ASUS Unveils Hatsune Miku–Themed ROG Astral RTX 5080 Special Edition

ASUS stunned the PC community with a new Hatsune Miku-themed ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC Edition, complete with a matching lineup of hardware: PSU, cooler, motherboard, chassis and monitor, all styled in vibrant teal and pink. The standalone GPU features ASUS’s signature quad-fan cooling, vapor chamber, phase-change thermal pad, and 50 A MOSFETs, preserving the Astral design’s performance pedigree in a visually distinctive package

ASUS’s ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC 16 GB GDDR7 represented the brand’s first quad-fan GPU, offering up to 20% more airflow and pressure, a patented vapor chamber for improved thermals, and a factory overclock reaching 2760 MHz (default 2617 MHz). Reviewers noted consistent 10–15% gains over Founders Edition, particularly in 4K gaming, backed by massive overclocking headroom thanks to ASUS’s robust power delivery system.

Despite its performance, the Astral 5080 drew criticism for extremely limited availability and high MSRP, with reviewers deeming it a niche, luxury-priced product rather than a mainstream 5080 offering. Enthusiasts on Reddit smirked at its sheer size and premium markups “stupid big, stupid expensive”. Reviewers weighed in with dose of realism for prospective buyers.

ASUS pushed a firmware update raising the card’s power limit from 400 W to 450 W, unlocking further overclocking potential. However, testers cautioned users not to expect proportional performance gains at that TDP, citing thermal constraints and diminishing returns on FPS.

In broader reviews, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition targeted $999 MSRP with modest 15% gains over the RTX 4080, making it the most balanced card at its price tier, even if it couldn’t surpass the RTX 4090 in raw power. AI features like DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation provided notable efficiency gains

Laptop builds equipped with RTX 5080 GPUs, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 delivered solid gaming at high framerates but often failed to justify their premium price compared to similarly priced RTX 5070 Ti machines.

Across GeForce RTX 50-series cards, a brief manufacturing glitch surfaced in early 2025: some early RTX 5080 units shipped without eight render output units (ROPs), impacting graphics workloads. Nvidia confirmed and resolved the issue through driver updates and vBIOS fixes.

ASUS’s quad-fan “Astral” design marks a bold departure from traditional dual- or triple-fan layouts, aimed at extreme thermals and overclocking stability. Even with high price tags, the OC edition and themed variants underscore ASUS’s strategy of creating headline-grabbing, status-enabling hardware. The Art/Hatsune Miku crossover and limited-edition Dhahab/Core models illustrate a runway for branding beyond standard GPU performance specs.