Outshine the competition
April 1st always seems an awkward date to launch new products, yet there was no messing around when Asus raised the curtain on its 'outshine the competition' event in Berlin earlier today.
Corporate Vice President Jackie Hsu kicked off proceedings in an upbeat mood, declaring the firm's decade-old Republic of Gamers brand as number one for gamers worldwide. There's no denying that ROG has become something of a juggernaut for the Taiwanese company, and the products unveiled today suggest there's plenty more in store for the most fervent ROG fans.
Amid the flurry of high-end hardware, Asus was particularly proud of its latest flagship graphics card, the ROG Poseidon GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Scheduled to be available before the end of the second quarter for an undisclosed fee, Poseidon will take over the mantle from the award-winning ROG Strix as the most powerful single graphics card in Asus's stable.
In its out-the-box form, Poseidon is initially an air-cooled card that Asus reckons will run a tad warmer than the aforementioned Strix. Things get interesting when you incorporate the card into a liquid-cooling loop. Standard G1/4-inch fittings help make integration as easy as possible, and in keeping with other recent Asus designs, Poseidon occupies two-and-a-half slots to maximise cooling performance.
We're told to expect a 22 per cent increase in flow rate compared to previous-generation Poseidon cards, as well as a 40 per cent increase in heat dissipation area, and though we'll need to run some in-house numbers to see how well it performs, Asus tells us the hybrid cooling configuration will blow the £800 ROG Strix out of the water.
Poseidon is of course outfitted with Aura Sync illumination and a factory overclock, but Asus is still keeping some details close to its chest. There's no mention of what the shipping speeds will be, and the MSRP remains a mystery - though, given that regular air-cooled GTX 1080 Ti cards are fetching £800 here in the UK, we'd suggest you start saving soon.