With the new Astral card line, ASUS positions this as the company’s highest-end GPU line, surpassing the current ROG Strix line. Indeed, when holding the card in your hand, you will immediately see the high-end with a high level of completion, beauty, and solidity; at the same time, it is also equipped with impressive parameters for the cooling system and user support. ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 OC Edition is a rare card model in the segment equipped with 4 cooling fans, a massive heatsink system, and other high-end equipment.
This year, the RTX 5080 primarily focuses on gamers who can play any AAA game in high graphics settings with UHD resolution and new NVIDIA technologies such as DLSS 4 or Multi-Frame Generation.
ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 OC Edition Hands-on: First Impression
Premium Build and Design
A high-end graphics card model is shown right from the outside with a high level of finishing. The card surface uses a matte-painted alloy to create a high-end feel. The backplate is also finished with metal and has gaps to increase airflow.
The total weight is about 2900g, and the size is 350 x 150 x 80 (mm). Compared to the Founders Edition version, ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 takes up about 3 PCIe slots. The PCB reinforcement of ROG Astral RTX 5080 is excellent.
The box has many user accessories, including a ruler, a small card model, and other items.
The card features customizable RGB lighting on the top edge, a dual BIOS switch that allows switching between performance and quiet modes, and two fan headers for case fan synchronization.
Subtle Design Changes Compared to ROG Strix
You need a large enough case and a good enough cooling system to optimize performance when using it. ASUS also includes a card holder to fix it more firmly on the case, avoiding damage to the PCIe connector.
Compared to ASUS’s previous flagship line, the ROG Strix Gaming GeForce RTX 4090, the ROG Astral RTX 5080 seems “gentler.” It has fewer gaming-oriented decorative motifs, such as the ROG logo on the fan.
The ROG Astral RTX 5080’s back is also “gentler” than the ROG Strix version, without many bold and stylized decorative motifs often seen on ASUS ROG.
The ROG Astral logo is placed in the center. On the right side is a fourth fan to support cooling. A large and massive heatsink is noticeable for high-performance graphics cards like the RTX 5080 or 5090 (Hands-On).
Advanced Cooling System
The fourth fan on this card’s backplate acts as a “pull” fan, helping to increase the air pressure passing through the heatsink. This ASUS design increases the airflow and pressure by 20%.
ROG Astral RTX 5080 features cooling technology, including the patented vapor chamber cooling system and four unique cooling fans.
According to ASUS, the vapor chamber system features milled pathways that allow the heat pipes to fit neatly inside. This design increases the contact area between the heat pipes and the vapor chamber assembly, enhancing overall heat dissipation efficiency. At the same time, ASUS also has MaxContact technology. This ASUS-exclusive technology increases the contact area between the GPU heatsink and the GPU by 5%, further improving heat dissipation efficiency.
In addition to the vapor chamber, ASUS uses a premium phase-change GPU thermal pad to fill the gap between the GPU and the heatsink module, improving heat dissipation. Other technologies, such as Optimized Fin Spacing and Quad-Fan Force design, also improve thermal efficiency. According to ASUS, this patented vapor chamber improves thermal efficiency by up to 10%.
Connectivity
The ROG Astral RTX 5080’s I/O ports include 3 DisplayPort 2.1b and 2 HDMI 2.1b ports. The DisplayPort 2.1b ports support UHBR20, allowing 4K 12-bit HDR output at 480 Hz or 8K 12-bit HDR at 165 Hz when using DSC (display stream compression).
Performance
At the heart of the card is the GB203 GPU, based on the Blackwell architecture and built on TSMC’s 5nm process. This architecture resembles the old RTX 40 series generation (Ada Lovelace architecture). However, the GB203 has a new Blackwell architecture with many improvements in performance and features.
Regarding die area and transistor count, GB203 has a die area of 378 mm² and contains 45.6 billion transistors, similar to AD103 (378.6 mm² and 45.9 billion transistors). The performance-per-watt improvements come mainly from the Blackwell architecture and new power management design, including clock, power, and rail gating.
GB203 uses a 256-bit GDDR7 memory interface with a speed of 30 Gbps and a bandwidth of 960 GB/s. It has 84 streaming multiprocessors, 10725 CUDA cores, 366 Tensor cores, 84 RT cores, and 64MB of L2 cache.
DLSS 4 and THOR 1000W Platinum III Power Supply
The RTX 5080 also supports DLSS 4, the latest version of NVIDIA’s image upscaling and frame compensation technology. DLSS 4 replaces convolutional neural network (CNN)-based AI models with transformer-based models, which increase image accuracy and quality. Transformer models power super-resolution, ray reconstruction, and frame generation. Next is multi-frame generation (MFG) technology, which uses AI to generate not just one but up to four subsequent frames after each traditionally rendered frame, increasing smoothness and frame rate.
In addition to launching the Astral RTX 5080 card, ASUS introduced the THOR 1000W Platinum III power supply for the new RTX 50 Series cards. THOR also has many versions from 1000W to 1600W, supporting well for the RTX 5090.
The ROG THOR 1000W Platinum III is an 80 Plus Platinum certified ATX 3.1 power supply with a 10-year warranty. It features Aura RGB LEDs that synchronize with other ASUS components.
Final line
The ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 OC Edition will deliver top-tier performance with a premium build, advanced cooling, and cutting-edge Blackwell architecture. With DLSS 4, Multi-Frame Generation, and high refresh rate support, it’s a future-proof choice for serious gamers. Ensure you have a spacious case and a strong PSU to handle its power.
B&HPhotoVideo, Newegg, and Amazon now list it for $1,649.99, but they haven’t provided a release date.
