ASUS also caught modifying GeForce RTX 3080 TUF and ROG STRIX PCB designs

Update

ASUS released a statement on Instagram:

All retail ROG Strix and TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards use only MLCC capacitors for decoupling close to the GPU.
During development, we discovered the improvement this makes to RTX 3090 and 3080 overclocking headroom, so we made specification changes before we started shipping cards to reviewers and customers. Please note that some of the product images used on etail sites and our product pages were from early development samples, so are not final. All images will be updated soon.
Please bear with us!

Original post

This is a continuation of our GeForce RTX 30 series ‘stability issues’ coverage.

ASUS quietly changes RTX 3080 photos as well

We have just reported that MSI has updated the photos on their website for RTX 3080 series (GAMING X TRIO and VENTUS) featuring a new PCB design. It seems that ASUS has done the exact same thing. There is however a small difference between both manufacturers.

Unlike MSI, ASUS delayed the launch of its ROG STRIX models, likely to deliver updated designs to the reviewers. Unfortunately for ASUS and fortunately for you guys, we have a very large database of graphics cards, which is usually updated as soon as new cards are released.

Now this story is based on something that we didn’t even notice ourselves. We received this information as a tip. As it turns out ASUS also had a different PCB design before the cards were seeded to reviewers and to distributors. The manufacturer first uploaded photographs showing full SP-CAP configuration, the full MLCC design was released later. That said, ASUS must have been one of the first manufacturers to change the design before the news first broke at ComputerBase (that was the first report on a possible problem).

This article is not about the reported issue itself, but about design modifications by the AIBs. Please remember, our job is to provide news and keep consumers updated with all developments on this topic. Whether the design change was dictated by the stability issues, we don’t know yet. Neither ASUS nor NVIDIA have made public statements, although multiple vendors have already issued theirs.

Below we attached old photographs uploaded by ASUS (which we had archived in our database) compared with the new ones.