PNY GTX 1080 Ti XLR8 OC Gaming 11GB Review

PNY's packaging reflects the theme of simplicity inherent in the product's design. An XLR8 sticker, installation guide and DVI (Female) to Display Port (Male) make up the accessory bundle.

The PNY GTX 1080 Ti XLR8 OC Gaming is a sleek looking graphics card with its grey and black colour scheme that's enhanced with a highlight of red. The translucent fans add some more intrigue to the design. Perhaps the most interesting design characteristic of all is that PNY has managed to squeeze into a dual slot form factor in a market where most graphics card vendors have accepted the need for 3 slots to tame the GTX 1080 Ti's 250W plus TDP.

This graphics card is longer than other graphics cards in its class, presumably to accommodate some additional cooling capacity that is lost to the dual-slot form factor. The length of the cooling solution and backplate extends an inch or so beyond the terminus of the PCB. It measures in at 31 to 32cm long, depending on whether the I/O is included or not, and is 11 to 13cm high, with the same I/O caveat.

The weight is perhaps to most telling specification, just 1.05kg compared to 1.25kg for the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X, 1.34kg for the Palit GTX 1080 Ti JetStream and 1.75kg for the MSI GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z. The shedding of 200g compared to its nearest rival suggests a thinner and lighter heat pipe and heat sink assembly.

Four large 8mm heat pipes terminate at the end of the card along with the 6 and 8 pin PCIe power connectors. The I/O sticks to one PCIe slot with three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b, it has an identical configuration and I/O mesh design to the Founders Edition card.

The heat sink assembly is a little light on fins compared to some other higher density graphics cards KitGuru has tested. The heat pipe arrangement consists of four 8mm and one 6mm for a total of five heat pipes. These all originate from a solid copper contact plate which is directly aligned to three thermal pads that draw heat away from the video memory.

An additional heat sink with associated thermal pads is affixed to the PCB to provide cooling to the power delivery components.

The full-cover backplate is made of aluminium and is fairly light, it includes cut-outs to ventilate the rear of the graphics card PCB.

As far as we can tell PNY's PCB design for the XLR8 OC is identical to the Nvidia Reference design board shipped with the Founders Edition. There are 7 phases with 14 dual-FETs for a total power capability of 250 amps.

Become a Patron!

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here