Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC 8G Review

Up Close

Having written reviews of all three Gigabyte Gaming OC RTX cards the box is becoming like an old friend, with the giant eye – that would make an epic case design if anyone is feeling creative – surrounded by the official Nvidia green identification box and feature set.

  
  

The Windforce 3X cooler that we’ve seen on the other new Ampere cards is here in full effect, with three 80mm fans that spin in alternate directions to ensure the heatsink is free from any dead spots. The fans themselves promise up to double the life span of regular ball bearing fans, which could be key if you’ve ever suffered from one of your graphics card fans dying.

  

Around the back the backplate helps disperse heat as well as adding some structural rigidity, and like all the Ampere cards we’ve seen so far the end of the card has a vented section help smooth airflow through the card and on to your CPU cooler.

  

Under the shroud there is a direct touch copper cooler tied in to the heatsink itself via some fat heatpipes to keep the temperatures of the RTX 3070 Gaming OC down whilst giving you plenty of thermal headroom for your overclocking efforts.

  

Power is provided by a 8+6pin arrangement, six pins more than the Founders Edition. If there is one thing the Gigabyte RTX 3070 won’t be short of it’s power.

  

Whilst at the business end there is a twist on the standard Nvidia selection outputs, with the Gigabyte card having two DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.1. The beefier HDMI throughput is a boon for those of you with high resolution, high refresh rate panels.