Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2070
A high end RTX 2070 with a price to match.
$1,199 | WWW.ASUS.COM.AU
The ROG Strix 2070 is the flagship Asus 2070 offering. The bar is always set high for any ROG product and if you take one look at the ROG Strix 2070 you’ll know it’s a premium offering. It packs in a premium PCB, a beefy cooler and plenty of unique ROG features. The competition is tough though and the Asus has a significant price premium that needs to be justified.
The Strix 2070 is outwardly similar to the other Strix RTX cards. The build quality is superb with a large brushed aluminium back plate that’s enhanced by an RGB-lit ROG logo. There’s also a large PCB baseplate that helps to cool the components while offering additional rigidity. The shroud features some RGB highlights around the fans while the ROG logo on the side of the card is also lit.
The cooler is a triple fan design. Like many cards these days, it’s effectively a triple slot cooler. Asus uses custom designed axial fans to increases static pressure which is a good thing with dense fin heatsinks. Like most coolers these days, the fans stop when the card is idle, only spinning up when the card reaches a temperature threshold.
The PCB of the Strix 2070 is particularly impressive. A 10 Phase VRM is present, easily capable of powering the not-too-thirsty TU106 GPU. There’s also a pair of fan headers present which are very useful for controlling adjacent case fans. An additional RGB header can be controlled via Asus’ Aura Sync app. If you’re not crazy about RGB though, there’s a handy switch to turn it off if you prefer. Other features include voltage read points and a BIOS switch to change between quiet and performance modes.
Asus has deviated from the standard RTX 2070 video outputs. Gone is the DVI-D connector and one of the DisplayPorts. We have a pair of DP 1.4 connectors, 2x HDMI 2.0b and a USB Type-C port. The inclusion of dual HDMI is a good thing for those who plan to use a VR headset.
Performance-wise, the Strix 2070 performed notably better than the Founders Edition but we did note that it ran just a couple of degrees warmer than the Aorus and MSI cards, which meant its maximum boost clock fluctuated a tiny bit more. The Strix cooler is very quiet indeed and we simply couldn’t hear it over the fans from our AIO CPU cooler.
The Asus ROG Strix 2070 is an excellent 2070 offering that crams custom features into a very well built package, but when it costs over $100 more than its highend competitors, it’s tough to recommend. When the supply settles and pricing stabilises, by all means take a look at the Asus Strix 2070. It’s an excellent and particularly quiet card with some unique features that that reinforces the reputation we’ve come to expect from Asus ROG.