Asus and Noctua's RTX 3070 is revealed in all its brown glory

[midian182]

In brief: Fans of Noctua's famous brown and beige color schemes (there must be some) will be pleased to know that the design is making its way to graphics cards, thanks to a collaboration between Asus and the CPU cooler/fan company.

Rumors of the partnership surfaced last month when leaker Komachi spotted an Asus listing for a GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB Noctua on the Eurasian Economic Commission website. Now, the Asus ROG Vietnam Facebook page has seemingly confirmed that the product is real and posted the first official images.

As you can see, this is a hefty card that uses a 4-slot design and features two of Noctua's NF-A12x25 fans under the shroud. It also has 'GeForce RTX' and 'ASUS X Noctua' branding, along with dual 8-pin power connectors for delivering up to 300W of power .

This particular RTX 3070 comes with three DisplayPort outputs and two HDMI ports, rather than the usual 3x DP and 1x HDMI. There are no specs available as of yet, but the product code— RTX3070-O8G-NOCTUA—suggests it's a factory-overclocked model.

The bad news, of course, is the price. Graphics cards are once again becoming more expensive after weeks of trending downwards, and that's reflected in this product. The Facebook post states it will sell for 26 million VND, which is around $1,137—the typical price you'd pay on eBay for a standard RTX 3070. Potential buyers also have to contend with the availability issues expected to last until the second half of 2022.

If the result of Asus and Noctua's partnership proves popular, we might see other cards that utilize the latter's cooling solutions. In the meantime, check out our Best of Cooling 2021 feature, in which Noctua's legendary NH-D15 takes the crown as the best Air cooler.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/91499-nvidia-rtx-3070-asus-noctua-revealed-all-brown.html

 

[nodfor]

I really don't see the point in this
I own an RTX 3070 ASUS DUAL OC, the performance in terms of thermals/noise is already great

And If you are going to spend more than a standard 3070 costs, you might just go with an RTX 3080.

 

[Geralt]

Noctua has very good coolers, but I wonder why they insist on using that turdy color combination. It looks ugly and doesn't combine well with the rest of the hardware.

 

[psycros]

Noctua has very good coolers, but I wonder why they insist on using that turdy color combination. It looks ugly and doesn't combine well with the rest of the hardware.

..unless you're going for a desert camo or post-apocalyptic theme.

 

[R00sT3R]

Noctua has very good coolers, but I wonder why they insist on using that turdy color combination. It looks ugly and doesn't combine well with the rest of the hardware.

Noctua wears comments like this as a badge of pride these days..

 

[VitalyT]

Hard to believe that when I chose to bite the bullet 2 months ago, and paid 1500 euro for a 3080Ti, it was pretty much the bottom. The prices didn't just go up recently, cards simply disappeared from the online shelves, and that's in progressive German shops, this just looks bad. For example, I got mine from ComputerUniverse.net, which had tons of cards on sale 2 months ago. Now it got zilch, nada!

 

[jonny888]

Noctua wears comments like this as a badge of pride these days..

It's not about pride. It's brand recognition. You see a brown cooler fan? You *know* it's a Noctua fan. (Not saying I like it, but it has a purpose).

 

[Dimitriid]

Noctua wears comments like this as a badge of pride these days..

Is that why they gave up on their dumb poop brown color scheme and now sell a completely black version of all of their most popular coolers?

It's wasn't "pride" before there's no sense of pride in liking a color more than other people, that's just called personal preference and a company that actively ignores endless requests from potential customers to have a wider range of colors or a more neutral one well, that's just called bad business practice, and that's why they're no longer doing that.

It's not about pride. It's brand recognition. You see a brown cooler fan? You *know* it's a Noctua fan. (Not saying I like it, but it has a purpose).

Nobody would have recognized their brand or cared about if it wasn't the absolute leader in performance and people were forced to just hide the fans somehow and still get the performance. Brand recognition was achieved because of their superior performance, the color scheme if anything just hurt them for a long while before they came to their senses.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Two 25mm thick case fans strapped to a video card.
Takes up 4 slots.
This is all kinds of no.

Unless you use your computer in complete silence, Noctua fans are the most overhyped fans on the planet imo.

 

[Sausagemeat]

I love it I want it but no way am I going to pay what they are asking for it.

 

[jonny888]

Is that why they gave up on their dumb poop brown color scheme and now sell a completely black version of all of their most popular coolers?

It's wasn't "pride" before there's no sense of pride in liking a color more than other people, that's just called personal preference and a company that actively ignores endless requests from potential customers to have a wider range of colors or a more neutral one well, that's just called bad business practice, and that's why they're no longer doing that.



Nobody would have recognized their brand or cared about if it wasn't the absolute leader in performance and people were forced to just hide the fans somehow and still get the performance. Brand recognition was achieved because of their superior performance, the color scheme if anything just hurt them for a long while before they came to their senses.

You're confusing their selling point (they're really good fans) with visual recognition. You can't, at a glance, visually recognise a fans cooling ability and know who made it. You can easily spot a 'unique' colour scheme, so that if someone is showing off a build and you see the brown fans, you know they went Noctua.
I agree the black versions are much nicer to behold (and they're the ones sat in my own case right now).

 

[Dimitriid]

You're confusing their selling point (they're really good fans) with visual recognition.

I'm not: I am saying visual recognition is not automatically positive if the reaction is highly detrimental.

The fact that they continue to announce and release black products (And previously gray for a decent chunk of their products too) as a feature tells me they know almost everybody hates the brown color, yes they recognize it and probably at the best of times, introduces these very discussions which is not something you'd want.

In other words: it's time we put the "any publicity is good publicity" myth to rest because it's clearly not true for companies that have more to offer than just gaining public notoriety and Noctua certainly has a hell of a lot more to offer.

 

[jonny888]

I'm not: I am saying visual recognition is not automatically positive if the reaction is highly detrimental.

The fact that they continue to announce and release black products as a feature tells me they know almost everybody hates the brown color, yes they recognize it and probably at the best of times, introduces these very discussions which is not something you'd want.

In other words: it's time we put the myth of "any publicity is good publicity" to rest because it's clearly not true for companies that have more to offer than just gaining public notoriety and Noctua certainly has a hell of a lot more to offer.

I would say the fact that they've been a very successful company even with the brown for so long means that it isn't/wasn't 'highly detrimental' to them. A lot of people don't care how it looks as long as it works well. But I won't disagree I prefer the black if given the choice.

 

[Dimitriid]

I would say the fact that they've been a very successful company even with the brown for so long means that it isn't/wasn't 'highly detrimental' to them.

I just disagree: the fact that nobody was even close to match their performance and specially at their noise levels is what kept them around, along with partnership and relationships with very big influencers like Linus.

It's hard to make a case for saying the constant complains about color are not detrimental when they kinda were the only name in town for silent, high performance air coolers as for years the conversation has been "This looks better than the Noctua but can it get close enough to their performance and noise levels? Let's find out!"

 

[jonny888]

I just disagree: the fact that nobody was even close to match their performance and specially at their noise levels is what kept them around, along with partnership and relationships with very big influencers like Linus.

It's hard to make a case for saying the constant complains about color are not detrimental when they kinda were the only name in town for silent, high performance air coolers as for years the conversation has been "This looks better than the Noctua but can it get close enough to their performance and noise levels? Let's find out!"

For sure. But I think we're agreeing on the same things. They were successful because they were good. No-one cared enough about the colour when the performance was top notch.
I'm not saying they're successful because they chose brown. I'm saying they're recognisable. That's all.

 

[hover389]

Oh wow another 3070 GPU but guess whats different this time??? Its brown..... amazing news...

 

[arrowflash]

Reading the article's comments, I guess I must be the only one who actually likes Noctua's brown and beige colors. I find them charming, to me they give off a retro vibe. They remind me of beige computer equipment from the 1990s, and faux wood grain electronics from the 1970s.

I've never owned any Noctua products, by the way. But the colors wouldn't put me off.

 

[herpaderp]

They just need to cover up the center of the hubs with a Noctua or Asus decal. As-is from the front, it looks a bit too much like a simple end-user cooler mod instead of an original product.

 

[nagynorbert97]

I just disagree: the fact that nobody was even close to match their performance and specially at their noise levels is what kept them around, along with partnership and relationships with very big influencers like Linus.

It's hard to make a case for saying the constant complains about color are not detrimental when they kinda were the only name in town for silent, high performance air coolers as for years the conversation has been "This looks better than the Noctua but can it get close enough to their performance and noise levels? Let's find out!"

In the way you sentence it it is hard to make a case for it. I would not agree with brand recognition altough it must be very important.
It is brand identity. They focus on performance, the brown coloures are a testiment for that. Not caring about the colours because your and the companies preferences are more towards performance. Oh about black fans? They are happy to sell black fans at a mark up, for people who care about visuals mostly, and performance second.

 

[Dimitriid]

In the way you sentence it it is hard to make a case for it. I would not agree with brand recognition altough it must be very important.
It is brand identity. They focus on performance, the brown coloures are a testiment for that. Not caring about the colours because your and the companies preferences are more towards performance. Oh about black fans? They are happy to sell black fans at a mark up, for people who care about visuals mostly, and performance second.

You do make a good case for "We intentionally don't care about the bad looks" but that does acknowledges the looks are bad and I think someone at Noctua legitimately thinks the color is really, really good because if you didn't care about the color, it would likely be something more neutral like grey or one of the colors you get out of the plastics used so not intense black but kind of a dirty look black or something like uninspiring greyish white.

It might be like an early decision they decided to just stick with but you don't get that kind of brown by accident so I tend to lean more towards being an intentional, unpopular choice at first at least.

 

[nagynorbert97]

You do make a good case for "We intentionally don't care about the bad looks" but that does acknowledges the looks are bad and I think someone at Noctua legitimately thinks the color is really, really good because if you didn't care about the color, it would likely be something more neutral like grey or one of the colors you get out of the plastics used so not intense black but kind of a dirty look black or something like uninspiring greyish white.

It might be like an early decision they decided to just stick with but you don't get that kind of brown by accident so I tend to lean more towards being an intentional, unpopular choice at first at least.

From now it is specualtion, but different plastic polimers have different coloures, and if you have a supplier, and an assembly line, it is not just adding some ink in the beggining and thats it. I work at a rubber factory and changing product colour from the original blck to anything else is a whole new assembly line separate from the rest, but my point is that it maybe has a practical reason. The truth can be that it is intentionally ugly to make people think it is practical. Noctua mindgames xD

 

[Dimitriid]

From now it is specualtion, but different plastic polimers have different coloures, and if you have a supplier, and an assembly line, it is not just adding some ink in the beggining and thats it. I work at a rubber factory and changing product colour from the original blck to anything else is a whole new assembly line separate from the rest, but my point is that it maybe has a practical reason. The truth can be that it is intentionally ugly to make people think it is practical. Noctua mindgames xD

Simplest explanation is almost always correct: simplest explanation is that the CEO or someone very high up at Noctua just really likes poo brown color schemes and what he says goes, instead of this "5D chess!" stuff.

 

[Ojref]

As I recall Noctua uses mostly recycled plastics and chose more natural based dyes.