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Asus and Noctua Reportedly Prep GeForce RTX 40-Series Boards
Asus and Noctua plan to introduce their new collaboratively designed GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards at CES, according to ChipHell. The boards will naturally feature cooling systems designed by Noctua as well as performance enhancements by Asus. The companies are expected to showcase the products at CES, though it is unclear when they are set to hit the market.
The only thing we know about the upcoming GeForce RTX 40-series Noctua Edition graphics cards is that they will be based on the Ada Lovelace generation graphics processors and will use cooling systems developed by Noctua. We do not know whether the new coolers will keep using Noctua's NF-A12x25 fans featured on the existing Noctua Edition graphics cards, though this is a possibility. We'll have to test to see if these boards will be among the best graphics cards money can buy in the coming months.
Keeping in mind that the timing of the introduction, Asus may offer GeForce RTX 4090 (GA102), GeForce RTX 4080 (GA103), and/or GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (GA104) boards with Noctua coolers. It remains to be seen whether Nvidia's top-of-the-range offering will be in this new family as it is uneasy to design a quiet air cooler for a part with a thermal board power of up to 600 W. But near-silence is something that everyone expects from a Noctua Edition graphics card.
When Asus and Noctua introduced their GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition and GeForce RTX 3080 Noctua Edition graphics cards back in 2021, both units were welcomed with loads of enthusiasm from the hardware crowd. The products offered a very decent performance uplift compared to reference cards while Noctua-designed coolers stayed quiet even under high load.
There was a slight hitch about these products: they were launched relatively late in the GeForce RTX 30-series 'Ampere' graphics processors lifecycle. Nonetheless, despite not-so-good-timing and very high street prices, Asus GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 Noctua Edition graphics cards were in high demand.
This time around the two companies reportedly plan to unveil GeForce RTX 40-series Noctua Edition boards at CES, about three months after Nvidia formally introduced its high-end Ada Lovelace GPUs. The early introduction indicate that the two companies consider collaboration a success, though we are eager to see performance uplift that these new GeForce RTX 40-series Noctua Edition graphics cards will bring compared to reference models.
For Asus, it makes a lot of sense to keep offering its highest-performing GeForce RTX 40-series under its own ROG Strix brand while keeping Noctua Edition for those who want a balance between performance and quiet. We will see about that once those boards are launched. Keep in mind that the information about introduction of new Asus Noctua Edition graphics cards at CES comes from an unofficial source, so take it with a grain of salt.
