ASUS STRIX RTX 2080 Ti White Edition – Is This The One Card To Rule Them All?!

ASUS STRIX RTX 2080 Ti White Edition

The packaging is what we have come to expect from ASUS/ROG. One thing to note is that while the styling carries over, the standard black and red theme is absent as this is a white edition model, which of course, gets white packaging. The outer box sleeve front carries the pertinent details and artwork we have come to expect. The rear has six feature callouts along with an I/O diagram, and even bullet pointed Nvidia features.

Pulling the sleeve and we see that ASUS invested in the full white packaging as the inner carton is also white with a metallic sheen STRIX logo.

Opening the carton, and instead of a GPU, the first thing we see is the included PCB ruler. These are quite cool as they work as a ruler while also have the solder pad layouts for several SMD components. On the reverse side of the ruler, we even have GPU solder ball arrangements. I know some may question this inclusion, but this is one of those ultimate nerd treasures that many people will appreciate. If you don’t and you are an avid PC gamer, I can almost guarantee you know someone who would enjoy it.

Pulling the foam form the ruler, and we now get a look at the GPU, which is in a static bag. Included as accessories are the two paperwork booklets for setup and instructions for driver downloads. Also included are two white-colored ROG branded velcro cable tie straps.

Now we get t0 the meat of things with the GPU itself. The STRIX is a triple axial fan design set atop a thick fin stack. The thin front slits are where the ARGB lighting will shine through when the card is running, and lighting is enabled. The backplate is metal and painted white. The backplate has ROG graphics in place along with the RGB lit reflective ROG Eye logo, which is cut through the metal of the backplate. There are several cutouts on the backplate, which allow access to removal of the colored along with clearance for some critical components. You will notice that ASUS went all out on the white theme as the PCIe slot connector fingers are covered with a white cover, same with the NVLink bridge connector.

Here you can see the rear I/O of the card and its bevy of connectors.

• 2x Displayport
• 2x HDMI 2.0b
• 1x VirtualLink (USB Type C)

ASUS opted to reduce the normal RTX DisplayPort count by evening it out to dual HDMI and dual DisplayPort. There is also the VirtualLink, which is the Type-C interface slated for future single cable VR solutions.

The power for the STRIX RTX 2080 Ti is dual 8-pin, just like we have from the FE model. This is a bit of a surprise as with the build of this GPU, I think that a third 8-pin would be an excellent addition for those looking to push the card to its limits. Next to the 8-pin connectors, we have the ASUS GPU Hotwire connectors, which allow direct GPU voltage modifications at a hardware level. I am a bit surprised that ASUS got this past Nvidia as recently Nvidia seems to have tightened up the extreme OC modifications available on retail cards. I am happy to see that while they are no longer clearly labeled, they are still present.

The connectors at the board’s edge are two fan ports for the FanConnect II along with an RGB header to allow you to sync RGB strips from the internal header via the ASUS Aura software. There are also two white plugs going here which control both RGB and the triple fan array.

Here you can see with the NVLink connector, the ability for multi GPU, whether it be SLI or NVLink, has shrunk to higher end cards since Pascal and has continued to shrink. The 2080 Ti is the flagship GPU emp[lots the connector with full enablement for full bidirectional bandwidth for workloads that can span a dual GPU configuration. I never thought we needed a white NVLink bridge until now, though.