ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC review - Introduction

ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC review

Enjoy the silence, who doesn't remember that song from the 90'ties. Join us as we evaluate a GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC variant, which has been introduced onto the market recently. You can argue its looks and design, but the card does deliver as expected, it's very silent. The ASUS RTX 3070 Noctua OC is equipped with a custom-designed cooling solution developed in collaboration with the Austrian company. It is equipped with a thick aluminum fin-stack heatsink and ventilated by a pair of large 120 mm Noctua fans that have been tuned by the manufacturer to prioritize low noise above all else in order to achieve maximum performance. Believe it or not, but as we close in to 2022, back in September 2020, NVIDIA declared three initial Ampere graphics cards in its inaugural launch wave. A week before announcements, specifications of the GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 took a twist; the shader core count mysteriously doubled up from what everybody expected. The GPUs are fabricated on an 8nm node derived from Samsung. This process is a further development of Samsung's 10nm process; no EUV is applied in production just yet. The first wave of announcements would see the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 being released first, and, as a bit of a surprise, the GeForce RTX 3070 was arriving in roughly the same timeframe as well. The lineup nearly doubles ray-tracing performance with Gen2 ray-tracing cores and 3rd iteration Tensor cores. These cards will all be PCIe 4.0 interface compatible and offer HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a, but most importantly is that exorbitant Shader processor count (referred to as CUDA cores by NVIDIA), passing the 10K marker for the flagship product, nobody... not even us, saw that one coming. With roughly half that shader processor count, we now meet the NVIDIA GA104 GPU, initially to be used solely in the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards. And despite a lower segmented card, it still holds a big GPU die; the 3070's GA104-300-A1 GPU is firing up over 17 billion transistors. To compare, a GeForce RTX 3080 is listed at 8,704 Shader cores, and the GeForce RTX 3090 (GA102) has 10496 Shader cores. In this review, we'll check out the Founder edition GeForce RTX 3070, paired with 8GB of GDDR6 graphics memory. A product that runs a boost clock of 1730 MHz and the sheer muscle power makes you smile, a lasting one. The Ampere lineup nearly doubles ray-tracing performance with Gen2 ray-tracing cores and 3rd iteration Tensor cores. These cards will all be PCIe 4.0 interface compatible and offer HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a, but most importantly is that exorbitant shader processor count (referred to as CUDA cores by NVIDIA).

ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC 8G

The possibility that ASUS would collaborate with Austrian cooling specialist Noctua to develop a customized set of graphics cards that would be based on proprietary cooling solutions was first raised several months ago. After a leak at ASUS Vietnam, it was confirmed, the product would be available for purchase. The goal of this card is to provide a near-silent gaming experience by first and foremost improving the cooling system on the card. In order to accomplish this, Asus utilizes the RTX 3070 TUF PCB and collaborated with the cooling experts from Noctua in order to bring this graphics card to market. When it comes to reducing noise, volume and efficiency are critical factors to consider. The specs  can be a little frightening. This puppy makes use of a 4.3-slot design and measures 310mm in length, 147mm in height, and wait for it ... 87.5mm in thickness. Yes 4.3 slots wide, still not an issue for me as these cards can't SLI anyway. The sample weighs 1567g when it is placed on the scale, a significant amount of weight. Noctua created a custom shroud to hold two 120mm NF-A12x25 PWM fans in their house color beige and cream scheme in this particular instance. Colors and lack of RGB in the shroud may disappoint some, but it is a solidly constructed piece of equipment nonetheless. The card has a dual BIOS that alternate between extremely Quiet (1815MHz boost) and a Performance mode offering a 1845MHz boost. This makes it a mildly overclocked variant of the RTX 3070. Asus also sells a non-OC version of the card that's ostensibly identical in all other respects. Both systems have 8GB of memory and operate at a standard reference frequency rate.