The Best Custom GeForce RTX 2080 Super?

NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 Super is very, very fast, but if you’re looking to take things up a notch with factory overclocks and custom cooling solutions, there are plenty of cards out there vying for your money.

- Koh Wanzi

This is a premium card crammed with nearly everything you could want, and then some. However, the cooler design hasn’t changed coming from the GeForce RTX 2080, with three “axial-tech” fans and a faceted shroud with RGB LEDs on the edges.

It’s one of the heaviest cards here, but also one of the most solidly built. The plastic shroud feels really well put-together, and there’s an additional metal brace that wraps around the card to prevent excessive torsion and lateral bending of the PCB. This brace is mounted to both the backplate and the I/O shield, fully integrated into the card’s design.

In addition, you get six heat pipes and a massive finned heatsink that occupies nearly a full three slots. This helps ASUS maximise the total surface area available for heat dissipation while allowing the fans to run at lower speeds in less demanding scenarios.

The heat spreader boasts of ASUS maxContact Technology, which uses precision machining to create a surface that is flatter and more even. This maximises contact between GPU and heat spreader, translating to more efficient heat transfer. A separate surface interfaces with the VRM circuitry (10+2-phases) via thermal pads, so ASUS hasn’t neglected these crucial components either.

The three axial-tech fans have a smaller fan hub to allow for longer blades and a barrier ring that increases structural integrity and downward air pressure. They are also Ip5X dust resistant and our numbers in the results page will speak to just how well ASUS’s entire thermal design works.

The fans support semi-passive operation too, so they’ll stop spinning entirely to reduce noise when the GPU temperature is below 55°C. This technically only works in Quiet mode, but you can also enable it in performance mode through the GPU Tweak II software.