With the end of financial year sales and tax season on the horizon, I’ve spent the last few weeks contemplating buying a new graphics card, and it’s as if they read my mind because ASUS have sent us one to try out – the ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming GeForce RTX4070 12GB OC Edition, and as if to further tempt me, this one is beautifully accented with Aura Sync RGB. Clearly, I mention my love of flashy lights too much.

A beautifully detailed diecast frame surrounds the bulk of the GPU, offering a stylishly solid means of preventing sag and helping to pull heat away from the more sensitive components. REPUBLIC OF GAMERS shines brightly across the top panel, light from within by ARGB, while a ring of ARGB strips caps off the non-business end, all Aura Sync compatible and offering a variety of preset effects, including music, to change in time with your beats, and Adaptive Colour, to reflect the colours showing on your display.

Gorgeous red and blue metallic accents initially draw your attention to the sleek Axial-tech fans. Heat is further dissipated by three redesigned Axial-Tech dual-ball bearing fans, pushing up to 31% more air through a 3.12-slow custom heatsink.

Cooling is further enhanced by the PCB being almost two-thirds the size of the piece of hardware, allowing the counter-rotating fans to better circulate that boosted airflow around the board, and as a result of the reduced turbulence, the GPU fans run substantially quieter, but if you’re not particularly worried about fans humming away in the background, there is a small Dual Bios switch located along the top panel.

Also included is a Graphics Card Holder, and while I’m not 100% sure what I was expecting, it certainly wasn’t what I found. Initially presented as a small hexagonal piece with a thumb screw on the side and a small rubber nub on one end, the rubber nub can be pulled out and secured in place with the thumb screw.

You can even go as far as removing it completely and doing so will present you with a small screwdriver that can be locked back into what is now a handle.

Returning it to the originally supplied position, extending the inner piece, and wedging the rubberised tip between your case and the bottom-facing panel of your shiny new GPU will indeed prevent it from sagging, though I can’t say I’m a fan of this setup as it’s only being held in place by a magnet, hopes, and prayers. An unfortunate bump could see a magnetised piece of metal bouncing about inside your case.

The ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming GeForce RTX4070 12GB OC Edition can support a maximum resolution of 7680 x 4320 at 60FPS, or 4K at up to 240FPS. It also supports up to four displays, with connections consisting of two Native HDMI 2.1 ports and three Native DisplayPort 1.4 ports. With a default Boost clock of 2610MHz and 12 GB GDDR6X video memory at 21Gbps, it’s already offering some amazing visuals, but using ASUS GPU Tweak III will potentially increase the clock to 2640 MHz while in OC mode, making those already smooth frames even more fluid and while maintaining those crispy details.

As with most GPUs, installation is an absolute breeze, as you only need a single PCI Express 4.0 slot and a lead from your PSU, however, it will take up two expansion slots on the rear of your case, so you’ll want to make sure you have the space before you go popping them out. Once that’s done, or you’ve completed the build, a quick download of Nvidia GeForce Experience will get you updated and running.

The only thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t support NVLink or Crossfire, but it can do something I didn’t know I wanted until now. There are two PWM FanConnect headers located near the ARGB Ring, allowing you to connect chassis fans directly to the GPU.

These are perfect if you’ve run out of these on your main board as they allow you to set the connected fans to run in accordance with GPU or CPU temperatures, reducing overall fan noise from your rig.

With the recent major patch for Star Citizen being released, I was keen to see just how much better this was than my existing RTX 2060S, particularly since the 3.23 patch has managed to improve the performance for me, even without switching over to CIG’s proprietary Vulcan Renderer. There was no comparison, and the ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming GeForce RTX4070 12GB OC Edition completely blew my RTX 2060S out of the water, effectively doubling my performance.

In locations where I would average 25-30FPS, I found myself comfortably sitting between 50 and 60, and if I were cruising around in the black, where I normally attain between 50 to 60 FPS, I was easily surpassing 100. The only time I ever noticed a substantial dip was when the mouse than runs the wheel to the internet needed to stop for a break.

The ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming GeForce RTX4070 12GB OC Edition gave me an exceptional performance boost, and it looked damn good while it was doing so. The cooling system seemed to work exceptionally well, regardless of switching between quiet and performance, and while I didn’t need to use the additional PWM ports, I do appreciate the inclusion. Though the inability to NVLink / CrossFire the card may deter some, the ASUS ROG STRIX Gaming GeForce RTX4070 12GB OC Edition is an amazing card on its own, and it’s sitting fairly high on my list of possible replacements.

Written by: Mathew Lindner