With my first look at the newly launched RTX 3060, I had the chance to take a look at the XC Black which has a stock 3060 clock and is designed to reach the target MSRP Nvidia announced. But what other kinds of options are out there? MSI sent over their RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio which has an overclock out of the box and a significantly larger three fan design. I’m excited to see what MSI has going on with their higher-end RTX 3060 and to see how the 3060 performs with an overclock. So let’s dive in and see what the Gaming X Trio is all about!

Product Name: MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio

Review Sample Provided by: MSI

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

Before diving into everything I do always take a look with GPUz to double-check that the listed specifications match up with what I am getting in my testing. In the case of the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio, it has a boost clock of 1852 MHz where the stock 3060 clock is 1777 MHz. GPUz does confirm the boost clock as well as the memory clock speeds. It also gives us the BIOS version of the card I tested for future reference as well as the driver version which is the pre-release Nvidia provided driver. It does have the sub vendor wrong though for some reason lol as this isn’t an EVGA card but that is okay. I forgive you GPUz.

Packaging

Well while I don’t have any pictures comparing the size of the box for the Gaming X Trio to the EVGA 3060 XC Black, the size difference between the boxes was HUGE. This is the same size box that the higher-end 3080/3090’s would come in. I love that MSI includes a full picture of the card on the front of the box. They have it floating with lights glowing from the back. Beyond that, the front has the MSI gaming logo, not even the word MSI is on the front which is surprising. The bottom right corner has the wrap-around that Nvidia requires which gets you the RTX and 3060 branding. Above that MSI has the Gaming X Trio model name which has a touch of RGB glow to it as well. Around on the back, MSI has taken advantage of the space to add in another picture of the card, this time from the top edge to show the lighting. They also talk about a few of the key features like the Tri Frozr 2 cooler, its Torx Fan 4.0 fans, heatpipes, and airflow control. The bottom portion then has key features in the Nvidia wraparound along with a very basic specification listing that sadly doesn’t have the clock speed included or information people might need like the card dimensions.

Inside of the box, you have a tray that has everything inside with foam on top with an MSI branded envelope. This has all of the documentation inside. For documentation, you get an installation cartoon with the MSI dragon as well as a user guide. There is another installation guide as well as a registration card and a card with information on MSIs other products.

Under the top foam, the card comes wrapped in a static protective bag and then is placed in its formed cutout in the thick bottom foam. It even has foam to lock it in place on the PCI bracket end as well as the PCI slit edge. Under the card, the Gaming X Trio also comes with an accessory that also has its own cutout in the foam as well as plastic protection.

The Gaming X Trio comes with a full-length metal anti-sag bracket. This isn’t the first MSI card to have one, they have been including them with all of their highest-end cards. This Is a little toned down without any MSI branding on it but it is all metal and has a thick rubber pad on top. The mounting slots have a lot of adjustment as well which means this should work with other cards as well if for some reason you don’t need it on this specific card.

Card Layout and Photos

Well here she is, the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio, and if I didn’t put the box in the first picture showing that this is an RTX 3060 you might even mix it up with another card like the RTX 3090 Gaming x Trio. From what I can tell this is the same cooler which is a little crazy. The card looks amazing though and this is my first look at one of MSI's Gaming X cards this generation and I like the new look. They have mixed grey and black on the angular plastic shroud to exaggerate the angles. The trio as the name implies is a triple-fan card. The center fan has almost claw-like cuts in it with addressable lighting behind them for just a touch of fan side RGB lighting on the otherwise color-neutral shroud.

I honestly didn’t exact there to be an RTX 3060 this large, but the Gaming X Trio comes in at 323mm long, 140mm tall, and 56mm thick. The extra 30mm up on top doesn’t count the extra wires coming off the top for your power cables, so keep in mind you will need room. The 56mm thickness is a triple-slot card as well. Those are the same dimensions as MSIs Gaming Trio for the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090 and that is because from what I can see this is the same cooler. Yeah, they really did pack an overclocked RTX 3090’s cooler on to an RTX 3060!

All three of the Trio’s fans are the same size and have the same orientation. They are 95mm and have a unique impeller blade that has more twist than you see on most other fans. If you look close you can also see that every other blade is held together with a small panel at the end that gives them more strength. Normally designs like this will connect all of the blades together on the outside, so the every other design is unique to the Torx 4.0 fans. When you look down through the fans you can also see the heatsink itself has a wavy design facing the fans.

Looking around at the top and bottom edges as well as the end of the card you get a better idea of its thickness. Even after the fan shroud which overhands, you can still see another 21mm of full heatsink thickness with it even thicker in areas like at the end where there is room. It is split into three sections with the middle having a full-contact surface for the GPU and memory around the GPU. Then at the splits, it gives room for the heatpipes to arch up to be higher in the outside heatsinks. Speaking of heatpipes there are five in total for the right heatsink and four for the smaller left heatsink, with all running into the center section and a few of those having 180 bends to come back in for a second layer on the center section up higher. The heatsink itself has a vertical layout that directs the triple fan layouts air up and down and for the far right fan it also blows through as well.

The top edge of the Gaming X Trio has the MSI logo on it as well as GeForce RTX branding. The MSI logo has their addressable RGB lighting built-in behind it. This goes with the accents on the fan side. Then there is also a full 145mm long light diffuser that sits on the top edge of the backplate. For power, the 3060 Gaming X Trio is also fitted with dual 8-pin power connections which is twice what the XC Black had. MSI did drop the power connections down slightly from the total height of the card and notched both plugs to allow room for the clips on the PCB side.

On the PCI bracket end the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio has what is now considered a normal display connection layout which gets you three DisplayPorts and then one HDMI down at the bottom. The PCI bracket does have ventilation holes that cover most of the rest of the space, but the cooler layout isn’t designed to blow air in this direction. I do wish that this was a full blacked-out bracket which in my opinion looks better. But the tinted chromed finish isn’t too bad as well.

The backplate for the Gaming X Trio is full length, even going down past the end of the PCB at the end where you can see MSI has added blow-through ventilation. It has the MSI Gaming logo as well as the GeForce RTX branding on it which is upside down to be oriented correctly when installed in a normal case. It is cut around the GPU bracket leaving just the one section of exposed PCB in the middle. The backplate is made of a composite and doesn’t feel like some of the cheap plastic backplates that I have seen used. They describe it as composite graphene. They say it is four times stronger than a plastic backplate and has 20 times the heat dissipation in my paperwork, but that doesn’t help compare it with a metal model which would also be stronger and have better heat dissipation than a plastic backplate.

Before jumping into testing, I did get a few shots of the card's lighting in action. I am digging the fan side lighting which isn’t too overkill and even lights up the rippled heatsink in behind the fans as well. The MSI logo being backlit, well I’ve talked a lot in the past about not being a big fan of lit up branding all over PCs so there is no point in saying much more on that. Then you have that long lightbar at the top of the backplate and it's bright. If you want big in your face lighting in your build this is going to work perfectly. If you want something more subtle you may need to turn this one down or off in the software.

Test Rig and Procedures

Test Rig

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3900X

Motherboard: Asus Crosshair VIII HERO WiFi

Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Royal 3600MHz 16-16-16-36

Storage: Corsair MP600 2TB

Cooling – Corsair H100i RGB Pro XT

Power Supply - Corsair AX1200w

Case - Primochill Wetbench

OS - Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Synthetic Benchmarks

As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. In this case, I want to check out how the MSI with its 1852 MHz clock speed compares with the stock clocked EVGA that I already took a look at which runs at 1777 MHz.

The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio came in at 20717 in Fire Strike performance compared to the XC Blacked 20577 which isn’t a huge gap but was enough to overtake the RX 5600 XT.

The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. Nvidia's card handle Time Syp a lot better than the DX11 based Fire Strike which can be seen with the RTX 3060 competing with the RX 5700 XT where it was running with the 5600 XT at DX11. The higher clock speed helped gain 190 points in Time Spy which helped surpass the fastest RTX 2060 SUPER a well as the Radeon VII.

The last test was using the Unigine based Superposition benchmark and I tested at 1080p with medium detail and again at 1080p with the extreme detail setting. In the extreme detail setting the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio out performed the overclocked 5700 XT’s but the medium detail results came in lower.

VR Benchmarks

As for Virtual Reality, I love it but it is more demanding than traditional gaming. This is partially because of the resolutions needed to render for two eyes and because they render more than what is immediately visible. But also because of post effects to get the proper “fisheye” effect for it to look proper in your eyes with the HMD. You also have to have much higher expectations for frame rates in VR, skipping frames or lower FPS can cause motion sickness in VR. Because of that, I ran a few tests.

My first test was again in Superposition. This time I tested the VR Maximum and VR Future tests using the Vive resolution. Here the 3060 Gaming X Trio saw a 1 FPS jump with its overclock compared to the stock RTX 3060 in both tests. This bumped it up over the 2060 SUPER as well as the overclocked RX 5700 XT.

My second round of VR testing was in VRMark which has two tests that are similar to the VR tests in Superposition. One is future-looking and extremely demanding and the other (cyan room) is more like modern VR games. The Gaming X Trio did 57.49 FPS in blue room compared to 56.38 of the stock 3060and 203.25 FPS in cyan room compared to 198.41 FPS stock which isn’t too bad of a bump for a small overclock.

In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 9 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 48 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio perform? When compared to the stock clocked RTX 3060 I already took a look at, the overclock only made one change in these graphs. It bumped one result in the 1440p results up into the 120+ FPS range. Even still, like the stock 3060 you get amazing 1080p performance with all of the results over 60 FPS and half of those even up past 120 FPS for that buttery smooth high refresh action on even on modern higher detail games like I’ve tested. At 1440p four results are under 60 FPS (though a few are by less than a 1 FPS margin), but 11 were over 60 and one even over 120 FPS. The RTX 3060, even with 12GB of VRAM isn’t designed for 4K performance and it shows in the 4K graph. Just one result was over 60 FPS, the majority with 13 results were still playable in the 30-59 FPS range so if needed you will be able to adjust detail down to smooth things out. Then there were two I would consider unplayable at under 30 FPS.

Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. Previously I took a look at where the RTX 3060 was landing compared to AMDs cards as well as Nvidia's previous cards and what I found was the RTX 3060 bounces around a little but mostly sticks with the RTX 2060 SUPER in most games. Was the overclock enough to make any change in this? Well, the overclock ends up getting around a 1 FPS bump at 4k, 1-2 FPS at 1440p, and in some of the 1080p results which are 120+ the gap was even larger.

Compute Benchmarks

Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases people who game also do work on the side. So it is also important to check out the compute performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was a simple GPU Compute benchmark using Passmark’s Performance Test 9 and the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio gained 183 points over the XC Black which helped inch it closer to the RTX 2080 Ti and away from all of the RX 5700 XT’s.

In Basemark I test with the DirectX12 setting and again with OpenGL. The RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio gained 91 points in DirectX 12 and 39 in OpenGL. A small gain and not enough to make any big changes in the overall hierarchy.

Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. Here I render two scenes and combine the total time it takes. The RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio knocked one second off of the CUDA time which isn’t significant but is still faster than the overclocked RX 5700 XT’s. In the second test where I compare CUDA and RTX exclusive Optix performance, it was 2 seconds faster.

RTX and DLSS

Being an RTX card I also like checking out the performance of some of Nvidia’s features. Namely the ray tracing performance and the performance improvements you can see by using DLSS combined with the tensor cores. In most of the tests, I’m only comparing a few of the RTX cards as well as a GTX 1080 Ti for comparison. But in the 3DMark Port Royal test, I have been tracking ray tracing performance in all of the RTX cards as well as a few of the GTX cards introduced into the mix as well. Here the 3060 Gaming X Trio jumped ahead of the 2060 SUPER Gaming X due to the overclock.

I then jumped into game tests, this time with the just recently released Watch Dogs: Legion. For this one, I wanted to get an idea of the performance you will see when taking advantage of Nvidia’s RTX and DLSS features. Here I tested with both on, just RTX on, and with neither on. The performance here was the same as the XC Black which struggled with RTX on unless DLSS was also turned on, getting better performance with DLSS and RTX than with both off.

Next, I wanted to check out the performance in Metro Exodus which I do our normal testing in as well. Here the Gaming X Trio gained 1 FPS over the XC Black with RTX only, almost two with DLSS added on to that, and was similar in the DLSS only result. These results again show that DLSS is a great way to get ray tracing without taking a big performance hit. Obviously, the RTX 3060 isn’t an idea 4K card and our RTX and DLSS tests are all done in 4K but you can see similar performance at lower resolutions as well.

With Wolfenstein: Youngblood I tested at 4K using their Mein Lenen! Detail setting which is the highest detail. I tested with RTX on and just compared running with DLSS on the balanced setting and with it off entirely. The RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio came in at the same 41 FPS with no-DLSS turned on as the XC Black but did get one more FPS when the DLSS was turned on. Overall this test shows how much of an improvement DLSS can get you in Wolfenstein: Youngblood and it was the difference between playable and over 60 FPS which is a huge difference.

Next, I tested using a benchmark based on the game Boundary. For this one, I wanted to see how all of the different DLSS settings would perform, including turning it off completely. At 4k the RTX 3060 was obviously out of its league here, but the jump from no DLSS up to the DLSS quality setting was big going from 9.6 to 17.4 FPS. DLSS balanced helped slightly but the jump up to the performance DLSS setting was nearly enough to make things playable on the 3060 which isn’t designed at all for 4k.

The last tests were done in a benchmark based on the game Bright Memory. Here I wanted to check out the performance difference between different RTX settings. Once again the RTX 3060 did struggle at 4k as expected, but it does let us see the performance difference between the different RTX settings. Each of the settings between very high, high, and normal were all close to 3 FPS difference between each though the RTX high result did gain one FPS over the XC Black changing that slightly. Then the RTX low has a much bigger gap with a 6 FPS difference between it and the RTX normal setting..

Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage. For this, I use our Kill-A-Watt hooked up to the test bench to record the total wattage of the system. I ran two tests with the first using 3DMark Fire Strike to put the system under a load similar to normal in game performance. Here our test system with the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio and our testbench pulled 344 watts. This was right with one of the overclocked RTX 2060 SUPERs and 11 watts more than the stock clocked XC Black. With AIDA64 providing the workload it was just the GPU working and the Trio pulled 274 which was 8 watts more than the XC Black is up close to the stock Founders Edition of the RTX 2080.

My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The Gaming X Trio with its three fans ran at 57.8 dB when I had them cranked up to 100% fan speed. This was 2 Db higher than the XC Black load but still near the middle of the pack of the cards tested and then with the fans at 50% it was 37.9 dB which is 2.6 dB higher than the XC Black which just has two fans. I was especially excited to see if the monster cooler on the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio would be able to run extremely quiet when under. The Trio when under load for a half hour ended up running at 34.7 dB which is a lot lower than the card even at 50% fan speed and it puts it right down near the bottom of the chart against smaller dual-fan cards.

To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up. Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio came in at 53 degrees which ran cooler than even the lower end cards on our chart. This was 5 degrees lower than the RTX 3060 XC Black which was already low as well. Cranking the fans up on the Trio took things to another level with it running at just 39 degrees. This is 4 degrees lower than the next best cooler which was liquid cooled! It was also 10 degrees less than the XC Black. Overall the delta between the two was 14 degrees.

While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. The Gaming X Trio’s backplate area surprised me by not having as much warm air coming through the vents in the back as I would have expected. But overall you can see that the graphene backplate is transferring the heat, the center of the GPU area which didn’t have a backplate covering it is nearly the same temperature as the VRM area closer to the PCI bracket. Up on the top edge, you can also see the temperature difference from the left side of the card and the right. The same can be seen on the fan side with the VRM area being the “hottest”, the center which is near the GPU, being in the middle, and the far right running extremely cool.

Overall and Final Verdict

Even just looking at the box for the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio you can tell it was going to be a monster of a card. Normally an xx60 range card is going to be a little smaller and will have a smaller box. But surprise surprise MSI put together an RTX 3060 with the same cooler they are running on their overclocked RTX 3090s and RTX 3080s. It is without a doubt overkill, but it does end up having a few unique upsides. For one the card looks amazing, I’m digging the styling with the angular shapes on the shroud mixed with different color shades to set them off even more. I also like the lighting, especially on the fan side though if you hate RGB lighting the light bar on the top will be a bit much for you. But the cool thing about the overall look of this card is normally only high-end models get coolers like this and mid and lower-end cards are left with coolers that look a lot cheaper. For once, if you don’t need to game at 4k you can still have a card that fills out a big build and looks just like that higher-end card. Kind of like buying a v6 or 4 cylinder Mustang or Camaro. The Gaming X Trio also has that composite backplate and because of the size, MSI even includes a full metal support bracket as well. The only cosmetic area that I wouldn’t mind seeing changed is the PCI bracket, I think a blacked-out bracket would be a nice touch to go with everything.

For performance, MSI did give the card an overclock of 1852 MHz compared to the 1777 MHz stock clock speed. That isn’t a HUGE overclock, but it did translate in my testing to a few FPS basically across the board and more than that at 1080p in most cases. That helped bump it up past overclocked RTX 2060 SUPERs and overclocked RX 5700 XT’s in some tests. The clock speed boost isn’t the main performance reason to consider this over one of the stock RTX 3060’s. It all comes back to the giant cooler. The cooling performance on the Gaming X Trio is amazing, running cooler than any other card I’ve tested including liquid cooled cards. This also translates to it being quieter when actually under load. Though I will say if your plan is to just crank the fans up, the triple fan design is going to be louder than something like the XC Black with two fans. But why would you do that, even under a heavy workload for an extended period of time the Gaming X Trio’s fans were barely running.

Of course, there is a reason companies haven’t just been tossing huge coolers on their mid-range cards this entire time. In a normal market, it would add way too much to the cost and price itself out against the competition. But we aren’t in a normal market at all right now, every card that comes in at the retailer's sells instantly. People are willing to take whatever they can get and scalpers are selling them for exorbitant amounts of money. A higher MSRP right now isn’t going to affect those scalped prices as much. Which is good because MSI has the RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio with an MSRP of $519.99. The price was also given a bump according to MSI because of the 25% tariffs that went into effect in January as well. But yeah, that is a $190 difference compared to the base MSRP from Nvidia. With the market the way it is right now, that’s high but still better than even the lowest scaler prices. But if the market gets better and people can get cards the Gaming X Trio isn’t going to be a lot of people's first choice, simply because of the price. Performance, build quality, and looks though are all amazing.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.