The cooling system has been inherited from the AX800 PRO, with the same disadvantage ? the memory chips are not cooled down at all, although ASUS could have easily realized that. The memory on the AX800 XT is clocked at a higher frequency than on the AX800 PRO, so it just demands cooling but never receives it. Running a little ahead, we should confess that the graphics card we tested would overheat often during our tests as the weather was rather hot these days here. Overheat led to frequent hang-ups which we only managed to prevent by installing an additional 120mm fan to blow at the card from its butt end. The air stream was being cut in two by the card?s PCB and was reaching to both front and back sides of the PCB, cooling the memory chips. We would have been spared the trouble if ASUS had put thermal pads on the memory chips under the cooler?s sole and passive heatsinks on the backside memory chips. Considering the more intensive heat dissipation compared to the AX800 PRO, we think the AX800 XT needs to be installed into a system case with additional air cooling and a well-thought configuration of airflows; otherwise you may find your card overheating too often, especially in summer.
