
The dawn of a new generation, tech that has been cooking since the release of the last. It’s a concept that we’re all very familiar with as tech enthusiasts. During the last few months we’ve had new CPUs from both the blue and red side of the divide, we’ve even seen graphics cards from team blue. Beyond that we’ve seen some great new ideas come to market, whether that is wireless RGB or AIOs donning curved screens on their pumps. All of that was exciting, and some of it was a genuine leap forward for tech. Last week team green kicked off their latest showcase with the RTX 5090, and it looks to have quite handily taken its rightful throne as king of the graphics cards. One might say that in the current gaming landscape the 5090 is overkill, more powerful than a gamer is ever likely to need, and its new tricks only amply this. Yes, I’m talking about Nvidia’s DLSS 4. It’s capable of adding in 3 frames for every one produced by your pc, while at the same time using advanced ray tracing and upscaling to make everything flawless. Reviews on this so far are good, and if you want in-depth technical analysis you are in the wrong place! Sadly we weren’t on the 5090 invite list, but we’re not too concerned about that. We did however get asked by our good friends at ASUS if we’d like to have a look at their most affordable RTX 5080 instead! It's from the Prime series, the second iteration of their cost effective line of graphics cards. For me (Sam) the Prime RTX 4070 Super could be my favourite recent graphics card, it came in at around Nvidia's MSRP, had 3 fans and is SFF ready. A look at the follow up is an offer too good to pass up, not only are we expecting power but we’re also hearing good things about price too…...
Graphics Card Overview

The Prime RTX 5080 still somehow manages to be a SFF ready card, with 3 fan cooling. It is larger than its predecessor, coming in at a 2.5 slot thickness, 306mm long and 126mm wide. It occupies a similar space to the ProArt 40 series graphics cards. I suppose with it being a step up for the Prime range an increase in size was inevitable, but it does come with a distinct advantage to cooling - a vapour chamber. Combined with the 3 fans, cooling should be a breeze! It seems that ASUS have opted for the tried and true 2 fans venting out of the sides with the third venting through the top plate.
Design wise the card is simple, minimalist. It’s a matt black shroud around the fans and sides with a brushed finish to the top. There is no RGB in sight. Adorning the side are the ASUS and Geforce RTX logos in white and in gloss black there is a fairly sizeable Prime logo. Across the top and bottom there are white lines which bring the simple design together well. It is worth noting as this card is a lower cost RTX 5080 the bottom shroud is plastic, and I’m sure some shudder at the thought, but for me it looks and feels absolutely fine. The build materials do make the card light weight, so it’s unlikely to need an anti-sag support.
The card supports 4 outputs, 3 x DisplayPort (2.1b) & 1 x HDMI (2.1b) and ASUS recommend a

minimum 850w power supply. Though that’s technically fine, we’d suggest going for a 1000w to allow a bit of headroom!
Of course the GPU supports all Nvidia’s magic tech, and DLSS 4 should do an incredible amount of heavy lifting, making those hard to run games super smooth. Beyond this it should be a productivity powerhouse, though we won’t be testing it for that.
I suppose we need to discuss what we intend to do on our first encounter with a RTX 5080? The obvious CPU choice is the Ryzen 7 9800X 3D, so that’s nailed on. It’s not really what I’m getting at though, the aim here is to lift the build from minimalist to showpiece. I guess we need the right case, something small form factor, but yet a bit out there?
Case Overview

Sat in the studio since release we’ve had a couple of Montech Heritage Pro cases, one in each colour variant. We kinda had to theme the build around the graphics card so black was the obvious answer. We knew from seeing the announcement earlier in the year that the Heritage has some very unique styling. Recently we’ve seen cases with a lot of wood accents, it feels like Montech have taken note that classy materials can result in a desirable aesthetic. In a change from the norm they have instead opted for ‘vegan leather’, and we are here for it. The ‘leather’ over metal, curves on the sides but yet sharp angles of the glass come together to give retro-futuristic vibes. It sort of looks like how a PC might look in the Fallout universe. Add in a CRT monitor with curved glass and I’m sold. In fact, perhaps we should find something akin to that for a future revisit, what are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

Diving a little deeper, it’s technically a small form factor case, taking motherboards up to micro-ATX. Though considering its SFF credentials it feels pretty big, standing at (h)368 x (d)480 x (w)235. To try to reinforce its portability Montech have included a removable vegan leather carrying strap. It definitely adds to the appeal of the ensemble. If you carry this by the strap into a LAN event you will catch the gaze of your compatriots, but in a good way. This case is different, interesting, and could be a little marmite (you either love it or hate it).
With the larger size comes support for larger hardware. We’re starting to appreciate manufacturers' forethought when allowing space for an ATX power supply, not having to stump up for SFX saves a lot of money! Of course that’s included here (up to 165mm). We also have support for larger graphics cards, up to 400mm. It’ll fit a 360 radiator up top, 3 x 120mm fans on the bottom, a 120mm on the back. There is space for 2 x 120mm fans on the side, but they appear as if they’ll be pretty well blocked by a larger power supply - we’ll have a look and report back. If you’re air cooling the case caps out at 140mm.
Supplied with the case are a set of 4 Montech black non RGB fans, all but the exhaust are reverse blade. Given that in a liquid cooled configuration the bottom fans would be intake we really respect the inclusion of reverse blade fans!
Parts List

How Was The Build?
Let’s keep this one brief and in build order. The motherboard assembly, insertion and connecting up the radiator all went exactly as planned.

Getting the bottom fans in came with difficulties, which you may be able to see in the video. Either the motherboard is mounted about 5mm too low, or the bottom fan mounts need to be offset by about 10mm, because as standard the included fans had to be wedged in under the HD Audio, and F-Panel connectors. The problem was so bad we had to wire in some fan splitters to deal with the fans before screwing them in. Once in it was all fine, they don’t cause any extra noise or vibration considering the snug fit, but something to be aware of. If anyone at Montech is reading we’d probably offset the fans so they’re closer to the glass. It would solve the fit issue and allow some air to flow around the graphics card to the AIO.
Fitting the power supply was simple, the bracket unscrews and pops off to allow the PSU to be easily fitted. Once it was in it became very apparent that using side fans would be pointless, well unless you want to cool the side of your power supply! There are plenty of cable mounting points in the back to manage cables, though you’ll need to provide your own Velcro. Then to finish off the star of the show, the Prime RTX 5080 clicked into place without issue.
Airflow
As we’ve already said, the intake fans on this case weren’t ideally positioned, they would be better offset from the graphics card to better share the cool air coming in. Another minor concern, the intake fans are reverse blade, which typically means they’re not quite as powerful as traditional fans. So you could say we went into testing a little anxious about how the build would perform. Almost all builds work as intended despite any concerns, and this was one of them. As you can see in the video the bottom intake passes cool air to the graphics card with some being drawn past to the radiator. We’re quite happy with how it turned out, and it also confirms that additional intake fans on the side are unnecessary.

Performance

We typically run the same suite of software to keep testing consistent, but at the time of testing only limited games had DLSS 4 support. So instead we decided to focus in on a single supported game and run it in a replicable way in a few different scenarios. The game chosen is the often tested Cyperpunk 2077, we’re well aware everyone else uses this, but the reason is clear, maxed out this game is incredibly demanding.
Cyberpunk 2077
3840x2160
Location - Dog Town
Custom Preset
DLSS Super Resolution Preset - Transformer Model
Texture Quality - High.
Ray Tracing - On
DLSS Multi Frame Generation - 4X
155-162 FPS
40°C CPU
60°C GPU
Custom Preset
DLSS Super Resolution Preset - Transformer Model
Texture Quality - High.
Ray Tracing - On
DLSS Multi Frame Generation - 2X
75-87 FPS
40°C CPU
63°C GPU
DLSS off/Quick Preset - Ultra
38-46 FPS
40°C CPU
60°C GPU
The Prime RTX 5080 is pulling some interesting figures, you can see the difference that DLSS is making to smoothness. The figures don’t really do it justice though, the visual difference is stark, though the image isn't perfect when relying on generated frames, you’ve really got to be looking for inconsistencies.
Roundup

It’s been an exciting build, getting to be one of the first to get to play with a new generation of graphics card is always an honour. It’s going to be interesting to see the roll out of the 50 series cards and the difference that makes to the gaming landscape. The Prime RTX 5080 looks to be launching at Nvidia’s MSRP, and has an extra bonus of having a vapour chamber for better cooling. It performed extremely well and kept cool while doing it.
As for the build, there are a few quirks with the Heritage Pro, things that perhaps need iterating on, but none of them are a deal breaker. The case is unique, we’ve seen plenty of cases using wood to give a premium aesthetic, but the use of vegan leather fills the same void. We love the use of retro futuristic design and the space available to build with. I personally would love to see a future version of this case but smaller, perhaps aimed at ITX.
Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes
Full Video Below:
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US Links
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GPU: Coming Soon!
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PSU (850w): https://amzn.to/4jzkrAH
PSU (1000w): https://amzn.to/40wtQk1
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MOBO: https://amzn.to/4gpgBYs
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PSU (1000w): https://amzn.to/4hyUIqA
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Storage: https://amzn.to/4hb5RxL
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Monitor: https://amzn.to/4778eh2
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