Yesterday, Gigabyte become the first Nvidia partner to tease their GTX 1080. Most of the other AiB partners haven’t yet revealed their custom plans and only a few have even teased their Founders Edition reference cards. Joining ranks today is GALAX who revealed their reference card already but is adding their first custom GTX 1080. Unfortunately, it is a rather plain model and not the HOF edition.
Unlike most custom models, the GALAX GTX 1080 is more like the reference models of old. It comes with a simple plain blower with a design reminiscent of the GTX 680 reference coolers. In fact, I suspect the Founders Edition reference model may even perform better than this one. I also suspect that this GALAX model will actually come in under the inflated Founders Edition $699 price tag given that the cooler is probably much cheaper.
Even with the much cheaper cooler, I’m still confident the GALAX card will manage to do fine. The GTX 1080 has trimmed down TDP by a large margin and even this cooler should be able to handle it. However, the cooler isn’t quite befitting a $599 product, however, high performing or power efficient it may be. Hopefully, we’ll see some more custom cards that bring the goods we’ve come to expect.
