GIGABYTE GTX 1660 GAMING OC Review
The Hardware
With the GTX 1660 Gaming OC, GIGABYTE has powered the GPU and memory via a 4+2 power phase design. The voltage controller here is the familiar uPI uP9512R 6-phase controller. Power is via single 8-pin PCIe power connector and memory is from Micron with the model number 8KB77D9VVR.
Cooling is via an admirably simple, but competent cooler. It’s a three heat-pipe design with a moderate fin stack packing about 108 fins from back to front. These heat pipes run right through the length of the graphics card, with additional cooling plates for the VRM and DRAM. The downside here as has been the case with GIGABYTE graphics cards for a while is that it’s a single unit. That means attaching any different kind of cooling means you have to make devise a plan for the VRM to cool it. Then again, this probably saves costs so one can see the reasoning from GIGABYTE’s perspective.
There isn’t much Led lighting here, but you do get a configurable GIGABYTE LED logo. It can’t do any fancy effects, but does allow you to set just about any colour you desire via RGB Fusion.
Overall build quality does make it abundantly clear that this is a budget card. It isn’t offensive by any means, but this is easy to see especially next to the AORUS model for example. That said, GIGABYTE does include a back plate which acts as protection for the rear components, but also a heat dissipating surface as well.
Overall there’s nothing unexpected here, but there’s also nothing to get excited about. You will not be attempting any LN2 cooling overclocking records with this one, but for the purposes of 1080P gaming it’s built more than well enough.
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