Asus Has A Pair Of GeForce GT 1030 Graphics Cards (Updated)

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Update, 6/16/17, 10:20am PT: Asus has made the Phoenix GeForce GT 1030 OC Edition and the GeForce GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 available on its website for $80 and $70, respectively.

Original article: 5/19/17, 11:00am PT:

Not one to be left out of the GPU arms race, Asus added a pair of new GeForce GT 1030 graphics cards to its GeForce line. Both cards are based on the recently announced GeForce GT 1030, which is equipped with 384 CUDA cores, 2GB of 6 GTps GDDR5 memory on a 64-bit memory bus, and a 30W power draw that requires no external power connectors.

The Asus Phoenix GeForce GT 1030 OC Edition is intended for compact system builds capable of light gaming, multimedia use, and driving a 4K display at 60Hz. The card comes with a custom cooling solution that mates a dual-ball bearing dust-proof fan with an aluminum heatsink under a black plastic shroud. The additional cooling enables higher boost clock speeds and overclocking headroom.

The Asus GeForce GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 is a passively cooled low profile graphics card intended for slimline silent HTPC builds. The relatively sizeable heatsink sports fins with large surface areas to keep temperatures down while remaining absolutely silent.

The company website clearly outlines the target market for this card:

Engineered with a highly-efficient 0dB thermal design, [the Asus GeForce GT 1030] dissipates heat in complete silence — making GT 1030 the perfect choice for your slimline home-theater PC (HTPC) build. Exclusive AUTO-EXTREME Technology for premium quality and best reliability. It also has GPU Tweak II for intuitive performance tweaking.

These cards are produced using Asus' industry-first Auto-Extreme manufacturing technology. Obviously, building something by hand introduces the chance of human error. This new production process fully automates every step of PCB manufacturing and can be done with much more precision than before.

Both cards are equipped with a single-link DVI-D port and an HDMI 2.0b port, which can handle a 4K display at 60Hz. Asus also bundles GPU Tweak II with both cards, which includes the new Gaming Booster function that maximizes graphics performance with a single click.

We reached out to Asus for pricing and availability and were told that the Phoenix GeForce GT 1030 OC Edition should retail for $70 and the passively cooled GT1030-SL-2G-BRK for $64, as soon as they’re available.