Introduction

We review the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 OC, which is the company’s second fastest custom-design implementation of NVIDIA’s latest performance-segment GPU, the other being ROG STRIX. The TUF Gaming brand received a spectacular upcycle with the GeForce RTX 30-series. We were extremely happy with the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 in our review. ASUS decided to use the same cooling solution on the new RTX 3070. The card combines a ruggedized metal body with a trio of Axial Tech fans and an airy cooling solution with vents at just the right places. There’s also a nice factory overclock to be had.

The GeForce RTX 3070 is an important product for NVIDIA as it offers more than double the performance per dollar than the RTX 2080 Ti, and NVIDIA claims the RTX 3070 even beats it. This would mean the RTX 3070 is able to do the same things as the RTX 2080 Ti—maxed out gaming at 1440p with RTX-on, and 4K UHD gaming with reasonably high settings, including mid-tier settings of RTX. This would bring 4K UHD gaming to an even wider audience while also delivering high refresh-rate gaming to the 1440p and 1080p e-sports segments. At the heart of the RTX 3070 is the new 8 nm “GA104” silicon, which is much smaller than the “GA102” that powers the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. The RTX 3070 nearly maxes out the “GA104.” NVIDIA cut costs where it could by giving this card the same 8 GB of 14 Gbps, 256-bit GDDR6 memory as the RTX 2070. For the full details on RTX 3070 technology and architecture, refer to our RTX 3070 Founders Edition article.

As we mentioned earlier, the TUF Gaming RTX 3070 OC in this review looks like an enthusiast-segment product for its price, and you could easily mistake it for the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 when installed. ASUS is combining the highly capable cooling solution with a GPU that has a typical board power of just 220 W at reference clocks, which at the factory-overclocked speeds, should barely bother this cooler. An overkill cooling solution that hopefully translates to lower noise levels.

The latest TUF Gaming board design involves a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink that’s ventilated by a trio of Axial Tech fans. The PCB is shorter than the heatsink itself, and ASUS has given the card’s metal backplate a large cutout for much airflow from one of the three fans go right through, a concept not unlike NVIDIA’s “dual axial flow-through” industrial design for its RTX 30-series Founders Edition cards. Out of the box, the TUF Gaming RTX 3070 OC comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1815 MHz GPU Boost (compared to 1725 MHz reference), which means the GPU may be pulling slightly more power than its stock 220 W rating. In this review, we take the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 OC for a spin to tell you if paying a $40 premium over NVIDIA’s $499 baseline price for the RTX 3070 makes sense.