EVGA XC Ultra Nvidia RTX 2080 Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look

First impressions of this card leave me between a rock and a hard place. I know many people who love this new design of theirs. For me, well, I can see that it’s well made, and the shape and style are pretty spot on. However, that clear plastic gets a big “no thanks” from me. I know that within its lifetime, it’s going to look dusty inside, and it’ll never look as clean as it is in this picture again. It reminds me when people fitted these to their PlayStations.

This is still every bit a high-end EVGA graphics card though. What advantages there are to the clear shroud though, are interesting. For starters, it’s going to light up with the RGB lighting very nicely, and really show off the internal heat sink design clearly too. What’s more, you can add coloured inserts to the models, giving it a more unique look.

Chunky!

The card is massive though, taking up a whopping 3-slots on your system. That size is not wasted though, with an extra thick heatsink running the length of the card, ensuring it can cool that beast of a chipset with ease.

Moving the airflow, we have two custom EVGA fans, with those funky E designs on the fan blades. Of course, as you can see, there’s loads of ventilation around the edges of the card too, allowing heat to easily escape.

On the reverse of the card, there’s a massive heat plate. Not only does this provide some passive cooling for the rear of the PCB, but also adds a lot of rigidity to the card, preventing dreaded GPU droop.

Durable Backplate

The PCB is dotted with cuts and grooves, I’m not sure if they add to the cooling performance, but they look great either way. I must admit, I like the back of the card more than I do the clear shroud.

Down the side of the card, you’ll find a large RGB lit EVGA/Geforce logo. Of course, it’s a powerful card, so you’ll need a 8+6 pin PSU cable to give it what it needs.

Finally, we have the rear plate, which is just a huge slab of metal in its own right. There’s some ventilation here, but since the card blows out all sides (most cards do), this is fine. There are the usual connections too, with 3 x DP, 1 x HDMI, as well as the new Type-C display output.

Lighting

Once installed, we can see the lovely glow from that RGB lighting. It still reminds me of LED clear cases for the PS1, but the style of something is such a subjective thing at the end of the day.