Today we are reviewing the second EVANGELION collaboration release from ASUS ROG, this time around featuring Asuka Langley Soryu with the release of the ROG STRIX RTX 4090 OC EVA-02. Now depending on your region you might’ve already seen this card on shelves but I’ve been holding on to this one as we have yet to see it get a local price tag.
That has yet to come in so I’m posting this already and while it will mostly be a review about the ROG STRIX RTX 4090 OC, there are some details that ASUS has went to great lengths to include for this collaboration release with KHARA. As mentioned, this review will primarily be focusing on the ROG STRIX RTX 4090 OC as the EVA-02 Edition is just a special version of the same card. It will still come at a premium though.
With that out of the way we’ll immediately go into the details of the ROG x EVA-02 collaboration release. More information is in our original story when the news broke about the ROG x EVA-02 collaboration. The new collection will feature the EVA-02’s color scheme but will also comprise of pieces featuring the pilot, Asuka, something absent in the EVA-01 collection which did not have Shinji in any of the product.
There are currently no other GPUs announced for this collection unlike the EVA-01 line and that’s a key factor if you’re going after this collection on top of the fact that the Z790 is up for an encore release this year for Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh. Going back to the GPU, the RTX 4090 has proven the be the most dominant graphics card in the market today in terms of outright performance and 1 year into its service life, it remains undisputed in its performance crown. Over to the partner side of things, with EVGA out of the picture, ASUS ROG has had a more comfortable position as one of the most coveted models around.
Much like they did with the RTX 30-series, the ROG Strix RTX 40-series manages to still get people’s attention. Personally though, I still think it feels like a cinder block hanging off the motherboard but all that metal on the heatsink cools the RTX 40-series cards very well. In our tests of the ROG Strix RTX 4080 OC, we’ve seen the exact same cooler as the ROG Strix RTX 4090 keep the RTX 4080 at around 65*C.
ASUS gives the ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC a factory overclock of 2.61Ghz, a significant increase from the reference clock speed of the RTX 4090. Memory is untouched but the RTX 40-series ROG Strix cooling features a vapor chamber laying directly on the vital components.
And here we have our look at the ROG x EVA-02 edition of the ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC. Featuring Asuka’s color scheme: bright red with hits of orange and green, this is as loyal as it can get to the anime’s color scheme. It isn’t symbolic as the EVA-01, who even in small hits is unqiuely identifiable via its colorway. So much so that despite having an inverse color scheme used by G1 Devastator, EVA-01’s color scheme is very iconic. This makes it doubly challenging for ASUS to just go for the color. But they found a way around that:
When licensing IPs like these, interested parties would need to license the specific characters meaning that if ASUS wanted to use the likeness of both EVA-02 and Asuka, they need to secure license for them both. And that they did. Asuka prominently graces the backplate of the ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC EVA-02 and perhaps any varying models.
The fan side of the heatsink comprises mainly of the fans. ASUS ROG did not include any RGB on the fans or the shroud except the edge of the card. So much like the regular color scheme, they went with gradient color on the ROG emblem this time around fading from orange to red and finally green.
By default, the card features orange lighting on the ROG logotype and the edge lighting. Users can customize this in Armoury Crate which also gets a reskin specifically this card.
ASUS ROG also gives a special skin for this model only under Armoury Crate. This skin will apply only for the configuration pages of the included products e.g. ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC EVA-02, MAXIMUS Z790 HERO EVA-02, etc.
GPU Tweak also gets its own custom skin for this release.
The trading card in the package is a unique EVA branded card.
Lastly, the cable straps and support stand are also EVA-02 branded to complete the bundle.
If you’ve been skimming past these details or don’t care about Evangelion, please skip to the benchmarks.
