Zotac 1060 Mini : Initial Impressions

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sleepybp

Limp Gawd
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Feb 5, 2014
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Just got my 1060 mini today from newegg and wanted to give you guys a quick update on my findings. I bought this because it was the only one in stock and was able to get it for $231 using paypal coupon code. I was concerned that it would run hot and have bad boost clocks because of how small it is but I am so far very pleasantly surprised.

Factory settings just out of the box it was boosting to 1911 mhz and stable at that clock playing overwatch for an hour, never dropped below 1898 and was mostly 1911 mhz. Max gpu temp at 1911 in overwatch was 62C and max fan speed was 52% (usually ran at 49% fan speed). The sound is audible at 49% fan speed, not too loud or annoying.

So overwatch is not a very demanding game, and gpu was not very high utilization, but at 1080P it was looking good and I will be sure to test this bad boy out further during the week.

I think the 1060 mini has a solid cooling setup considering its size and price. The GPU has idle gpu temps at 30C in widows :)

I think this card will be great for small form factor builds and anyone who wants a low priced 1060. Oh and one final note, it is TINY. It is literally the size of my hand (6 foot male hand)
 
Sounds good - yes indeed for a small form factor blowing air inside the case can be very problematic a.k.a. Nano. Blowing it outside the case simplifies everything. I can see for the Nano to keep it cool a blower cooler would probably not be sufficient but for the 1060 it is ideal. Congrats!
 
I'm glad to see other small form factor cards working well. I have a EVGA Superclocked 1060 on order from Amazon (if they will ever hurry up and get it to me...) and it is the same small form factor.
 
STrooperTK421 said:
I'm glad to see other small form factor cards working well. I have a EVGA Superclocked 1060 on order from Amazon (if they will ever hurry up and get it to me...) and it is the same small form factor.
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Yeah I've got the non-oc on order from amzn also, status is stuck for a week.
 
I would expect your evga minis to perform even better than the zotac mini. The zotac mini has only an aluminum cooler, I believe the evga's came with copper in the base plate. Let us know how they run when you get them!
 
Is there a way to make the imgur frame full size? I cant see the picture just the very top. I'm using firefox BTW.
 
Impressive little card. Is there any drawbacks compared to full sized versions? Slightly less (50-100) max gpu oc?
 
DeathSmasher said:
Is there a way to make the imgur frame full size? I cant see the picture just the very top. I'm using firefox BTW.
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Click on the IMGUR icon on the top left corner.


Too bad this isn't just exhausting out the back instead of everywhere.
 
Thanx for helping me out. Nice card BTW i have the asus 970 mini which is very similar in size it does a perfect job!
 
These mini cards are ideal candidates for those single fan Arctic Cooling GPU coolers if the stock cooler doesn't do the job that is. Thermal adhesive is the problem though...
 
Well, I got tired of waiting with no kind of delivery date or anything (there is something up with EVGA stock availability and Amazon) on my EVGA Superclocked 1060 and canceled that order. Ended up with a Zotac 1060 AMP (dual fans, heat pipe cooler, etc.) for just $3.50 more than what I was going to pay for the EVGA. WOOOOOO!

Though I do still have to wait, expected delivery will be 08/10 - 08/11, d'oh!

EDIT: A word.
 
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Very nice! I was hoping MSI or EVGA would make an ITX card. not just a single fan card.
 
Update: Unofficial "just my $0.02" review of the Zotac GTX 1060 AMP incoming! Got an email with an updated shipping date of 08/03! Picking up my EVGA 600B PSU tomorrow ($30.00 at BestBuy - not bad for a decent won't blow my shit up power supply).

Stay tuned!
 
Well, it certainly has been a fun few days. I got my card on 08/02, and I have to say, for a $250 video card, this thing is straight up kicking ass at 1080p. Been playing Fallout 4 non-stop over that time and the card has not cracked the 55C mark at all. It has been hanging around the 50C mark even under load. I have not been able to take the 60FPS cap off yet, but with that being said, this card is having zero problem maintaining 60FPS during game play with everything set to Ultra (except godrays...not a fan of those being set very high, set to low) and HBAO+. I've seen a few dips below 60, but it doesn't feel "sluggish" even during those times.

Yay, games!

Specs:

Asus M51AC (pre-built, gifted... free!)
EVGA 600 Watt power supply
Intel I7-4770
16 Gigs ram
1 TB HDD
Zotac GTX 1060 AMP
Win 10
Other shti...
 
I wish they bring back the fan idle feature like in the 9xx series. Most of the time the cards are just idling with temperature low enough not needing fan on. just make for a quieter pc, less part wearing out, less dust built up.
 
wildpig1234 said:
I wish they bring back the fan idle feature like in the 9xx series. Most of the time the cards are just idling with temperature low enough not needing fan on. just make for a quieter pc, less part wearing out, less dust built up.
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its not too hard to set a custom fan curve...
 
pendragon1 said:
its not too hard to set a custom fan curve...
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No matter what curve you have it will not help if BIOS (or hardware) has a limit how low you can go.... My GTX 970 only goes down to 1650 rpm which is really bad. Luckily with BIOS fiddling I can make it go to 1100 rpm but not any lower.
 
Only a bios flash can change it to fan idle if that's not already a part of the card. I think with all these new cards should have it by default.
 
I've got a EVGA 1060 SC arriving today. Its the one with one fan and is just under 7in. Its going in my main gaming rig for now but I like the that it will fit in a mini case one day as I upgrade and move cards to other boxes. With the small card you just have many more options. My guess is that even the small card will perform just as well as its larger cooler counterparts and with one fan, may even be quieter.
 
bbvdd2 said:
I've got a EVGA 1060 SC arriving today. Its the one with one fan and is just under 7in. Its going in my main gaming rig for now but I like the that it will fit in a mini case one day as I upgrade and move cards to other boxes. With the small card you just have many more options. My guess is that even the small card will perform just as well as its larger cooler counterparts and with one fan, may even be quieter.
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There's a new bios for it that gives more control to fan speed and passive mode. If it's not already flashed to it (early batches do not have it).

What I've read the cooler actually does pretty nice job.
 
Tup3x said:
There's a new bios for it that gives more control to fan speed and passive mode. If it's not already flashed to it (early batches do not have it).

What I've read the cooler actually does pretty nice job.
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I will check that out. Card arrived and ran some simple benches. At stock settings its a tick slower than my SLI 960 GTX FTW cards. 3DMARK 11 netted 15043 vs 15769. But where it makes a huge difference is in DOOM where before I could run medium/high settings and now can run Ultra maxed out. Will see what overclocking does.
 
Managed to grab this at retail price from Newegg. It's a tiny card for the case I'm using but blends in quite nicely overall.

URZ17AP.jpg
 
Anybody have one in a mini-ITX case? Curious how it fares vs. a blower fan.
 
Lord Risky said:
Impressive little card. Is there any drawbacks compared to full sized versions? Slightly less (50-100) max gpu oc?
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The only real drawback is it's not a mini 1070 :D

The other being it's perf per watt is technically lower than the mini 1070 since the 1060 is a heavily overclocked card to start with. It's basically a GTX 980/780Ti with no overclocking headroom.
 
Im going to get this for my new HTPC build but that wont be until november when black friday deals hit. Glad to see you can boost it high enough. Thanks OP!
 
jwcalla said:
Anybody have one in a mini-ITX case? Curious how it fares vs. a blower fan.
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I tried my evga mini 1060 in my smaller htpc case. One thing I noticed is that the evga 960 mini heatsink is heavier and more beefy than the 1060 heatsink. Second is that the 1060 seems to draw 20 watts less (vs 960 mini) from the wall while running Unigine Heaven. I don't think you'll have any problem with the 1060 mini, unless your mini case has zero air flow, but that's always a problem.

pippenainteasy said:
The only real drawback is it's not a mini 1070 :D
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A mini 1070 that was slightly downclocked to hit 130-140 watts would be an interesting $400 product. I have a 760 that pushes the power limits for mini form factor, 170w is definitely too much.
 
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Feel bad for anyone who paid $650 for an R9 Nano now...even at the discounted price of $499...this is basically the same thing at $250 with ~2/3 less power consumption.
 
xorbe said:
I tried my evga mini 1060 in my smaller htpc case. One thing I noticed is that the evga 960 mini heatsink is heavier and more beefy than the 1060 heatsink. Second is that the 1060 seems to draw 20 watts less (vs 960 mini) from the wall while running Unigine Heaven. I don't think you'll have any problem with the 1060 mini, unless your mini case has zero air flow, but that's always a problem.



A mini 1070 that was slightly downclocked to hit 130-140 watts would be an interesting $400 product. I have a 760 that pushes the power limits for mini form factor, 170w is definitely too much.
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According to Techpowerup their card only consumes 145W on average during gaming, with peaks of 154W. 170W sounds more like the GTX 180 (166W average/184W peak).

A mini 1070 downclocked by 300MHz would consume about 117W, or about the same as the GTX 1060 (116W average). The difference is it would be about 10-15% faster due to more CUDA cores at a slower clock speed.
 
pippenainteasy said:
Feel bad for anyone who paid $650 for an R9 Nano now...even at the discounted price of $499...this is basically the same thing at $250 with ~2/3 less power consumption.
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Hitting 200W was way too much for a "mini" design. I even feel 150W is on the border limit. Personally I would go 120W like the 1060/470, unless its a real blower card. But even with that, I would prefer my 1080 using less in my ITX.
 
xorbe said:
I tried my evga mini 1060 in my smaller htpc case. One thing I noticed is that the evga 960 mini heatsink is heavier and more beefy than the 1060 heatsink. Second is that the 1060 seems to draw 20 watts less (vs 960 mini) from the wall while running Unigine Heaven. I don't think you'll have any problem with the 1060 mini, unless your mini case has zero air flow, but that's always a problem.



A mini 1070 that was slightly downclocked to hit 130-140 watts would be an interesting $400 product. I have a 760 that pushes the power limits for mini form factor, 170w is definitely too much.
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When you say EVGA mini, do you mean SC or non SC version? Those two actually have different coolers. SC has beefier heatsink (heatpipes and all).
 
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