The advantage of having such a big cooler on an efficient chip like the GA106 is the temperatures under load as well as the low sound levels coming from the fans. We’re using Unigine Heaven 4.0 in 4K for monitoring the stock and OC frequencies while testing for stability. Some not-so-premium RTX 3060 12GB from other brands have bigger TGP limits compared to the card that we’re reviewing. We will speak about the other pros in a minute.Īs you can see from the BIOS information, the stock power limit is 170W and it can be increased to just 180W – such a shame. The first one is the idle temperature – 32☌ is a great result. The RTX 3060 12GB is a more efficient chip compared to the GA104-based RTX 3060 Ti and in our case, the cooler of the MSI RTX 3060 GAMING X 12GB is almost the same as the one that can be found on the MSI RTX 3060 Ti Gaming X LHR – this leads to some advantages. You can have a look at the BIOS of the GPU and its stock clocks. The gain from overclocking is around 9% on average. The backplate is made of metal and it has some cut-outs so the hot air can be dissipated more quickly. The metal anti-bending strap is here again – it looks good, and it provides some additional reinforcement to the overall sturdiness of the card. This sounds like overkill for a GA106-based GPU but it’s weird that the maximum power limit is just 180W – that’s too low for an 8-pin + 6-pin configuration. Yes, a metal shroud is a rare find these days.įor powering the graphics card, you have to connect an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCIe cable as well. Aside from that, the fans look good and modern while the shroud around them is made from plastic which doesn’t feel cheap on the touch and it’s sturdy at the same time. The pair of fans is called TORX FAN 4.0 and it’s their latest and greatest version which in theory should be better compared to the previous variants in terms of cooling. The video card takes 2.5 slots so it can possibly block one PCIe slot depending on what motherboard you have. Speaking of which, the GPU is 276 mm long and it should fit with ease in most modern ATX and mATX cases. No surprises here, this is a typical MSI design and this cooler can be found in some other video cards from the same brand. You can check the current price of MSI RTX 3060 12GB Gaming X here: Buy from (#CommissionsEarned) If we put the still-not-normalized GPU pricing aside, the RTX 3060 12GB looks like a decent mid-range video card, at least on paper.įor today’s review, we got the MSI RTX 3060 GAMING X 12GB for testing – this one feature a massive dual-fan cooling solution (for a GPU of this caliber), a metal backplate, it doesn’t come with a million glowing RGBs, and we think this one should be a near-silent product given our previous experience with the MSI RTX 3060 Ti GAMING X OC which has a similar cooling design.

However, even the competition from the red team (AMD Radeon RX 6600 and Radeon 6600 XT) offers 8GB of video memory as well. So, we got a mid-range GPU that has a bigger VRAM buffer compared to its bigger sibling – the RTX 3060 Ti 8GB. On the other hand, the memory configuration is tied with the memory bus, and in this scenario, the 12GB memory option sounds like a logical choice for a 192-bit bus (the other possible variant is 6GB VRAM which should be extremely too low for some of today’s games).

Some months later, they released this mid-range GPU with 12GB of VRAM buffer which is more than you got with the RTX 3070 Ti or even with the RTX 3030 10GB.

Actually, there is nothing particularly wrong with this GPU – the strange thing is, when the GeForce RTX 3080 10GB debuted, the green company was ensuring everyone that 10GB video memory is just fine even for 4K gaming. The GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is a bit of a strange case.

Rtx 3060 unigine heaven