PNY RTX 2080 Ti XLR8 Gaming Review

The PNY RTX 2080 Ti XLR8 Gaming ships in a fairly simple box, with only the XLR8 and GeForce branding on the front – there's no image of the card itself here.

Inside, the only accessory is a small ‘quick install' guide.

The card itself is what we are here for, though, and we can immediately see the monochrome yet fairly aggressive styling PNY has gone for with this card. The main body of the shroud is matte black plastic, yet there are a number of angular metal plates screwed onto of the plastic which give it that somewhat aggressive look. The card doesn't feel as premium as the Founders Edition, but it is still fairly weighty and doesn't feel cheap in the hand.

As for the three fans, these measure 90mm in diameter. I'm not so keen on the glossy plastic used for the fan blades, however, as while this is of course subjective, I think matte black would have looked a bit cleaner as the glossy plastic just cheapens the overall look in my opinion.

It's also worth touching on the dimensions of this card – it measures 314 x 128 x 44mm. That's quite a long card then, yet it is not very tall and only a dual-slot thickness. The length is the most likely aspect to cause issues with case compatibility, so as always I suggest double-checking that this won't interfere with any front fans or brackets etc.

On the front side of the card we can get a look at the NVLink finger used for SLI, as well as the GeForce RTX logo – though do note there is no lighting on this card, so don't expect this to glow when powered on.

As for the backplate, this is a full-length design which is made of aluminium. It is plain black, apart from more GeForce branding, though it does feature plenty of cut-outs as well.

Power requirements and display outputs are standard for a 2080 Ti –  with 2x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and then 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI and 1x USB-C VirtualLink display connectors.

Prising off the cooler only requires the removal of six screws, and then we can get a look at the PCB. We'll look at the VRM in more detail below, as PNY has fitted a finned heatsink on top of the right-hand side MOSFETs and chokes which is a nice touch, but starting with the memory it is no surprise to see the modules coming from Micron, each one labelled ‘8QA77D9WCW.' We can also see the big TU102 GPU, labelled ‘TU102-300A-K1-A1'.

To remove the VRM heatsink, four screws need to be removed from the back of the PCB, which requires the removal of the backplate. Once that is done, we can get an unobstructed look at the PCB, and we can clearly see it is a reference board. That means it uses a 13+3 phase VRM, with 7 GPU phases and 3 memory phases hidden under that heatsink.

As for the cooler, this is comprised of two separate fin stacks which are connected by five heatpipes – 4x 8mm and 1x 6mm. The GPU itself contacts with a copper coldplate, but there is a separate plate for the VRAM modules and the VRM positioned to the left of the GPU (i.e, the MOSFETs not covered by the finned heatsink).

Become a Patron!

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here