Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look

One thing I like about Gigabyte is that they keep things as simple as possible, and it’s one of the reasons they have such a solid warranty policy too. They use the same cooler on multiple cards, making only minor changes to ensure compatibility. That may not seem that great, but it is in this case. This is the same cooler they use on the RTX 3090, and if it can cool a more powerful card with ease, it’ll have no issues with a mere RTX 3080.

I must admit, their new Windforce design looks so much better than the old one. Then again, we saw that same cooler for a good few years, and it was starting to get a little boring. This new angular design is much more aggressive, but also allows for a much wider heatsink too.

The cooler design uses their triple fan design, with two 90mm fans and one 80mm fan. What’s unique is that the middle fan spins clockwise, while the outer fans spin anti-clockwise. This creates a vortex that improves the overall airflow and cooling.

Of course, all of the fans are PWM controlled and independent, so any or all of the fans can completely stop in lower loads and temperatures to keep things nice and quiet.

The card features 7 composite copper heat pipes, running though their direct touch heat plate, and two massive heatsinks.

On the back of the card, you’ll find a fantastic looking metal backplate, which features added ventilation to keep the card cool. I love that bit at the back, it literally allows the GPU to blow heat right out the back.

There’s a BIOS switch here, allowing for OC or silent mode switching. Default is OC, but if you crazy silence and lower power usage, it’s nice to have the option.

Down the side of the card, there’s a small Gigabyte logo and a small strip below it which are RGB lit. It’s not a lot, but it’s just enough to stand out without going too crazy on the lighting.

Finally, we have the rear of the card, which features dual HDMI and triple DisplayPorts. It’s nice to see dual HDMI most of all, it’s so often limited to just one.

Remove the backplate, you can see that lovely PCB.

And since YouTube viewers think they’re electrical engineers these days, you’ll be happy to see 470µF rated hardware, when the Nvidia reference spec is only 220µF.