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ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GeForce GTX 1080Ti Review 

What’s better than a GTX1080Ti? Well, if you ask ASUS that question, it’s a factory-overclocked GTX1080Ti that has both air and liquid cooling options.

To prove it, that’s exactly what the firm set out to build, and the result is the ASUS Republic of Gamers Poseidon GTX1080Ti – a card that has fans and a custom water block, and which can run on either, or both.

The point of such a card is to give discerning buyers the choice between air and liquid cooling and the ability to switch between them as situations dictate. As enthusiasts know, air is fine and all, but it’s noisy and not as effective as liquid at keeping temperatures down.

And heat is something to be avoided, as it places physical strain on electronic components, and outright failure if not managed properly. It’s also the enemy of a stable overclock.

This decision to include both air and water cooling options, however, seems a little odd on the surface: someone who doesn’t have a water cooling solution installed is unlikely to buy it, and someone who has a water cooling solution will have no use for the fans. Sure, you can run both at the same time, but the water cooling is so good here that further air cooling is simply not needed.

The appeal, then, comes down to the fact that this card is just so fast out the box. It features ASUS’s biggest factory overclock yet, faster even than the company’s STRIX GTX1080Ti, and offers the option to push those clocks even further thanks to the excellent cooling provided by its water block.

This is therefore an overclocker’s GPU, rather than one for a well-heeled gamer simply looking to play at 4K/60fps without much concern for squeezing every possible drop of performance from the card. Other GTX1080Ti cards do that quite nicely, and can be bought for less than the R16 300 the Poseidon goes for at retail. ASUS’s own STRIX GTX1080Ti can be had for around R15k, for instance.

But for those with the cash and desire to overclock and watercool, this is an exceptional graphics card.

Max Temps

Here’s the most important thing you need to know – maximum temperatures under load (like when running the Furmark benchmark). At the time of testing, ambient temperature in the room was 24°C.

Air: 78°C 
Liquid: 52°C 

That’s a significant difference – liquid cooling is the clear winner here. What makes it all the better, is the silence that accompanies it, unlike the noise made by the fan.

Max Overclock (Air)

This card comes factory-overclocked out the box, but with some manual tweaking using ASUS’s GPU Tweak II we managed to get the card to perform even better.

During a game of EA’s Battlefield 1, these are the clock speeds we managed to reach when overclocking on air:

Min: 1986MHz
Max: 2035MHz
Average: 2020MHz

That average of just above the 2GHz mark is higher than what the card is capable of using its stock speeds and its GPU Boost feature. GPU Boost dynamically boosts clock speeds while gaming, and its speeds looked like this in our testing:

Min: 1885MHz
Max: 1983MHz
Average: 1935MHz

On paper, this appears to be a solid gain when overclocking on air. The actual gaming benefit, however, was negligible, boosting Battlefield 1’s in-game 4K performance by just 2.5% versus the card running its stock factory OC:

ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 1080Ti Stock: 70fps
ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 1080Ti Air OC: 71.8fps
Reference GeForce GTX 1080Ti: 65.9fps

That’s a good 9% better than a reference GTX1080Ti, however, so still a good result.

Max Overclock (liquid)

Liquid makes overclocking a whole different story, as it’s able to keep the GPU’s temperatures down (max 50°C) and thus clock speeds incredibly stable – We saw no minimum or maximum speed, just rock-solid consistency in-game at 4K and Ultra settings:

Min: 2070MHz
Max: 2070MHz
Average: 2070MHz

In-game, we saw an average of 75.2fps, a decent 3.4fps/4.7% performance increase over the air OC, and an 11% increase over the reference GTX1080Ti, which is an already-fast card.

4K Nailed

As you can see from that 70+fps score in Battlefield 1 at 4K and Ultra settings, this is the card to get if you want to play games at 4K and above 60 frames per second. It’s an absolute beast, and with that superb 11% overclock versus a reference GTX1080Ti, it’s one of the fastest cards on the planet.

Value

This is the card to get if 4K is your thing, you like not hearing fans spinning in your system and you like keeping your GPU cool. Sure, it’s expensive, but it’s worth it for the gains offered over reference GTX1080Tis and the option to cool the card as you like.

Get it from: Rebeltech
Price: R16 299

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