Its a beast. Thing is absolutely massive and build quality is second to none. In use as the cooler is pretty massive it stays pretty cool and quiet. Mine runs to around 1800-1900 Mhz or so out the box without any tweaks. Overclocking it and increasing power target in MSI AB lets it draw up to 400watts and at that point can see it hold around 2050 Mhz + without bother.
Mine does have coil whine though, but digging into it, think its more the PSU. Using a SFX one as its expected to go into a HTPC soon and the Silverstone unit has a lot of ripple so looking to replace with a corsair SKU. tried same card again with my primary AX1600i in my other build and its much better. That all said, I think coil whine is down to luck and combination of parts. Guru3D mentioned in there review there Strix had whine for example:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_geforce_rtx_3090_strix_oc_review,34.html others users have reported mixed bag.
I suspect strix thanks for having a 480w BIOS may be able to shove more power into the chip to get a couple of steps higher with the same silicon, but not worth the premium IMO unless your really into benchmarking more so considering the FE build quality and how it keeps the 3090 cool and quiet. I would not pay the premium for the Strix at this point. That said, could even wait for AMD at this point, unlike the 3080FE, the 3070FE and 3090FE can be had for an hour or so after going live when up for sale. I suspect that may be the case going forward and those two should be easier to pick up.
