Card Layout and Photos

The box for the Zotac GTX 1660 was smaller than normal, but that is because the card itself is small at as well. I thought this was a proper ITX sized card, but Zotac did oversize the card just slightly. The PCB comes out to 6 7/8 inches which is 175mm but with the fan shroud sticking out at the end the card is 7 inches or 177.8mm. ITX is close at 170mm so this will most likely still work, but in the most compact situations, you want to keep in mind that slight difference. That extra space did help them fit a dual fan design into the form factor but if you look close they are actually two different sizes as well. The left fan is a 65mm fan and the right is 75mm. The all black fan shroud wraps around both with a design that is similar to the Zotac Gaming logo.

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Really though, I didn’t even notice the two fan sizes until later in my testing and that all black design helps hide the difference. Looking down through the two fans we can see that Zotac did go with a sheet metal heatsink design which runs horizontally. Combined with the axial fan design the airflow blows down into the heatsink and at least part of the air will be pushed to the PCI bracket and out the end of the card. The larger fan does reach out past the heatsink on the top edge, blowing some out the top after going across the heatpipes. Not visible in this image, but I also should note that the fan shroud design does integrate down around the fans as well to help with that airflow, most cards just end at the thickness of the shroud and let air go anywhere. A proper shroud design is nice to see.

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Looking around the top, bottom, and end of the card shows us a little more about the cooler design that Zotac went with. For starters, up on the top edge, we can see that they use three heatpipes. The bottom view shows that they run right up on top of the GPU and pull heat out across the heatsink and the heatpipes are lined up at the ends of the heatsink with the third in the middle between the fans best take advantage of the fan's airflow. The heatsink also touches on top of the VRM which on the PCI bracket end of the card as well as the memory which you can see on the bottom edge view. The end of the card view shows that Zotac built their heatsink around each component like the power connection, not using a universal design like some cards use.

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The all black fan shroud also avoids any lighting so on the top edge Zotac kept things simple with their Zotac Gaming brand in the middle and the Geforce GTX branding next to it. I would prefer to see GTX 1660, but by just using the basic branding they can share this cooler across a few card models like their GTX 1660 Ti. This also gives us a good look at the 8-pin connection, given the same TDP and same base GPU as the GTX 1660 Ti this isn’t a big shocker.

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As for the back of the Zotac GTX 1660 they didn’t do anything crazy back here. You can see the notch at the power connection and we can see that the overall card height is stock. Beyond that, the six screws that hold the cooler on are easy to get at. There isn’t a backplate or any protection. But you do at least get a black PCB that should hopefully blend in.

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The cooler design is designed to push some of its air out the PCI bracket and while there is a gap on the shroud before this so you can’t expect it all to go out this way like a proper blower card. But Zotac did leave a lot of room for venation here with all of the display connection tucked up against the PCB. You get three DisplayPort connections and one HDMI and I know I have been ranting about it but at these lower price points I think DVI is still needed for some people but there are a few adapter options from both DisplayPort and HDMI at least.

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To put the overall card size into perspective I did grab the GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS that I recently reviewed from MSI. You can see how much smaller the Zotac design looks when they are at least close to the ITX form factor length and sticking with a standard PCI card height.

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