Wednesday, September 26th 2018
ASUS Clears the Air on Missing Fan Connect Case-Fan Headers on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
ASUS ROG Fan Connect is a feature that allows you to connect up to two of your case-fans to two standard 4-pin PWM fan headers present on an ASUS ROG Strix series graphics card, letting you synchronize your case's front intake and rear exhaust fans to the temperature of the GPU, and control them using the GPUTweak software. ASUS has introduced the feature with the Pascal and Vega architecture, and has since included it with its ROG Strix series graphics cards.
When we published our reviews of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its sibling based on the RTX 2080, we noticed something curious, and our readers were quick to spot it as well. ASUS did not add the Fan Connect 4-pin PWM case-fan headers on its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Strix card, while the company's RTX 2080 card had them. Adding to the confusion, the PCB of our review sample had blank traces where the headers are supposed to be. This got our readers asking if the final product has those headers. The box doesn't advertise those headers anywhere, neither does the ASUS website, so it isn't a case of false-marketing yet.
We reached out to ASUS to clarify about this issue. ASUS, in its response, stated that while the RTX 2080 Ti Strix PCB does feature traces for these headers and related SMT components, they decided not to implement the feature in the initial RTX 2080 Ti production batch, because the designers ran into "technical problems." The company stated that all future production batches will include this feature. To avoid having to mark the cards with headers in future batches leading to consumer-confusion, ASUS decided to omit mentions of fan headers throughout its marketing material for the cards. You won't find any mention of the headers (or lack thereof) on either the boxes, or the product-pages on ASUS website, or any other marketing material.
When we published our reviews of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its sibling based on the RTX 2080, we noticed something curious, and our readers were quick to spot it as well. ASUS did not add the Fan Connect 4-pin PWM case-fan headers on its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Strix card, while the company's RTX 2080 card had them. Adding to the confusion, the PCB of our review sample had blank traces where the headers are supposed to be. This got our readers asking if the final product has those headers. The box doesn't advertise those headers anywhere, neither does the ASUS website, so it isn't a case of false-marketing yet.
35 Comments on ASUS Clears the Air on Missing Fan Connect Case-Fan Headers on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
A nice restock fee on a $1300 card. I wouldn't buy the thing (if I were in the market for a $1300 GPU) unless I knew for sure the fan headers were on there. And they wont even put it in the specs or on the box in the future??
Except their website does state the 2080Ti and 2080 both have the fan connect headers. And before anyone says "oh, you found a random page deep on their website that says it", no this is literally the first result in Google when you type Asus 2080 Ti.
The product pages themselves contain no mention however. I hardly think you've caught some wild conspiracy to defraud the consumer by identifying a single (if prominent) page that wasn't edited.
All it really did was open them up to allowing everyone that buys a first batch 2080Ti to demand a replacement that does have the feature ASUS said it is supposed to have. It's not a big deal, but it needs to be known that anyone buying these cards should contact ASUS for a replacement with the FanConnect headers.
Before my 1070 strix I used to do a DIY wiring to extract the pwm signal of the gpu's fan to control some case fans.
The 2080 might not have this issue due to lower power wattage and since both use the same VRM....
but yea they might have rushed the product.
I've said RTX was shit *during* the GDC Keynote, before it dawned upon most people here or even Linus himself. No I don't need a cookie for that, just to illustrate my point. I've even said long before Turing launch that this gen would likely be a tiny jump in performance and I predicted when RTX was first announced that they were going to sell Turing on this feature alone. And all on this very forum too, so you can scan my post history to verify everything.
Crystal ball or common sense, you decide.