KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X Black: Review 2021 | Specs | Hashrate (Ethereum)

In this review, we will take a look at the skillful scout and open him up to the whole world!

Full name: KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X Black;

Manufacturer Code: 36ISL6MD1WGK.

Packaging and equipment

KFA2 products always have original packaging with a pleasant color palette and a stranger: in the light of mining, this is a subtle hint of “be a pirate and take a video card by force” rather than buy it. From the front, the manufacturers immediately come up with trump cards: the cooling system uses a pair of 102 mm fans with RGB backlighting.

We turn the box over and get acquainted with the standard, I would say, classic description of the model’s features. The novelty is supported by the updated Xtreme Tuner Plus utility. Inside, we will be equipped with a simple but colorful assembly manual, instructions for connecting external components with RGB backlighting and a mini 4-pin> 4-pin adapter required for this operation.

Appearance and design

The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X video card has an original dual-fan design, the features of which lie in many details, which makes the novelty under consideration special.

Thanks to the improved cooling system, the dimensions of the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X turn out to be immodest: the length of the graphics accelerator reaches 297 mm, and covers 2.5 expansion slots. Many cases are designed for such video cards, and as for the thickness, users, with rare exceptions, use two cards, and the PCI Express slots are well removed from each other. Two large 102mm fans are installed on a massive radiator, and the back is protected by a metal backplate! A rare solution, but very useful: other brands have resorted to plastic base plates. The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X requires only one 8-pin auxiliary power connector, which features metal reinforcement and a convenient cutout. And next to it is a mini 4-Pin port for lighting elements: you can connect fans or other components with RGB glow, and synchronize them. The power consumption of the video card is 200-210 W, which will require a power supply with a capacity of 500 W or more. And on the back side, it meets the familiar bunch of video outputs – three DisplayPort 1.4a and a lone HDMI 2.1, which has become a classic for the RTX 30 family.

I like the engraving on the apanel from the letters “XOXO” more: probably with such a cry, the gamer dominates the battlefield.

The model in question has excellent performance and appearance thanks to the backlight. Here’s a graphics card with the backlight off, which will appeal to old-school users. And here is a pleasant glow of the fans using the proprietary software – Xtreme Tuner Plus. You can set a separate color or mode as you wish. I will talk about the utility itself in a separate article.

Cooling system

KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X received an impressive cooling system by the standards of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti: with the exception of a few three-fan tops.

The cooler uses a massive two-piece heatsink with a copper insert for the GPU and a wide area covering all video memory chips. Separately, plates connected to the fins are used to cool the mosfets. In the body of the radiator, four heat pipes are involved according to an interesting scheme: two central ones with a diameter of 8 mm, side ones – 6 mm each. As a result, we get increased efficiency. A shot of the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X radiator from the other side. Notice the large metal insert on the left? An interesting solution. The engineers employed a separate stiffening plate that attaches to the interface panel. Taken together, it is also a radiator for the power section of the VRM, soldered to the fins of the main radiator. It cannot be called anything other than “3 in 1” and is actually very original and effective. The casing has a proprietary structure KFA2 with separate connection of fans and lighting, reduced to a separate board: we get high maintainability and independent control!

The speed of the turntables is adjustable from 0 – 2700 rpm with Fan Stop technology when idle.

The metal backplate is evenly fixed over the textolite and distributes the load of a large cooling system, but itself does not participate in the heat removal: there are no necessary thermal pads.

Printed circuit board

The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X PCB is close in structure to the NVIDIA reference, but KFA2 engineers could not miss the chance to use proprietary technologies. We see additional voltage measurement points, a pair of unsoldered connectors for the backlight, a third fan and other additional equipment

The reverse side of the PCB of the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X video card. The heart of the review hero is the GA104-200-A1 graphics processor. It was produced using 8nm process technology in the 41st week of 2020 and includes 4864 shaders, 80 rasterization units and 152 texture units. In comparison with the reference, the power subsystem is slightly simplified and has eight phases, where six phases are allocated to the graphics processor and two to video memory. Used power stages AOZ5311NQI from Alpha & Omega with a rated current of 50 A.The video card is equipped with 8 GB of video memory of the GDDR6 standard. This volume is recruited by eight Samsung chips. Their clock frequency is 1750 MHz (effective frequency 14000 MHz).

Test stand

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Z490 Maximus XII Formula;
• Processor: Intel Core i5-10600K;
• Cooling system: XPG Levante 240;
• Thermointerface: Noctua NT-H1;
• RAM: Team Xtreem 8Pack ~ 4000 MHz (2 x 8 GB);
• Video card: KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X;
• Drives: Western Digital Black SN750, 500 GB;
• Power supply: be quiet! Straight Power 11, 850W;
• Monitor: AOC U2790PQU;
• Case: open stand.

Software

• Operating system: Microsoft Windows 10 x64;
• Driver: GeForce 460.89 WHQL.

Testing tools and methodology

For overclocking video cards, as well as monitoring temperatures and fan speeds, we used the proprietary MSI Afterburner utility.

Standard frequencies KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X

KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X has a factory overclocked +45 MHz core and can add 15 MHz thanks to 1-Click OC technology through the proprietary Xtreme Tuner Plus application.

Of the nice features of the KFA2, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X can offer the “Fan Stop” function. We get the following indicators:

• 36 ° C and 0 rpm when working with MS Office documents;
• 37 ° C and 0 RPM when watching videos and surfing the Internet.

Here are the detailed characteristics of the BIOS of the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X. The TDP level is 220 W without the possibility of increasing. The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X graphics card is limited by NVIDIA’s reference power requirements, but this does not prevent this model from “squeezing” the last megahertz out of the GPU thanks to GPU Boost technology. The novelty boosts up to 1875-1910 MHz in the core at a temperature of only 67 * C, and the fans spin slowly at no more than 1200 rpm, which makes it very quiet. The evaluation of the cooling system demonstrates a high potential for efficiency: at maximum power, the GPU is cooled to 53 * C! The cooler runs at 2700 rpm, which is above average but not annoying. Theoretically, in a closed case, it can even be used at maximum speed) When the voltage drops to 0.875 V, the consumption decreases from 215 W to 164 W, as does the temperature! Now the video card warms up to 59 * C.

Overclocking KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X

The novelty is limited by Power Limit, but this is also a certain plus: the video card itself knows how much it can boost with a given table inside the BIOS (GPU Boost Table), so setting +100 MHz or +150 MHz, the card itself will determine how much it needs. Thus, KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X conquers 1965-2040 MHz in core. The video memory is overclocked to 2088 MHz.

Overclocked KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X in benchmarks.

The performance of KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X from manual overclocking increases by 6-8%.

Gaming performance in other games at 2560×1440. Testing KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X with RTX technology in current projects at 2560×1440. In total, we have high performance in modern games and top-end releases, in particular in projects with RTX and DLSS (an anti-aliasing technology based on a neural network that helps to increase fps) or a combination of both technologies, including Metro Exodus, Fortnite, Control, CoD Cold War, Watch Dogs Legions, Cyberpunk 2077.

NVIDIA technology

Well, those for whom a video card is not only a means of entertainment, but primarily a working tool, will like the NVIDIA Studio driver package, which is responsible for the stability of working applications. Thanks to the RTX platform, all types of cores are involved: CUDA, RT, tensor – accelerating AI algorithms that are used in production applications. The increase in rendering performance and speed can be felt in Adobe, Autodesk, Blender, Cinema 4D, Vegas Pro, Davinci Resolve and a number of other graphics and 3D rendering applications.

Power consumption KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X

Attention! The power consumption of the entire stand from the outlet is taken into account using the Robiton PM-2 wattmeter.

Conclusion

The developers from KFA2 perfectly understood that GeForce RTX 3060 Ti video cards do not support NVLink / SLI technology, motherboards have remote adjacent PCIe slots from the main PCI Express x16 slot, so why limit yourself in size and shrink to a standard two-slot format? Let’s make the fans wider and wider, the heatsink thicker, and, voila, we get the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X!

The novelty is interesting for everyone: a new cooling system, a modified heatsink design, heat pipes of a larger diameter, connecting the backlight and organizing the fans, cute, not meticulous backlighting, factory overclocking and a good boost! These features make the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X a great graphics card if not great.

Can you find fault with the hero of the review? Slightly fat, yes, but quiet and efficient. And with overclocking, everything is pretty good, despite the limited Power Limit.

Summing up, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti X video card can be confidently recommended for building a gaming PC, focusing on the absence of the need to change the PSU (a 500 W power supply is enough), good characteristics and an excellent cooling system.

Advantages:

• High performance and speed;
• Original appearance;
• Quiet and efficient cooling system;
• RGB backlight with separate port;
• Passive cooler mode.

Disadvantages: