Nvidia RTX 4080 Graphics Card Review

Palit RTX 4080 GameRock OC

Now if you want something different and frankly completely bonkers in terms of style, then you have the Palit GameRock OC, which I’ll come straight out and say it, but colour me impressed. I love the look of the GameRock cards, because they’re bold and brash and they’re not trying to hide it at all, though the 40 series as a whole have had a bit of a redesign, with the midnight kaleidoscope styling. Now featuring a slightly darkened crystal design, it simply looks stunning, but I also get that it’s going to be a love/hate type design.

Again, it looks to use the same cooler design as the RTX 4090, though I never had a Palit 4090 in my hands, so I can’t directly compare but it’s easy to see the similarities in the design.

Speaking of the design, it is unique. I said it when they first introduced the crystal style on the 30 series, and while that has improved, turning the card on is where you really get to appreciate the appearance, especially if you’re a fan of RGB. I won’t lie and say that it’s to everyone’s tastes, or that it will seemingly blend in with the rest of your system as it won’t and I’m fine with that.

Along with the crystal showstopper, the card features a nice mixture of materials and has some premium elements down the top and bottom that add to the rigidity of the card while also adding to the look.

The card is slightly smaller than some of the competition, coming in at 329mm long, 137mm wide and 71mm thick, so it’s up there with the Gigabyte Gaming OC in terms of being over 3 slots thick and weighs in at 2240 grams. So not the heaviest, but also not the lightest either. To avoid sag, much like the other cards, it does come with a support bracket to cater for any worries you may have due to its size and weight.

With the cooler apart, it’s easy to see that there is some extra strengthening between the cooler and the PCB and again, another vapour chamber design, again featuring 8 heatpipes which flow into the cold plate, which makes contact with both the GPU core and the surrounding memory chips, which then transfers the heat away towards each end of the card.

Again, no word on pricing, but based on the design and its factory overclock, you’d be expected to pay a premium over a reference spec or FE based card.