Asus rolls out a cooler, more colorful, overclocked GTX 1080 card

Asus today unveiled its take on the GeForce GTX 1080: a graphics card that includes customizable RGB lighting, controllable auxiliary fans and both an overclocked and standard version.

The Republic of Gamers Strix GeForce GTX 1080 comes with a base clock speed of 1,759MHz, up from Nvidia's founders edition which runs at 1,607MHz, and can boost up to 1,898MHz. An overclocked version of the card bumps the base speed up to 1,784 MHz and the boost to 1,936 MHz, or about a 12 percent increase over the founders edition.

The ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 goes on sale on June 4 for $619.99, with the overclocked version selling for $639.99 In comparison, Nvidia's founder's edition sells for $699.

The higher clock speeds may be enough to make up for the fact that the card is coming in higher than the starting third-party price of $599 that Nvidia mentioned when it unveiled its new Pascal cards.

The card uses three fans for additional cooling and includes Asus FanConnect support, which can provide targeted supplemental cooling.

Where Nvidia's founder edition 1080 only has one HDMI out, the Strix includes two native HDMI 2.0 outputs along with a DVI-D output and two Display Ports.

The card has RGB lighting on both the shroud and backplate and can be personalized with Asus' software.

It's unclear when the card will go on sale. One of Asus' sites says it is available starting June 4, but another official site says May 27.