The Asus-Noctua RTX 5080 teamup is big, modest, and likely pricey

It’s been a year since we saw a new graphics card festooned in Noctua’s iconic shades of brown. But for those who’ve been waiting for an RTX 50-series upgrade, it’s almost here. The official “Noctua Edition” of the Asus GeForce RTX 5080 has been exhaustively detailed in a new video. There are only two details missing: a price and a date.

The new RTX 5080 version of the Asus-Noctua teamup, now entering its third generation, is a little more buttoned-down than the previous ones. The oversized triple-fan cooler has just a bit of extra adornment with one chevron and some ever-so-slight ring decorations on either side. (It’s giving me owl vibes, obviously.)

If you’re wondering, those fans are Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 fans, 25mm wide each. That means a—ahem—robust size of 385mm long and 80mm wide, requiring four open PCIe slots on your motherboard and case. In the words of Harry Harrison, “Make Room! Make Room!”

All that cooling power needs a minimum of 850 watts from your power supply, resulting in a boost clock of 2700MHz (or 2730MHz at an absolute maximum overclock), a modest bump over the stock RTX 5080’s 2620MHz boost. But the mega cooling power of triple Noctua fans does give some extra options, including just turning them off at under 50°C for silent operation at low loads.

Exactly how much all this will cost isn’t precisely known, though “a lot” is a safe bet, since Asus Noctua Edition cards already command a hefty premium even over other inflated “custom” cards. Tom’s Hardware spotted an August 15th pre-order at one UK shop for £1,499.99, pretty much exactly 50 percent over the retail price of the standard RTX 5080.