There’s nothing quite like opening the box to a new piece of tech. Spending quite a significant time of my life as an Apple user, there was always something about opening the box of a new Apple product to that familiar Apple scent, which would send excitement levels to a whole new level.
That is the best point of reference I have for cracking open the NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founder’s Edition. Lifting the lid off the box, I was greeted with the delicious smell of metal, the GPU was sat there in all its glory, with the premium metal alloy structure staring back at me. Going off initial impressions, this might be one of the most beautiful pieces of tech I’ve ever come across. It’s a hefty piece of metal, but the design is incredibly understated, and whilst there’s obviously a lot going under the hood, it feels like NVIDIA were quite restrained in their design approach.
Obviously, the fan design isn’t like what we’ve seen before with one on each side which is set to allow for even more optimum cooling. What catches my eye the most though, is the fins that surround the fan on the front, and make up the majority of the design for the back. These allow you to see almost straight through to the GPU and compliment the gun metal grey that make up the most of the design structure.
The other things worth mentioning before I hook the GPU up to my PC is the fact that the 3080 Founder’s Edition GPU has a 12-pin PCIe power adaptor, so NVIDIA has included a 12-pin to 8-pin converter. The connector does awkwardly sit in the middle of the GPU, which might make for an awkward cable placement. By the way of inputs, there’s three DisplayPort 1.4 and for the first time, a HDMI 2.1 port which will allow for 8K 60Hz.
Without keeping you any further, here are some of the shots I took of this sexy piece of tech earlier today. Granted, we’re still stuck at home in Melbourne, so they were just taken in my living room. Due to the fact we only got our card today, a review won’t be live for a little while, but others are set to go live later tonight.
