ROG ASTRAL RTX5080 - Maximum Airflow?

Sam Thwaytes

Feb 36 min read

PC aesthetics, it’s what we do around here, but it’s not an art form which has been around for too long - after all, PC’s were typically full metal cases that simply housed the components. You couldn’t see inside without removing panels, and if you did, you would likely have to force it back on over a bunch of messy cables. I remember my dad buying a PC which had a clear perspex panel, (it was just the top half of the side) and him joking that it was so he could see all of the non-moving parts. I’ve not really thought of it since, but I guess that was PC aesthetics in its infancy.

If you fast forward to today much of the industry has been reinvented. It is not simply enough to provide technological advancement, the higher end products are painstakingly designed to look good. It’s especially true when you talk of partner graphics cards, where they take the chipset and boards required and build something special around it. The best, most advanced and the ones using the most premium materials always cost more. They’re not for everyone, and some will scoff at the price and buy something else - and that’s fine, it’s something I’ve done before. Others will see it as a must have, you’ve got to treat yourself sometimes.

With all of that in mind the ROG Astral RTX 5080 has arrived in the studio. The price tag is one of the highest for a 5080 at launch, but when we saw the announcement we knew we had to get one in. It’s design is flawless, it looks to be well built and the cooling tech is top tier. For now at least we’re going to put the price aside. To those that appreciate beautifly designed tech read on.

The Unboxing

The unboxing experience with the Astral RTX 5080 was largely as expected. There were a few highlights, to start with there are a few included collectables. It would appear that gone are the days of ASUS’s top trumps cards in the box, instead we were greeted with a mini plastic graphics card model, with fans which spin. Accompanying the mini was a ruler, a magnet, and the expected anti-sag support. Included goodies always make us smile and the mini graphics card was fun to mess around with.

Plucking the card from its box, we noticed that the tape seal on the anti-static bag had moved in transit, so we had to cut it twice! Once it was out the reality of both the size and weight of this absolute unit hit home, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Peeling off the protective plastics wasn’t an ideal experience. ASUS, if you’re reading, please stop using such hard plastics to cover your tech! A soft plastic easy peel would be amazing. Removing the plastic on the side sounded like a rusty gate, it was so unexpected that both Matt and I burst into laughter during the peel!

ROG Astral RTX5080 Overview

Unboxed and on its side on the desk, it is very pretty. The silver surrounding 2 of the bottom fans framed by black edges feels very premium. The 3rd bottom fan has the black framing cut through it in half diagonally, but the fan is this time half framed in silver, half in chrome. On the side there is the GeForce RTX logo, the Republic of gamers logo, a RGB strip running horizontally and a nice view of the black heatfins. On the top we have a black metal plate surrounding the GPU, and curiously another fan, with the framing once more cutting through the middle of it diagonally. The 4th fan on the top is one of the Astral’s standout features, and is also likely partially responsible for its girth. So why is there a 4th fan? What is its purpose? I suppose we should dive into cooling support next!

Let’s start with the vapour chamber, we saw it in the Prime RTX5080 and we have it here. Its job is to draw heat away from the chip with increased efficiency and pass it to the heat pipes. As the heat pipes are in milled pathways sunken into the vapour chamber they don’t have to be flattened, which should result in better heat transfer. This is then passed to the fins on the cooler. This is where the 4th fan comes in, ASUS claims because of the push-pull effect of the combination of bottom fans and the top fan they’re able to more densely pack the fin stack. It’s something that we can believe on the surface as we’re seen Noctua do similarly on the NH-D15 G2. The intense amount of cooling tech on offer here is allowing ASUS to reach one of the highest clocked OC RTX5080 variants on the market.

As for other features of the Astral, there are 2 fan headers on the side. We’re not sure why you’d use them, but it’s there if you need. There is the usual addition of a switch for performance or quiet mode. The PCB has been coated to protect against dust and moisture, which is a nice touch.

I suppose we should deal with the elephant in the room. The result of the level of included hardware: it’s massive, both in size and weight. It’s a 3.8 slot behemoth, 358mm long and 150mm wide. As for weight, it’s pushing towards 3kg (or around 6lb), it’s a good job it includes an anti-sag support. With that in mind make sure you’ve got the clearance inside your case before attempting to fit.

Airflow

Now we’re on to the reason that we wanted to get hold of the Astral, and why the video is focused on the graphics card and not the build, airflow. Sure all graphics cards have defined airflow paths, which we’ve visually demonstrated on a weekly basis for the last few years! This one is different though, we’re really curious as to how well the push-pull design will work. It took a bit of trial and error to get the visual to look the same as it felt, this was an us problem though, getting the smoke to travel to the fans correctly from underneath sounds simple, it turns out it was a pain! Once we got the input sorted the airflow visual does show that the push-pull fans are working as intended and we’re happy they will perform exceptionally.

Some have raised issue with noise from the fans at max RPM, we did have a little play around with this in testing, obviously there was audible fan noise - there always is, but we didn’t feel it to be excessive. Though with that said we were using an open chassis, using a closed case may have an amplifying effect on the sound. I’ll report back once we test in that situation.

Performance

We decided not to test this build in the usual way as the only thing which would be notable on an open chassis build would be the GPU temps, and we’re PC builders, not reviewers. There are plenty of 5080 reviews out there from reputable reviewers if you’re after performance metrics. When we do performance testing it is to see how the build we’ve crerated runs as a whole. The important part of our testing this week was the airflow visualisation.

Roundup

The ROG Astral is ASUS’s most premium looking and feeling graphics card to date. Yeah it’s chunky, but this is meant to be housed in a big showpiece of a build! It’s cooling tech is market leading (on paper at least) and we’ve proven that the push-pull fans do a fantastic job of venting the air. The price of entry for this one is high, but for those that covet aesthetics, cooling and performance equally then the ROG Astral might just be the one to go for.

Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes

Full Video Below:

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