GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6GB Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Priced at £224.99, the Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 1060 ITX 6GB graphics card is excellent value for money. Of course, that’s still quite a bit of money, but for what you get in return, it’s a solid investment for a great gaming card; especially one in such a small form factor.

Overview

I’m absolutely stunned with how well this card performed. Despite the fact it has been designed to fit into a tiny PC case, thanks to its mini-ITX form factor, it managed to go head to head with cards that are more than double its size. The ASUS STRIX RX 480 features a much longer PCB, a backplate, three powerful fans, and still the 1060 Mini-ITX battled it out with it in terms of performance. Both the RX 480 and the 1060 Mini-ITX cards cost about the same, and most GTX 1060’s cost from £230-280 dependent on their overclocks and the size of their cooler, but I would have expected more of a price premium in terms of performance vs cost given the smaller form factor of this card; it may be one of the best value GTX 1060’s on the market right now.

Gaming is a big focus for this card, and the GTX 1060 chipset has more than enough grunt for maximum settings at 1080p, or mid-to-high settings at 1440p, even 21:9 1440p in some games. Of course, for those wanting to game at 4K, you may want to save up for something like the 1070 or above, but to expect a mid-budget compact card to play at those resolutions would be crazy anyway.

It terms of build quality, you can’t ask for much more than what you’re getting here. The card has a nicely finished matte black shroud with some nice orange highlights, and the built-in fan is very good quality too.The heat sink may not be massive, but it’s more than enough to passively cool the card when it’s not being maxed out. The range of outputs on the back is pretty decent too, with the card able to handle up to four displays, should you require them.

Pros

• Amazing 1080p gaming performance
• Capable of gaming at 1440p
• Performance that matches much bigger cards
• No price premium for mini-ITX model
• Good temperatures and efficiency
• Zero RPM fan mode works very well
• Good range of display connections
• 6GB of VRAM

Cons

• None

“If you’re looking to build a SFF gaming rig, and you want a small graphics card that still offers big performance, the Gigabyte GTX 1060 ITX 6GB is the way to go!”