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After our launch day review, which focused on the Gigabyte RTX 3060 Gaming OC, here we have looked at MSI's flagship card based on GA106 silicon – the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio.
The most eye-catching aspect of this card is its sheer size. MSI has used the same shroud design across all of its RTX 30-series Gaming X Trio graphics cards, meaning this RTX 3060 is as big as the company's flagship RTX 3090. It might sound slightly ludicrous considering one is rated for just 170W while the other can draw 370W, but it does mean the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio is ridiculously cool and quiet.
Temperatures, for instance, stayed below 60C at all times, and when we noise-normalised to 40dBA, went as low as 46C. It's quite staggering. And then in terms of noise, this has to be the quietest card I have ever tested. It recorded just 33dBa on our sound meter, which is only just above the noise floor of my testing environment. It is, for all intents and purposes, a silent graphics card.
The thing is, as technically impressive as it may be, the Gaming X Trio is actually slower than Gigabyte RTX 3060 Gaming OC, by 2% on average when testing at 1080p. It's not a significant difference at all, but it does make you think – does a graphics card need to be this quiet and run this cool, if it's not going to boost your frame rates?
Of course, the noise produced by a graphics card is going to be of varying importance depending on your personal preferences, but certainly in terms of thermals, there's no real-world benefit to running at 58C versus 70C, for instance. For me, I'd argue that the Gaming X Trio is just overkill for an RTX 3060. Its sheer size and 6-heatpipe cooler mean the fans barely have to spin past 1000RPM while still maintaining sub-60C temperatures, but that does come at a cost.
First of all, like we said, it is absolutely massive. Compared to the Palit RTX 3060 StormX OC, for instance, the MSI is almost twice as long, but offers effectively the same gaming performance. Then we have the monetary cost, which as it always is for one of MSI's Gaming X Trio cards, is very high. We were told a UK MSRP of £449.99, which doesn't mean much these days, but even so – that's just £20 less than the RTX 3070, of which the Founders Editions do occasionally come into stock at MSRP. Even if GPU pricing normalised in the coming months, we all know the Gaming X Trio would still be a very pricey RTX 3060 relative to the competition.
Overall, the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio has been a very fun one to test – seeing noise-normalised temperatures hit just 46C is frankly ridiculous, and it is so, so quiet. Whether or not it would be worth paying for, I think, is another matter entirely.
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Pros
- Incredibly quiet.
- Runs very cool out of the box, and only gets better when noise-normalised.
- Subjectively very good looking.
- Overclocked very well.
Cons
- Slower than the Gigabyte RTX 3060 Gaming OC.
- Monstrously large for a RTX 3060.
- You pay a significant premium for the Gaming X Trio feature-set.
KitGuru says: It is a technically superb graphics card, but it is overkill for an RTX 3060.
