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Gigabyte's GeForce RTX 3060 Just Became The Fastest So Far
The Gigabyte camp has added a new rendition of the GeForce RTX 3060 to its arsenal. Barring any subsequent models, the Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G (GV-N3060AORUS E-12GD) appears to carry the flagship tag of Gigabyte's custom GeForce RTX 3060 models, and is also looking to be the fastest GeForce RTX 3060...for now.
The Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G features a 1,867 MHz boost clock, 5.1% higher than Nvidia's reference specification. It comes with two vBIOS profiles: one for silent and another for performance. Previous to the Elite model, the GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC 12G and GeForce RTX 3060 Vision OC 12G were the fastest SKUs in Gigabyte's lineup with a 1,837 MHz boost clock. Although the Elite version only has a 30 MHz higher boost clock, the graphics card comes with a steeper power requirement, apparently.
As opposed to Gigabyte's other GeForce RTX 3060 offerings that leverage a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, the Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G needs the same 8-pin plus an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector. This obviously bumps the recommended minimum power supply capacity from the previous 550W up to 650W.
The Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G is also armed with a triple-fan cooling system and has dimensions of 296 x 117 x 56mm. The cooler seems to be overkill for a GeForce RTX 3060 as the renders show that it extends far beyond the graphics card's short PCB. On the aesthetics side, Gigabyte kept the design relatively low-key with a simple, black shroud with a tiny Aorus RGB-illuminated logo and cooling fans with ARGB rings.
The cooling system adheres to Gigabyte's WindForce 3X design with five composite heat pipes transferring the heat away from the GA106 die and memory chips towards the bulky heatsink. Subsequently, a trio of 80mm semi-passive cooling fans dissipate the heat. The Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G comes equipped with a black, metal back plate that helps with cooling and improves the graphics card's rigidity. According to Gigabyte, the extended heatsink allows hot air to exit through the large cut-out.
In terms of display outputs, the graphics card provides two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. The configuration is sufficient to support up to four monitors simultaneously.
Gigabyte hasn't revealed the pricing for the Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Elite 12G as the GeForce RTX 3060 isn't officially available until tomorrow. Since it'll likely be one of the best GPUS among custom GeForce RTX 3060 models, we don't think it will be easy on the pockets.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
