Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent card so far
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2019
I will start out by saying I am not the best person to review, I don't have tons of experience with other different cards. What I can say about this card is that so far it has met all of my expectations.
My first card that I purchased for my current computer was an rtx 2060 black from EVGA. I didn't do any research before I purchased it, I just saw it had a fair price and claimed to operate rather silently. It didn't. It was loud, and warm, resulting in dropped clocks (76 degrees during heavy load). This was probably a result of the one fan design, despite the rather large heat sink. For some people, the loud fans probably wouldn't be an issue, but with nearly everything else silent on my rig I found it to be annoying. It performed okay, it was just too loud, and from what I have seen a lot of the rtx 2060s run pretty warm resulting in increased fan use (noise). I was even considering liquid cooling the 2060 just to get temps, and therefore noise, down, but decided to instead return the card and get a card with good thermals to begin with.
Having not been satisfied, I checked reviews for the different 2070 models. After seeing that this was a no-frills card that managed to keep rather low temps, I was on board. At first, after installing, I was worried when I saw it idling at around 48 to 50 degrees, and I thought that furmark would push it up to 90. Nope, this gpu has fans that are completely off at idle, which is why it runs a little warmer than normal. This means no noise at all from the gpu… and you can even set a custom fan curve to have it run cool at idle if you wish. Idle temps don't really bother me. I shouldn't have worried about furmark, because the curve topped out at 65 degrees with silent case fans (noctua), and with a custom (still nearly silent) case fan setup I dropped a further 3 degrees to 62. These temps are with a front mounted radiator, by the way. Also, this was with a +200 on the core, +800 memory, 114% power limit, and 88 temp limit. That blew my rtx 2060 out of the water, and because the temps stay low this card boosted rather high and rarely dropped clocks during heavy gaming.
Now, for the important stuff. I play some games 2k, some 4k, depending on the game. 2k this card is a winner. 4k I have run some older games at max or extremely high settings (Killing Floor 2 runs buttery smooth, so does GTA V). I don't have any newer games to test at 4k so I can't say how well this card does, but I'd assume that with concessions in your graphics configurations you could get a lot of them going well. I have a 4k monitor that runs at only 60hz refresh, so your mileage may vary. I find 60hz to be fine for casual gaming, but some people don't. I don't play many first person shooters so I don't need high refresh as much as I appreciate greater visual fidelity.
In any case, as I have seen reviews that this card may fail after a while, I may update this review. If I don't, awesome, this card rocks, and they have worked out their issues. For now, however, I am enjoying my new graphics card, and it is definitely worth the money. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good budget (at 500 dollars, it can be 100 or 200 cheaper than other rtx 2070s so I suppose that fits) rtx 2070 for their build. Great thermals, noise, and performance.
