The duo previously birthed the GeForce RTX 3070 Noctua OC Edition, and slapped together something similar for Nvidia's RTX 4080. Known more for running cool and whisper-quiet than winning beauty contests, these cards carried Noctua's trademark beige-and-brown fan units and were, frankly, huge.

Rolling into Computex, Asus has wheeled out a new RTX 5080 with not two, but three Noctua fans. If size matters, this thing’s winning. It's got the kind of heatsink bulk that might just collapse a PCIe slot under its own weight.

With a total graphics power (TGP) of 360 W, the RTX 5080 doesn't exactly sip electricity. Still, with the RTX 4080 only drawing 320 W, it feels a bit overdone. Asus has nudged the boost clock up to 2,730 MHz compared to Nvidia's 2,617 MHz Founders Edition, which is a mere four per cent gain.

Asus might be playing it safe. PC Gamer's Dave James found, it's possible to wring out a 40 per cent overclock, pushing the card more than 500 MHz past stock speeds.

PC Gamer hardware writer Jacob Ridley said: "I’m a fan (pun intended) of Noctua’s classic colour scheme. But I feel a bit disappointed with the new RTX 5080 Noctua Edition.”

While it devours four slots and looks like it means business, the brown shroud seems to cover up too much of those lovely Noctua fans. The old cards had a wonderfully DIY vibe, like you’d bolted the fans on yourself. This one is more like a normal Asus card given a quick brown paint job.