ASUS and Noctua have officially announced the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition, the world’s first graphics card with Noctua fans and a tailored heat sink co-engineered by the Austrian cooling manufacturer.
The ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition features two state-of-the-art NF-A12x25 fans that enable not only excellent cooling performance but reduced noise levels of up to 15 dB(A). It also features ASUS’ 0 db technology, whereby the graphics card’s fans will come to a standstill when the GPU temperature falls below 50°C.
Enthusiasts who have never been fond of Noctua’s color choices may not be too impressed with how the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition looks, however. Its fans feature the manufacturer’s unmistakable but polarizing beige and brown color scheme rather than black.
ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC Edition
- CUDA Cores: 5888
- OC mode boost clock: 1845 MHz
- Gaming mode boost clock: 1815 MHz
- 8 GB GDDR6
- PCIe 4.0 interface
- 2 x native HDMI 2.1
- 3 x native DisplayPort 1.4a
ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition
- CUDA Cores: 5888
- OC mode boost clock: 1755 MHz
- Gaming mode boost clock: 1725 MHz
- 8 GB GDDR6
- PCIe 4.0 interface
- 2 x native HDMI 2.1
- 3 x native DisplayPort 1.4a
ASUS and Noctua’s press release:
ASUS and Noctua today announced the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition: the world’s first graphics card to use Noctua fans and a tailored heatsink that has been co-engineered by Noctua. Allowing for a reduction in noise levels of up to 15dB(A), this refined cooling setup makes the Noctua Edition the quietest card in its class and the perfect choice for customers who demand serious GPU performance without sacrificing quietness of operation.
“Using our extensive thermal R&D experience, we’ve created a new GPU heatsink that’s tailor-made for the performance characteristics of their state-of-the-art NF-A12x25 fans,” said Kent Chien (Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the ASUS Multimedia Business Unit). “Our teamwork gives noise-conscious gamers and Noctua enthusiasts a unique graphics card that maximizes heat dissipation per decibel of noise emitted, all in a package that coordinates perfectly with other Noctua products in a DIY PC.”
“Customers have been asking us to create GPU cooling solutions for quite some time, so we’re excited and honoured to team up with ASUS in order to make this happen. Using our NF-A12x25 fans and fine-tuning the heatsink for use with them, we’ve managed to achieve a significant boost in performance-to-noise efficiency”, explains Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). “ASUS’ GeForce RTX 3070 was certainly an outstanding card already, but we’re confident that the further improved cooling solution of the Noctua Edition will be the cherry on top for noise-conscious customers.”
Measured side by side, the improvements of the Noctua Edition are substantial with a massive reduction in noise levels of 15dB(A) at medium fan speeds and 9dB(A) at maximum fan speeds. When used in cases with good ventilation and at moderate ambient temperatures of 24°C or lower, the card will keep its fans at very low speeds even at 100% GPU load. In such a typical setting, the Noctua Edition achieves a reduction in noise levels of 5.7dB(A) as compared to the standard version. Registering at only 12.6dB(A), it is not only quiet but near inaudible. This enables customers with well-ventilated cases and moderate ambient temperatures to play games or run other GPU intensive tasks in almost complete silence.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition features a semi-passive fan control setup (ASUS 0dB technology) that can switch the fans off completely whenever the GPU temperature goes below 50°C. This means that in typical configurations with low to moderate ambient temperatures and well-ventilated cases, the card can run entirely fanless at lower GPU loads such as during office productivity tasks, web browsing, or even light gaming. Even at high GPU loads such as during gaming or benchmarking, the fan speeds will stay extremely low as long as the ambient temperature inside the case isn’t excessive.
The combination of semi-passive functionality, extremely low noise levels even in GPU-intensive tasks and the possibility of setting custom fan curves via ASUS’ GPU Tweak software also makes the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition an ideal companion for Noctua’s NH-P1 passive cooler paired with the NF-A12x25 LS-PWM fan for semi-passive operation. Combining these products in a suitable case makes it easy to build a system that will run completely fanless in typical productivity tasks and only relies on ultra-quiet fans for situations when extra GPU or CPU power are required, such as gaming or video editing.
In sum, the ASUS GeForce GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition is the ideal card for quiet cooling enthusiasts who demand serious GPU performance without sacrificing quietness of operation.
Neither ASUS nor Noctua appears to have confirmed its pricing, but there will be both standard and OC versions of the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua Edition available. Their official landing pages can be accessed here and here. Noctua’s detailed performance comparison can also be found here.
Source: Noctua