done; very clever!
The ASUS STRIX is an overclocked high-end version of the 1080 Ti, which is basically a beastly version of the GTX 1080. The increased performance is met with an increased thirst for power, which you’ll need to provide via 2 x 8-pin PCI connectors.
Around the back of the card, a large and rather thick back plate provides added strength to the card, and it’ll need it too, as a card this heavy would certainly droop without one.
In the test bench, the cards RGB lighting sparks to into life. You can customise it in the downloadable software, but by default, it’ll cycle through a wide range of RGB colours.
This has by far the best cooler I have tested on a 1080ti card. My card never goes above 70 C even with a large OC.