Catching up where we’re behind, we come to the GeForce RTX 4060. Across designs, these graphics cards represent not only the most efficient and lowest-power across the latest generation of Nvidia Ada Lovelace, but overall (i.e., even compared to the latest Radeons, including the competing RX 7600). The advantage of the tested (RTX 4060) Windforce OC 8G design is in its smaller size and extra compatibility.
Methodology: temperature tests
We’re also bringing you temperature tests. You are at HWCooling after all. However, in order to make it sensible at all to monitor temperatures on critical components not only of the graphics card, but anything in the computer, it is important to simulate a real computer case environment with healthy air circulation. The overall behavior of the graphics card as such then follows from this. In many cases, an open bench-table is inappropriate and results can be distorted. Therefore, during all, not only heat tests, but also measurement of consumption or course of graphics core frequencies, we use a wind tunnel with equilibrium flow.
Two Noctua NF-S12A fans are at the inlet and the same number is on the exhaust. When testing various system cooling configurations, this proved to be the most effective solution. The fans are always set to 5 V and the speed corresponds to approx. 550 rpm. The stability of the inlet air is properly controlled during the tests, the temperature being between 21 and 21.3 °C at a humidity of ±40 %.
We read the temperature from the internal sensors via GPU-Z. This small, single-purpose application also allows you to record samples from sensors in a table. From the table, it is then easy to create line graphs with waveforms or the average value into bar graphs. We will not use the thermal camera very much here, as most graphics cards have a backplate, which makes it impossible to measure the PCB heating. The key for the heating graphs will be the temperature reading by internal sensors, according to which, after all, the GPU frequency control also takes place. It will always be the heating of the graphics core, and if the sensors are also on VRAM and VRM, we will extract these values into the article as well.
Perhaps I remembered wrongly, but I thought the analysis section was a bit different (on the size of the cooler and heatpipes)?
Anyway, it’s a shame that this model has such poor thermal performance. The fin stacks looks ok, the fans look fine, so the most likely culprit is indeed the lack of a second heatpipe. The similarly sized MSI Ventus 2X is much better in comparison.
The fans are smaller, with a diameter of 80 mm and a profile height of 10 mm. The heatsink is lower, the cooler with the cover fits comfortably into two slots. The heat pipe has a diameter of 6 mm, its path is well visible from the TechPowerUp tests. We don’t disassemble graphics cards, so that the next reviewer in line, who will test the sample, can also measure the correct (undistorted) values.