Had a good chance to take some quik-n-schittie (TM) pictures of my Strix 2060 today. Figured I'd yank it out and snap a few photos since I was going to be opening the case anyway. Bear with me on the quality... it's been years since I've used an SLR in manual mode and even when I was competent, that was on a 35mm film kit, not the DSLR setup I apparently own now... and have unknowingly had tucked away for years. Funny, the things that turn up in storage. it's like a whole new world and I don't know where to start with actually using it properly. Too much to do today to really work it out. Just couldn't wait. Anyway...
I do not have the skill to capture how nice this card truly is. A lot of cards have moved through my hands in the past year. Some of them were faster, but none of them were nicer. This may actually be the nicest card I have ever held in my hand. I mean... look at it. Nothing else like it in the looks department. And that is a cooling solution, man! Other cards do similar things. None do it as well. Well worth the $400 over the $350-$380 options available at the time. I knew this the moment I took it out of the box. You pick it up and it's just like "Oh damn...
wow." Build is just beyond anything I've seen recently. People rag on the Strix cards for being too expensive. I guess you can drop $100 more on the most basic 2070. But I say if you're already well-covered by the performance bracket you've settled on, can still stretch out a little and you want the absolute highest quality you can get in the 20-series, it doesn't get much better. Only a handful really match it and none of those are 2060's. Snipe it out if you gotta. Other cards I previously thought were great are kind of ehh next to this thing. Recently, I've been jealous of the GPU's I've dropped in builds I've done for other people... not so much now. No exaggeration, these things are seriously, seriously nice. Plenty of other
fantastic cards out there now, but they are not this.
The cooler and that metal brace make it for me. The board itself is fantastically overdone, complete with the silly spare 6-pin (which I frankly don't mind as most PSU's you'd want to use are good for it anyway and it is still nice to have,) but the cooler design is something else and the resulting cooling performance is undeniable. 5 heatpipes running through an extremely thick, dense fin array. And by that I mean the fins themselves are beefy. That radiator is CHUNKY man. Additionally, the thick, metal "GEFORCE RTX" bracket you see on the side runs over most of the PCB, not only bracing the card from any sag, but also providing a nice, big surface for heat from the components and PCB to traverse, leaving the heatsinks to carry only the heat of more cooling-critical stuff. It makes direct contact with all of your memory chips as well as several other components on the board. It really works too. This is the heaviest card I've ever held, but it sags less than some cards that are half its weight. I only saw it today, in specific photos I took. In person it looks perfectly plumb and true. Most would look at it and say it has no sag at all.
So many other nice little touches with this card. Dual bios, RGB off button. Black bracket. Fan and RGB headers... also just a lot of other nice little touches with the whole build. They spared nothing and it shows when you sit down and just look at it and all of these little things they did with it jump out at you. I cannot possibly show all of the details that make this card so nice. Honestly my only complaint is ketchup/mustard/blueberry fan cables.
I
could fault the backplate for not actually making any contact, but with the cooler design, does it really need to? *shrugs* I think it's a nice looking backplate and the RGB logo looks sweet. The RGB also is not multi-addressable. It all does one color. You'd figure if any card would have it... but I still can't fault it too much there. Logo is up to taste, but I think most people would find the rest of the RGB to be very well done, with the lovely glow it casts on the heatsink.
I really could go on and on about this card. So much to like about it. It's one of those things you look at and think "Wow, that is really nice, but I'll never own one." It's an exciting moment when you finally do get something like that all to yourself. I've had it for a little while now and I still find myself enamored with it at times. It is without a doubt my favorite part in this build!
The thing is pretty massive, though. Big AND heavy. I have cartoonish hands and it barely fits. This was a difficult shot to take. Feels about as awkward as trying to hold up an actual brick. Definitely not a brick though!
Juust fits in my S340 Elite. Nice and cozy
Spending some time with it, I've gotten the fan curves as low as I want to go. I've hit a stable 2.1ghz overclock and the fans still keep up great - still won't pass 70C and only comes close with RTX enabled. Otherwise it chugs along down in the 60's. If not for these being so locked down I have no doubt that it would go further. Would be very interesting to see an unlocked BIOS for it... as if that'll ever happen. I'm still going back and forth between OC and stock, debating if it's worth the very slight increase in fan noise and 10C temperature delta. I mean the thing is super-quiet, so it's negligible. And still far from throttling. Just don't know yet. Stock, it boosts to something like 1980mhz. I wanted to capture some screenshots of things like this today, but my AC took a crap and it's climbing above 80F in here right now, so it's kinda pointless to look at temperatures, meaning I'd be putting it through the ringer twice to gather everything I want to show you guys.