ASUS, Inno3D, & Gigabyte Tease Custom GeForce GTX 1060 Cards
by Daniel Williams on July 8, 2016 9:00 AM EST
Yesterday we saw the announcement of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060. Though NVIDIA is producing a reference Founders Edition card, as this is a more mainstream product, NVIDIA is leaving retail card production to their partners, who will be launching their custom solutions on day one. With the retail release still approaching what we have is more of a teaser then an announcement, but can begin to show us more of what the $250-$300 price bracket will start to look like as the GTX 1060 launch approaches.
ASUS has teased three separate renditions of the GeForce GTX 1060, as pictured above. These include a Turbo card with a blower, the Dual with two fans, and an ROG STRIX card. The last of which has the same cooler as the ROG STRIX 1080 and 1070, and as hinted by the AURA logo may feature the same RGB lighting found in the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 ROG STRIX cards. There is no news yet on specs or performance numbers, or price and release date for these cards, but we should see those as soon as the July 19 release of the GTX 1060.
Inno3D GTX 1060 Gaming OC X2
Inno3D has announced that two cards are on the way. First is the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming OC X2, which features two fans and translucent highlights. We don’t yet know of any physical details aside from what is pictured. Next we have the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1060 iChill X3. This card appears to be longer and also has three fans. While this cooler may be more effective than the two fan Gaming OC X2 card, it appears that these cards have identical specifications with a boost clock of 1784 and memory clock of 8.2Gbps. That identifies these cards with a factory overclock, but performance should be identical with the numbers that are currently reported.
Inno3D GTX 1060 iChill X3
Finally, in the truest definition of a teaser by not even showing the whole card, Gigabyte is teasing its GTX 1060 G1 GAMING. The card features a dual fan Windforce X2 cooler, with RGB lighting built into the shroud. Gigabyte has also disclosed that the card will feature a 6+1 phase power design (as opposed to 3+1), which indicates that they'll be using a custom PCB for their card and not NVIDIA's reference PCB.
Mainstream NVIDIA card launches typically feature semi and fully-custom designs from NVIDIA's partners right off the bat, so no doubt we'll see more custom cards unveiled as we get closer to the 19th. Meanwhile with vendors no doubt eager to lock in sales with premium cards, it remains to be see how many of these designs will actually approach the $249 MSRP NVIDIA has announced.
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owan - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
I understand it to some extent... bigger faster cards always had bigger faster coolers, and the biggest fastest fanciest ones came on the most expensive cards. Plus, bigger fans = slower speeds = less noise, better temps vs smaller ones. That said, I think the whole thing has gotten quite ridiculous. We could probably see single slot designs on longer cards, or shorter card lengths with dual slot designs with no real problems, but I guess thats not what people associate with performance and quality these days.IndianaKrom - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
A giant 3 fan dual slot cooler probably is overkill, but 120w is still more than you would want to try and dissipate with just a single slot cooler. Most people put a larger cooler on their 65-95w CPU than the total volume available to a single slot GPU cooler. You could do it in single slot, but it would be geforce FX 5800 ultra levels of obnoxiously loud. I think nvidia even did a joke about this back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOVjZqC1AE4The_Assimilator - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
8800 GT had a single-slot cooler and drew slightly less power than this card, I'm sure an AIB can figure something out. I'd personally be quite happy to lose the DVI port in favour of a single-slot card.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
and was loudOxford Guy - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
and had overheating issuesJoeyJoJo123 - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
Back in the GTX 600 series days, Asus made triple-slot thick GPU coolers. I recommended one to a friend, on the premise that they costed the same as other custom fan solutions on other GPU vendors, but you get more cooling capacity due to the thicker heatsink.That didn't pan out into the GTX 700 series and beyond.
The thing is, GPU manufacturers are extremely hesitant to do ANYTHING outside the 2-slot width cooler now, even if a 3-slot blower style cooler would probably make a lot of sense for directly removing waste-heat from a computer.
Maltz - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
Bigger coolers and more fans does make for a quieter card, so there's that. It's not my primary concern, but it's still something I can appreciate the value of.MadDuffy - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
Agreed. The Gigabyte 1070 Mini card looks good, anything more for the 1060 is probably over-compensation for something.HomeworldFound - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
You're definitely right. My first thought was wow, these are really overdone graphics cards. Prior to clicking the link I honestly expected these cards to be aimed at ITX/MATX not full sizePeter2k - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
You don't like a cooler that you can't hear while gaming or something?Some also switch off the fans completely
Though I understand it a bit
Like Asus strix cards
They're just reusing the same cooler again (also on rx480)
Makes sense from a company s
Point of view