[nextpage title=”Introduction: “]
What at first seemed to be just a fake ended up being a reality when Asus confirmed the existence and upcoming arrival of this RTX 3070 Noctua OC model. As the name of the card suggests, this is a model made in partnership with Noctua. The Austrian firm Noctua is a brand that needs no introduction and has already proven itself for many years in aircooling.
The only thing that surprised us was the choice of the RTX 3070, although the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 “Ti” models were already available at the time of the launch. Asus seems to have favoured the RTX 3070 which is still the most interesting mid-range model at the moment. This is our reference card against which all others are compared in our gaming tests. Finally, you should know that this Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC benefits from the new LHR(Lite Hash-Rate) stepping. The principle is to reduce performance by half for crypto-currency mining.
This Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC was tested on our new GPU test setup which is based around an Alder Lake i7-12700KF processor and an ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard. You will find the whole test configuration on page 4. A big thank you to Asus France for giving us the opportunity to keep the Z690 Extreme motherboard for our tests.
[nextpage title=”Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC: “]
The architecture :
This Asus RTX 3070 Nocuta OC is a new graphics card from Asus and benefits from NVIDIA’s new architecture, Ampere. It is intended to replace the GeForce RTX 2070 launched a little over two years ago. This RTX 3070 is equipped with a GA104 core built on the 8nm manufacturing process by Samsung. The chip size is 392mm² and hosts 5888 cuda cores.
Our Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC has 8 GB of 256-bit GDDR6, which translates into a bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The TDP is 220 watts, which is higher than the RTX 2070 it is intended to replace, which had a TDP of 185 watts. As we said in the introduction, this Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC is provided with the new LHR (Lite Hash-Rate) stepping.
The cooling system :
Needless to say, the cooling solution used on this Noctua OC RTX 3070 is unprecedented for us. It’s a custom design made to accommodate the two Noctua fans. As you can see, the dimensions of the card are also out of the ordinary with 310 x 145 mm, a weight of 1578 g and a width of four slots in your case.
Now this width is not a penalty as RTX 3070s are not SLI compatible, so only smaller cases might have issues with this model. Let’s go back to the two Noctua fans which are NF-A12 PWM in 120 x 25 mm. These fans have not been modified in any way at the power connector and could therefore be replaced without any difficulty. The fans will also switch off if the temperature drops below 50°C.
It is a very strong choice on the part of Asus to have kept the brown colour of the fans. Since the launch of the card, there are now NF-A12 chromax.black versions available on the market. It would be very easy for you to change them to black versions if you wanted to.
The card also has two BIOSes. By default, the “performance” BIOS is selected, but you can also opt for the “silent” one. The only difference is the noise level. Finally, our RTX 3070 Noctua OC has a metal backplate, which serves to stiffen the PCB and protect it from damage.
The Heatsink :
Considering the thickness of the board, it is logical to expect a rather large heatsink. And it is! There is an imposing finned block on which the two fans are placed (glued). This is actually quite surprising when disassembling it, as you have to force it a little in order to separate the heatsink from the casing. As mentioned, both fans use a traditional 4-pin connector.
The heatsink has 5 heat pipes running through it. There are many thermal pads whose role is to ensure the heat transfer between the component and the heatsink. Asus has provided a specific heatsink for part of the power supply stage.
Connections :
To power the card, there are two 8-pin connectors. In terms of output, this Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC has three DisplayPort 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1 ports.
Let’s move on to the technical specifications of our model of the day. [nextpage title=”Specification and PCB: “]
Technical specifications :
In terms of frequency, the base frequency is announced at 1500 MHz while the Boost peaks at 1815 MHz. The 8 Gb of G-DDR6 memory runs at 1750 MHz (448 GB/s) on a 256 bit bus. Our Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC benefits from a good factory overclocking, as the reference card offered by NVIDIA has a Boost frequency of 1725 MHz. We went through GPU-Z to check that the information read was correct.
The GPU frequency is 1500 MHz, and the Boost frequency is 1815 MHz. Don’t forget that the latter will be higher during benchmarks depending on the quality of your chip and determined by GPU Boost 4.0. The memory has a frequency of 1750 MHz. Check out how GPU Boost works here.
The PCB :
Let’s start by removing the numerous screws on the backplate and the ones holding the heat sink to the GPU chip. Let’s have a look at the PCB of our sample in detail. The PCB is in fact that of the RTX 3070 Tuf Gaming. First of all, no surprise, the chip that equips our model is indeed the GA104 whose size is 392 mm². Now let’s deal with the VRM, Voltage Regulator Module. It is the OnSemi NCP81610 controller that will supply the GPU with the right voltage and current. There is a set of 10 phases, one more than the Founders Edition. The number of phases is often determined by the current requirement of the graphics chip. The more current the graphics chip needs, the more phases there are.
Then there are the mosfets, which in this case are 50A Vishay SIC654A. The mosfets are the elements to keep cool and are often topped by a heat sink. They are the ones that will convert the direct current since our GPU does not work on 12 or 5 volts, but on a lower voltage often located around 1 volt. Finally, we should also note the presence of voltage read points integrated directly on the PCB.
The memory chips :
The two phases of the memory are controlled by a UPI uP9529Q chip. The chip is located on the front right side of the PCB. Finally, as far as the GDDR6 memory chips are concerned, there are eight of them, K4Z80325BCs, and they are manufactured by Samsung. They should have good overclocking potential. [nextpage title=”The test configuration: “] As we said in the introduction, we have just completed a full upgrade of our test setup to Alder Lake, DDR5 and Windows 11. This is the first card we will officially test on this new configuration. Of course, all our previous cards have been retested on this configuration in order to update our various charts.
- Motherboard : ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme
- Processor: Intel Alder Lake i7-12700KF
- Memory : 32 GB Corsair Platinum RGB 5200 CL38 DDR5
- Graphics Card : Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC
- Cooling system : ROG Ryujin II 360
- SSD: Western Digital Black SN750 2 TB + EKWB heatsink
- Power supply: Corsair AX1600i
- Operating system: Windows 11 64 bits
- Display: Asus PG27UQ
Our test protocol :
All cards are tested at stock frequencies and without any optimisation. For the various benchmarks, both synthetics and games, we will opt for 1080p, 1440p and 2160p resolutions depending on the card’s performance. As you can see, we have switched to Windows 11 and we have enabled the “ReSize BAR” in the BIOS as you can see in these screenshots.
Now that you know everything about our test setup, it’s time to get started! [nextpage title=”Synthetic benchmarks: “] Our first series of tests will be dedicated to synthetic benchmarks. These are often used for overclocking competitions but are also very interesting to compare different GPUs. We will therefore focus on benchmarks from the 3DMark series. We will test the following benchmarks:
- Fire Strike (1080p)
- Fire Strike Ultra (2160p)
- Time Spy (1440p)
- Time Spy Extreme (2160p)
- DirectX Raytracing
- Mesh Shader
3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra :
Let’s start with 3DMark Fire Strike, which is one of the most used benchmarks today. It consists of two graphics tests, a CPU test and a fourth test that combines GPU and CPU. Don’t forget to deactivate the demo which doesn’t add anything to the final score and prolongs the benchmark unnecessarily. The version used for these tests is of course the latest one
This is the first benchmark we’ve done with this Noctua OC RTX 3070 and we can say that it’s off to a good start. Unsurprisingly, the performance is on par with the RTX 3070 Founders Edition.
Even though the RTX 2080 Ti is no longer in our chart due to lack of a unit on hand, you should know that the performance of this RTX 3070 is far superior.
3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme :
The second test is 3DMark Time Spy. Although this one is done in 1440p, it is especially useful because it uses DirectX 12. It consists of two graphics tests and a CPU test. As with Fire Strike, don’t forget to disable the demo. These first two benchmarks are provided by UL Benchmark.
The first sign of the card’s performance in 1440p, with our sample of the day taking the lead over the RX 6700 XT.
The performance is confirmed under 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, with an overall score of 6908 points.
3DMark DirectX Raytracing :
UL Benchmarks has added a new test to its series of benchmarks to measure Ray Tracing performance. The idea will be to use the 3DMark DirectX Raytracing test to compare the performance of dedicated Ray Tracing hardware included in graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA (and of course in upcoming Intel models). The 3DMark DirectX Raytracing test is designed to make Ray Tracing the limiting factor. Instead of relying on traditional rendering, the entire scene is traced and drawn in a single pass. The test result will depend entirely on the performance of the Ray Tracing elements of the GPU. This makes it easy to measure and compare the performance of different cards.
The Ray Tracing advantage still goes to Team Green, with our RTX 3070 Noctua OC scoring better than the RX 6900 XT.
3DMark Mesh Shader:
Here is the new test we added to the synthetic benchmarks: Mesh Shader. We added it because it is managed by AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture and therefore our RX 6000’s. It allows us to analyse the level of performance of the GPU concerning this functionality. As a reminder, it allows the use of more complex calculations at the geometry level, in a more flexible way, for each meshlet . The results displayed are those with the Mesh Shaders active.
Our Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC scores 454 points, which is in line with the order we have previously obtained for these 1440p cards. [nextpage title=”Gaming performance: “] We decided to select five games as they seem to be representative enough. We opted for DirectX11, DirectX12 and Vulkan with the following games:
- The Division 2 (DirectX 12)
- Borderlands 3 (DirectX 12)
- Red Dead Redemption II (Vulkan)
- Far Cry 6 (DirectX 12)
- Watch Dogs: Legion (DirectX 12)
We have chosen to use the benchmarks integrated in these different games. Why did we do this? Simply to allow you to compare your results with ours if you also have a copy of one of these games. It’s a thought that seemed relevant to us and that will allow you to compare your results with ours. As we mentioned on page 4 of this article, we have enabled the Resizable Bar in the BIOS, which is supported by both NVIDIA and AMD cards. Finally, we have opted for 1440p resolution, which is a perfect match for this RTX 3070 Noctua OC. Of course, you won’t have any problems with the lower 1080p resolution..
The Division 2:
The Division 2 will be tested under DirectX 12. As for the graphics settings, they will be set to ” ultra ” mode with vertical sync disabled.
First game and the trend seen in the synthetic benchmarks seems to be confirmed in The Division 2. The 1440p resolution test here is a formality for this RTX 3070.
Borderlands 3:
For the second game, we switch to Borderlands 3. The graphics options are set to “Brutal“. Borderlands 3 is quite demanding and this choice of settings has a strong impact on FPS. This is a game that is often mentioned in new graphics card announcements.
The same goes for Borderlands 3 where our model of the day is perfectly at ease in 1440p with an average of 80.6 FPS and with the graphics options in Brutal mode!
Red Dead Redemption 2:
Third game and not the least, Red Dead Redemption II on PC. The advantage of this new opus is to offer the possibility to test the integrated benchmark under Vulkan. We opt for “ultra” graphics settings.
The game makes our graphics cards suffer a bit more but we are well above 60 FPS with an average of 73.4 FPS.
Far Cry 6:
The latest game we are adding to this section as it supports DXR as well as SFR offered by AMD. We will also find it on the next page. For our benchmarks, we have opted for “ultra” graphics quality.
Even though our review of this game showed an advantage for the RX 6000 cards, our RTX 3070 Noctua OC did very well with an average of 100 FPS.
Watch Dogs Legion:
Last but not least, Watch Dogs Legion will also be used for our tests with Ray Tracing. For our benchmarks, we opted for “very high” graphics quality.
The trend continues with our RTX 3070 Noctua OC, which performs like a fish in water in this 1440p resolution. It achieves an average of 94 FPS.
Gaming Average:
For the gaming average, it is no surprise that we chose the NVIDIA RTX 3070 as our reference card. The other cards score either higher or lower depending on their performance against this model.
Some of you are already imagining the idea of being able to play with higher resolutions, but this is almost impossible with only 8Gb of memory. Now, with restrictions on graphics quality, anything is possible, but is it really worth it? We don’t think so. [nextpage title=”Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performance:”] Let’s now take a look at the four games we have selected that support Ray Tracing and DLSS. We will be able to judge the impact of these two technologies on the FPS number. As you can see, some games support first generation DLSS and others support 2.0. We have also added Far Cry 6 which supports DirectX Ray Tracing and AMD’s SFR but is still compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards. The four DirectX 12 games we will be testing with Ray Tracing or DirectX Ray Tracing and DLSS or SFR are :
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Watch Dogs: Legion
- Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition
- Far Cry 6
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
The first one we are adding to this comparison supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 1.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and only one level of DLSS. For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, “ultra” Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled.
Even with Ray Tracing enabled, our RTX 3070 Noctua OC does just fine with an average of 72 FPS. Enabling DLSS gives a frame rate boost to 84 FPS.
Watch Dogs Legion:
The second game, Watch Dogs Legion, supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. It is one of the most demanding games of the moment. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ‘high‘ Ray Tracing and ‘ balanced ‘ DLSS.
The Ray Tracing in Watch Dogs Legion makes all the cards suffer! As a reminder, we were getting an average of 94 FPS which drops to 51 when it is activated. Fortunately, DLSS comes to the rescue and raises this average to 84 FPS.
Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition :
Third game supporting DLSS 2.0, we have devoted a report to it. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ‘high’ Ray Tracing and ‘quality‘ DLSS.
We continue with the demanding games and once again the combination of Ray Tracing and DLSS gives our model of the day the opportunity to enjoy an average of 73.9 FPS at 1440p.
Far Cry 6:
The latest game we are adding to this section as it supports DXR as well as AMD’s SFR. For our benchmarks, we chose Ultra graphics quality, we enabled both DRX and FSR in “quality” mode for the three resolutions: 1080p, 1440p and 2160p.
A visual change in our charts since here, with FSR, both NVIDIA and AMD cards can benefit from this FPS gain. In Far Cry 6, our RTX 3070 already manages to easily pass the 70 FPS mark with Ray Tracing enabled. We could even do without FSR! [nextpage title=”Temperature, power consumption and nuisance: “]
Thermals:
In order to measure temperatures, we opted for the Superposition stress test in Extreme mode. We opted for three 5-minute runs with a 10-minute interval between each test. We took advantage of this benchmark to record the power consumption of the graphics card for the table above.
In order to know the temperature at Idle, after completing the three loops of the stress test, we let the card rest for 20 minutes before reading the temperature. It should be noted that most cards have “0 dBa” technology and therefore the fans cut out below a certain temperature, often between 50 and 55°C. This means that it takes longer to dissipate the heat after a period of stress testing or gaming. A card that does not have this technology will be noisier than others at rest. A reminder: our temperature readings are taken in Open-Air. In a closed case, the cards will logically be hotter.
And there you have it, the numbers speak for themselves with an excellent place in our ranking. As a reminder, the RX 6800 XT is a version with liquid cooling. The Asus RX 6600 XT Strix also does better but it is much noisier as you can see below.
Noise level :
To measure the noise, we use a sound level meter placed 40 cm away from our graphics card. All other components that may make noise (fans and liquid cooling loop pump) are disabled.
And who takes the top spot in our ranking? The Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC. It’s simply amazing, you can hardly hear it. Those who have a Noctua cooling solution for their processor will understand what I mean.
Power consumption (full configuration) :
We use a wattmeter by reading the power consumption on the output of our power supply. Our modular power supply is a CORSAIR AX1600i. The result we offer you is the average of the total power consumption of our configuration. Only the graphics card changes between each reading. It is therefore easy to calculate the difference between each graphics card.
No surprise here, we know that the RTX 3000s are quite power hungry and this is the case with our RTX 3070. The total power consumption of our configuration is 345 watts. NVIDIA recommends using a 650W power supply for a RTX 3070 configuration. [nextpage title=”Overclocking: “]
Overclocking via GPU Tweak :
Let’s head over to the latest version of the GPU Tweak software. This is the overclocking software designed by Asus but which will be compatible with other brands of GPUs. The software is really well designed but you will have to go select advanced mode to have access to all the settings.
To test our overclocking, we will first focus on the Time Spy benchmark. Let’s get started! We opt for a maximum fan speed, raise the power limit to the maximum, i.e. 110% and off we go! At first, we only push the GPU frequency until the benchmark is no longer running. Once we have a stable GPU frequency, we move on to increasing the memory frequency.
By default, at stock frequencies, our Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC scores 14165 points in Time Spy. Under Fire Strike Ultra, a score of 8909 points is achieved.
In-house protocol:
Let’s go! The fans are set to maximum speed and the power target is increased to the maximum, from 100 to 112%. This allows us to increase our score slightly. Next, we move on to the overclocking of our GPU. We tested several frequencies and finally arrived at a maximum boost frequency of 2175/2190 MHz. Once the GPU frequency was found, the same principle is applied to the memory frequency. Here are the parameters we finally obtained.
So we did the benchmarks with a boost frequency of 2020 MHz (max GPU-Z 2175/2190) and memory at 2050 MHz.
In the end, we scored 15587 points on Time Spy (+10%) and 9882 points on Fire Strike Ultra (+12%). As you can see, the temperatures remain perfectly cool. It is now time to give you our impressions of this Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC. [nextpage title=”The last word: “]
A collector card?
We already knew that the NVIDIA RTX 3070 graphics card is certainly one of the best choices for 1440p. This model also offers perfect cooling and noise reduction. Of course, we are dealing with an unusual graphics card with its 4 slot thickness. Let’s not forget that the RTX 3070 does not support SLI, so is this really a flaw? Yes, and only yes, if you are looking for the most compact configuration possible. What we also particularly liked was the boldness of Asus. First of all by keeping the colour code of the Austrian brand. Now some will love it, others will hate it, but it will leave no one indifferent. The other major advantage of this card is to shake up the series we already know. Each brand has its own series that are repeated from one generation to the next without really changing the design. With this RTX 3070 Noctua OC, Asus has delivered!
Now, yes, the asking price is high – and even higher with the shortage we are currently experiencing. It is unfortunately sold out everywhere except on Amazon where we found two units available for a price of 1248 euros. If you have been lucky enough to acquire one, keep it well as it is likely to be a collector’s item in the years to come.
Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC
We liked :
- Asus and Noctua, a winning combo!
- The perfect card to enjoy 1440p
- The excellent cooling system
- A card that is quickly forgotten in terms of noise pollution
- The possibility to change fans if you feel like it
- The audacity of Asus to keep the Noctua colour code
- The same performance as the top of the range Turing, the RTX 2080 Ti
- A well-designed power supply with quality components
- Very good overclocking potential
- GDDR6 memory is still flexible when overclocking
- The presence of two BIOSes
We would have liked :
- Better availability
- Prices that return to normal in 2022, fingers crossed..
There is no doubt about it, this Asus RTX 3070 Noctua OC is our first favourite of 2022. Our first wish is that this collaboration will continue in the coming months. This cooling system offers excellent performance and, above all, low noise levels. Since Asus has already trusted the Austrian brand for the cooling of its AIOs, there is no doubt that we will hear more about this collaboration in the future, for our great pleasure.