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The Palit RTX 4080 GameRock OC ships in a dark box, with an eye-catching crystal-like pattern on the front. On the back, Palit highlights a few key features of the card and the cooler design.
Inside, we find a triple 8-pin power adapter, an ARGB cable used to synchronise the card's RGB lighting with your motherboard, and a height-adjustable GPU support bracket which screws into the side of the card to prevent GPU sag.
Looking at the card itself, the shroud and external design is identical to the RTX 4090 GameRock OC we reviewed in October.
That means we find a black plastic shroud, but with two large brushed metal plates to add more of a premium feel. It's impossible to miss the ‘crystal' plastic RGB diffusers too, which occupy almost the whole of the front of the card.
We also get a look at the three 90mm fans, using Palit's ‘gale hunter' design, with a new ‘winglet fantail' that Palit claims helps to increase airflow concentration.
As for overall dimensions, the card is exactly the same size as the 4090 model, measuring 329 x 137.5 x 71.5 mm. That means it's a 3.5 slot card, while it weighs in at just over 1.94KG, so you will want to use the included support bar.
Flipping the card over we get a look at the full-length metal backplate, with a number of cutouts to allow air to pass straight through the heatsink.
We can also see the dual-BIOS switch positioned just by the I/O bracket. The Performance BIOS is the default option, and that offers higher fan speed, clock speed and an adjustable power limit compared to the Silent BIOS, but we do test both modes later in this review.
We can also note the 12VHPWR power connector, with the RGB header positioned right next to this connector which lets you sync the lighting with your motherboard via the included cable. I do like this inclusion but the placement of the RGB header potentially causes a cable management headache, so I would have preferred to see this header on the end of the card.
Elsewhere, display outputs are as standard, with 3x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1x HDMI 2.1.
Palit is re-using the PCB design from the RTX 4090 GameRock OC, though with a slight tweak to the power delivery. Instead of a 16-phase VRM for the GPU, we find a 15-phase VRM, but still a 3-phase VRM for the memory. Palit is using 50A ONSemi NCP302150 MOSFETs across the board, with a UPI UP9512R controller for the GPU VRM and a UPI UP9529Q memory controller.
The cooler is really where we see the main difference between the 4080 and 4090. Instead of a vapour chamber, we find a traditional baseplate that sits on top of eight heatpipes. This baseplate contacts both the GPU and memory modules, with separate plates used to contact the VRM.
We can also note that Palit is not using any thermal pads on the underside of the backplate.
