Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme Waterforce Review

Test System and Testing Procedures

All testing was done with both the CPU (8700k) and GPU at their stock settings. For the I7 8700k, it was left at its stock speed of 3.7 GHz. However, this particular chip usually boosts between 4.4 and 4.5 GHz. Ambient temperature is kept as close to 20°c (68°f) as possible. When the system was first turned on, it sat idles for about 30 minutes or so before any benchmarks were run or results recorded. We waited in between each benchmark no less than 30 minutes to give the system time to cool down a bit.

All games were tested at their highest presets except for one. All games were tested in 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160. The games we tested for this review were Battlefield V, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Far Cry 5, Final Fantasy XV, Ghost Recon; Wildlands, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of War and The Witcher 3.  Final Fantasy XV, Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider were all tested with both RTX on and off, as well as with NVIDIA’s DLSS. For synthetic benchmarks, we used the following; 3DMARK Time Spy, 3DMARK Firestrike, Unigine Superposition, VRMARK Orange Room, VRMARK Cyan Room, and VRMARK Blue Room. Lastly, we tested Furmark with the 1080p, 1440p and 2160p presets. For gaming benchmarks, the AORUS RTX Waterforce Xtreme 2080 was put up against the Founders Edition RTX 2080 from NVIDIA and the MSI RTX 2080 Duke OC. So if you see the term reference 2080 or reference card, I’m referring to the Founders Edition RTX 2080.

Test System

Now where this is the usual hardware that’s on my test bench, the hardware is not on my normal test bench. Usually, I use the Praxis Wetbench from Primochill. However, I had the board set up on the Thermaltake P5. Not the same case but, both are open air cases. The entire system was water-cooled.  While testing the AORUS Waterforce 2080, the card was cooled on a dedicated loop using a single Swiftech 140 mm radiator, an Alphacool Eisbecher DDC pump and 150 mm reservoir combo and a 140 mm Cooler Master MasterFan.