Question Nvidia branded RTX 3080 vs. Asus/MSI/EVGA/Gigabyte RTX 3080 ; any difference ?

[Pumice]

Wondering if there is any difference between Nvidia's house brand RTX3080 , pictured below


Versus the RTX 3080 cards from MSI,Gigabyte,ASUS,EVGA that come with 3 fans



If there is a difference, any preference on which brand: Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA ?


I know these are all sold out, but I can wait a month. Building a custom PC with Ryzen R9 5900X.

 

[CP5670]

The cards with 3 fans tend to run quieter and cooler than the Nvidia one. Some of them have lower/higher power limits but the 3080/3090 don't have much OC headroom anyway. I would just buy whatever you can actually find in stock.

 

[Mopetar]

Any differences are going to pretty minor and come down to individual silicon quality more than anything else. A few models might have some nice features like the ASUS TUF with a quiet BIOS mode that slows the fans down so that's it considerably more quiet. Not that the FE card is noisy, but the AIB cards do have some extra bells and whistles.

I'd get whatever is available, but if you can find any card that's closer to the $700 MSRP I'd go with that. There just isn't enough OC headroom to justify some of the $800+ cards with the massive coolers on them.

 

[Golgatha]

The three fan AIB models generally run cooler and quieter. No performance differences to speak of really. However, the AIB models use standard PCIe power plugs. Not a huge thing, but those do make for better cable management.