Today, Asus held a Republic of Gamers event to capitalize on the excitement of Nvidia's Ampere announcement and announced a number of ROG goodies, including graphics cards, monitors, keyboards, and high-quality gaming headsets. Obviously, the new RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070 cards are the big news, and Asus has several models available with different designs and cooling.

Asus showed off new 30-series models in the ROG Strix, TUF, and Dual graphics card series; both the ROG Strix and TUF lines will feature all three new Ampere cards, while the lower-priced Dual will feature only the RTX 3070

Perhaps this is because the new RTX 3070 cards are not available in the new series.

Presumably this is because the smaller dual-fan design does not have the cooling capacity to handle the powerful GPUs that the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 carry; the ROG Strix is 2.9 slots (so that Asus can say it is definitely not triple-slot) ) to accommodate the needed increase in airflow. [To be honest, the thing I'm most excited about with the new Asus cards is that the center fan on the ROG Strix cards spins in the opposite direction! Asus claims that this is for better airflow and "thanks to the reversed direction of rotation of the center fan, turbulence between the fans is reduced." They claim. Definitely something we'd like to see highlighted in RGB.

Nvidia's redesigned cooler and Asus' new Strix design both show that cooling these graphics cards seriously needs to be on point. the ROG Strix uses three 8-pin power connectors and draws up to 400 watts The TUF and Dual cards use two 8-pin power connectors; Asus supports Nvidia's claim of 1.9 times the performance per watt of previous generation graphics cards, so even if the Ampere consumes more power, you should get a much higher frame rates should be obtained.

Asus' ROG website states that this is not the only new design. More 30-series cards are on the way, "including a convenient Turbo design that exhausts hot air directly from the case. Perfect for small form factor builds and enclosures that help maintain system temperatures. Stay tuned.

Asus does not list prices for their Ampere cards, but Nvidia lists the RTX 3090 starting at $1,499, the RTX 3080 at $699, and the RTX 3070 at $499. The ROG Strix RTX 3090 will be a terribly expensive GPU I have a feeling that it will be a terribly expensive GPU.