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Question RTX 3080

phillyman36

Golden Member
Hey just curious I know we are still waiting for reviews but for those buying 3080 which one do you plan on getting and why? I generally don't care about looks that much but who do you prefer from a thermal prospective? I'm thinking of going Evga XC3. I kind of like the holes in the backplate but not sure how effective it is. My choice of cards
Evga XC3
Asus Strix
MSI

Whats your take of the thermal designs of the cards from what we have seen thus far?
 
I am really looking at the FE cards since my case has some sizing constraints but do like the design and aesthetics some of the AIB cards. I do think its going to be very hard for me to get one right away but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
 
Local Microcenter in Overland Park, KS literally had a dozen cards to sell. 10 of those were the eVGA variant. Looks like supply will be tight if launch is any indication.
 
Local Microcenter in Overland Park, KS literally had a dozen cards to sell. 10 of those were the eVGA variant. Looks like supply will be tight if launch is any indication.
Yeah my local Microcenter had about 10 Evga 3080s in stock. Ill just trying to find more reviews to see which one I want. right now i"m either going Evga or Msi.
 
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I would slightly prefer any of the AIB cards over the FE, whichever is cheapest. Maybe EVGA for their slightly better support. The FE looks great, but my past experience is that the cards with 3 fans run significantly quieter than stock models. The regular power connectors are also a plus. I'll probably get one after a few months when the supply issues die down.
 
Local Microcenter in Overland Park, KS literally had a dozen cards to sell. 10 of those were the eVGA variant. Looks like supply will be tight if launch is any indication.
Yeah my local Microcenter had about 10 Evga 3080s in stock. Ill just trying to find more reviews to see which one I want. right now i"m either going Evga or Msi.

When I looked this morning the Microcenter in Tustin CA was showing 85 in stock with no FE's even listed.
 
Gamers Nexus has a story up now about the launch/stock levels. They have real industry contacts, unlike a lot of fabricated nonsense on the click-bait channels.

TLDR: Steve starts by telling people to Chill out. It's just a video card. AIB Partners who are usually quick to throw NVidia under the bus, didn't. They said stock was normal, compared to previous launches. It's just sold out fast (NOT a paper launch). Couldn't get real numbers except from one System Integrator. They were only selling cards in systems. They sold out of 900 systems in 10 minutes.

Interesting bits: GPUs were selling way above normal before this, apparently due to CV-19, but they dropped a lot after the NVidia reveal. So high demand that paused. So there was pent up demand, in an already high demand time. This bot driven scalping is unfortunately likely to be more the norm going forward...

 
I am really looking at the FE cards since my case has some sizing constraints but do like the design and aesthetics some of the AIB cards. I do think its going to be very hard for me to get one right away but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Careful if you have a small case, 3080 FE card will blow hot air directly to your CPU and inside your case, it will provide bad result for those who still have air cooling for their CPU, or have bad airflow on their case.

Here what will look like an FE 3080 on regular PC case without modding the airflow direction :
RTX 3080 case air flow.jpg

You can always mod the direction though, but it will need extra work for changing all fan direction just because you buy an RTX 3080 🙂
 
Careful if you have a small case, 3080 FE card will blow hot air directly to your CPU and inside your case, it will provide bad result for those who still have air cooling for their CPU, or have bad airflow on their case.

Here what will look like an FE 3080 on regular PC case without modding the airflow direction :
View attachment 30089

You can always mod the direction though, but it will need extra work for changing all fan direction just because you buy an RTX 3080 🙂

Basically an irrelevant myth. Where do you think the heat going to go with normal triple fan open air card? Air blowing through the flow through heatsink is starting cool, and making one quick pass, it's not going to be that hot. Put a normal open air fan their, and it will recycle and heat the air more, and it's still going to move up and through you CPU cooler.
 
iO-Tech did measure RAM temperature and FE lowered the RAM temp a lot compared to AIB designs without flow through (9c advantage for FE over MSI). The air coming out is not very hot at all and the increased airflow towards the RAM is beneficial. There wasn't any difference for CPU temperature (although they used AIO).
 
Careful if you have a small case, 3080 FE card will blow hot air directly to your CPU and inside your case, it will provide bad result for those who still have air cooling for their CPU, or have bad airflow on their case.

Here what will look like an FE 3080 on regular PC case without modding the airflow direction :
View attachment 30089

You can always mod the direction though, but it will need extra work for changing all fan direction just because you buy an RTX 3080 🙂

And with a FE card, some hot air is blow outside while a non-FE card all of the hot air is just blow around inside the case, heating up everything unless you use water cooling.
 
iO-Tech did measure RAM temperature and FE lowered the RAM temp a lot compared to AIB designs without flow through (9c advantage for FE over MSI). The air coming out is not very hot at all and the increased airflow towards the RAM is beneficial. There wasn't any difference for CPU temperature (although they used AIO).

Was this an open or closed case? If closed case, what was the case airflow setup?
 
Basically an irrelevant myth. Where do you think the heat going to go with normal triple fan open air card? Air blowing through the flow through heatsink is starting cool, and making one quick pass, it's not going to be that hot. Put a normal open air fan their, and it will recycle and heat the air more, and it's still going to move up and through you CPU cooler.

Well in my case, as I still using Noctua air cooling hsf with pushing air configuration, I still prefer an open fan configuration instead of FE, as hot air will blend with the cold intake air from my front fan which I directing my AC to, before goes to my CPU directly
 
I'm still waiting for reviews that include performance numbers from the games that I actually care about, as well as comparisons against cards that are more than 1-2 generations old.
 
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