MSI Gaming X Trio RTX 3060 Graphics Card Review

MSI is one of the best when it comes to high-performance gaming. Sure, the Nvidia RTX 3060 isn’t the flagship of the range, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t squeeze every bit of performance from it. MSI has equipped the new entry-level RTX 3000 series card with its award-winning Gaming X Trio design. That means bigger power delivery, a massive cooler, three huge fans, a thick backplate and more. The end result should hopefully be a card that can sit at maximum boost clocks for a lot longer, giving you even better gaming performance!

MSI Gaming X Trio RTX 3060

The RTX 3060 is Nvidia’s latest chipset and obviously sits just below the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti. That makes it the new entry-level card for the RTX 3000 series, and it should have an MSRP of £299. Of course, more expensive models, such as the MSI Gaming X Trio we’re reviewing, will cost more. It uses a lot more premium materials and technologies that enhance performance and aesthetics. What’s interesting about the RTX 3060 is the hardware. The 3060 Ti features 4864 CUDA cores at 1.67 GHz, while the 3060 only has 3584 CUDA cores, but they’re running at 1.78 GHz, and the card now has 12GB of VRAM compared to the 8 GB of the RTX 3060 Ti. How will they impact the performance? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out!

Features

Boost Clock / Memory Speed

• 1852 MHz / 15 Gbps
• 12GB GDDR6
• DisplayPort x 3
  HDMI x 1 (Supports 4K@120Hz as specified in HDMI 2.1)

TRI FROZR 2 Thermal Design

• TORX Fan 4.0: A masterpiece of teamwork, fan blades work in pairs to create unprecedented levels of focused air pressure.
• Core Pipe: Precision-crafted heat pipes ensure max contact to the GPU and spread heat along the full length of the heatsink.
• Airflow Control: Don’t sweat it, Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for maximum cooling.

RGB Mystic Light

• Mystic Light gives you complete control of the RGB lighting for MSI devices and compatible RGB products.

Dragon Center

• MSI’s exclusive Dragon Center software lets you monitor, tweak and optimize MSI products in real-time.

For in-depth features and specifications, please visit the official MSI GeForce RTX 3060 GAMING X TRIO 12G product page here.

What MSI Had to Say

The GeForce RTX™ 3060 lets you take on the latest games using the power of Ampere—NVIDIA’s 2nd generation RTX architecture. Get incredible performance with enhanced Ray Tracing Cores and Tensor Cores, new streaming multiprocessors, and high-speed G6 memory.