Do you hate installing water blocks on your gaming graphics card? Do you find the process of creating custom liquid cooling loops tedious at best, and potentially disastrous for your components at worst? Then has Asus got a GPU for you: The new all-in-one ROG Strix LC AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT OC Edition ($1,299 MSRP) makes it easy to integrate a fully liquid-cooled GPU into your build as long as you've got space to mount another radiator, and its stock performance, while only marginally better than the non-liquid reference Radeon RX 6800 XT, sets a baseline for more serious overclocking potential. That high overclocking ceiling doesn't come cheap, however, and with today's runaway GPU inflation every $100 added to the base cost—i.e., double the $649 of the reference card—adds untold amounts of scalper markup on top. If you already have a custom loop installed in your desktop PC, liquid cooling a reference version of the RX 6800 XT should cost no more than about $250 for the backplat...
The Asus ROG Strix LC AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT OC Edition brings AMD closer than ever to Nvidia in the high-end GPU battle, but its podium-level performance comes at a cost.
Liquid-cooled water block adds serious overclocking potential; Fun LED-lit design; Surprisingly compact design; Record-setting results in certain games and resolutions
Expensive compared with reference RX 6800 XT; Radiator installation could be difficult for novice users; AMD's drivers still have issues in certain DirectX 11 titles; Balks at Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark