It looks as though Asus is not waiting until September to launch custom versions of AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5700 cards, after all. Instead, the first two will arrive on August 16, followed three more throughout the rest of the month.
The announcement is a nice surprise, considering Asus said a few weeks ago that it would have more information about its custom RX 5700 models in September. Had Asus stuck with that time frame, it would have lagged behind some of the competition—AMD indicated that custom Navi cards would start arriving around the middle of August.
It's all moot now. Asus is planning to launch at least five custom Navi cards in August, beginning with ROG Strix variants of both the 5700 XT and 5700. Asus is not revealing clockspeeds just yet, but it is sharing pictures of some of its cards, and various other specs.
"The blower cooler on the reference Navi cards we’ve seen so far can push waste heat directly out of a system at the cost of potentially audible noise levels. That direct-exhaust capability is useful for small-form-factor builds or off-the-shelf PCs with weak cooling, but good enthusiast cases have more than enough airflow to exhaust waste heat without relying on the graphics card cooler for help," Asus says.
"Our three families of custom Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards take advantage of the favorable thermal environment of enthusiast PCs by using open coolers with lots of heatsink surface area and fans to help Navi perform at its best. The only question is how mild or wild you want your RX 5700-series card to be," Asus adds.
The ROG Strix cards will feature "massive 2.7-slot" coolers (effectively taking up three expansion slots). Three axial fans provide airflow to a giant aluminum heatsink, with copper heatpipes snaking through. There's also a metal backplate to provide rigidity to these hulking cards.
A week later on August 23, Asus will launch two more custom variants, the TUF Gaming X3 Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5700. While different in design, these cards also sport 2.7-slot coolers with three axial fans.
"We built these spinners to IP5X standards so that dust can’t make its way into their bearings and reduce the lifespan of the graphics card. We also pack the sleeve bearings of these fans with a space-grade lubricant that delivers ball-bearing longevity without compromising on noise," Asus says.
The design language is consistent with the company's other TUF Gaming products, utilizing "hard angles, chunky accents, and camo-inspired patterning." As with the other cards, Asus did not share any information about clockspeeds.
Finally, Asus says it will launch a single Dual Radeon RX 5700 Evo card on August 30. The company did not share any photos of that model, but said it too will take up 2.7 slots, albeit with two axial fans instead of three.
Pricing has not been announced on any of these variants. Generally speaking, we know that custom Navi cards will start at the same price points as reference models, as PowerColor revealed this week. However, we expect pricing to also reflect factor overclocks and the use of high-end components on some models.
