In the spring of 2023, unexpected news appeared about the cooperation between the Taiwanese giant Asus and the famous Austrian brand Noctua. The fruit of the collaboration is a new line of silent video cards with exclusive cooling systems from Noctua, whose tower coolers are considered the benchmark among experienced gamers. Unlike NVIDIA reference GPUs and proprietary modifications from other companies, the Asus Noctua series uses shortened, but at the same time very high hybrid cooling systems with several active coolers, an enlarged heatsink and a vapor chamber. And to emphasize the authorship, the protective cover and blades are painted in traditional Noctua wood colors (note: without any backlight).


The most interesting and popular option in the new line is the GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua video accelerator, which fully demonstrates all the features of the series. Unlike most RTX 4080 modifications with three active coolers and a long PCB, the Asus and Noctua collaboration uses a shortened PCB from the TUF Gaming series GPUs with two Noctua NF-A12x25 active coolers. At the base is a massive heatsink with an evaporation chamber and 8 heat pipes, all this goodness rises by 146 mm, occupying almost 5 motherboard slots. For comparison, more traditional versions of the GeForce RTX 4080 occupy 2.5-3.5 slots.

The Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua is independently measured as one of the quietest air-cooled AAA graphics cards on the market. Quieter can only be expensive and difficult to maintain water-cooled GPUs. In normal mode, Noctua's modification emits no more than 28 dBA of noise, and in Quiet mode, the fans rotate at a speed of 866 rpm, emitting 23.6 dBA of noise. It is not without reason that both manufacturers position the fruits of their cooperation as elite tools for gamers and creative industry representatives who are looking for an extremely powerful and at the same time very quiet and modern video card.