The world of custom RTX 4060 graphics cards is a strange one indeed. From adorable single-fan Mini-ITX GPUs to unnecessary three-fan models, the 4060 seems to have something for everyone. And while the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB launched today with not much fanfare, we'll discuss how experimental and strange Nvidia's recently released third-party designs for the RTX 4060 are, and why this card in particular has such wild design variations. I thought this would be a good time to explain why this card in particular has such wild design variations.

Add-in boards like Lenovo's Mini-ITX GeForce RTX 4060 are currently limited to the company's homebrew PCs, but could one day be available in retail stores and offer mini-PC enthusiasts all the benefits of the 40 series cards in a smaller form factor. We also see some somewhat unnecessary experimentation, such as Gigabyte's triple-fan model. If nothing else, they at least make entry-level GPUs look more impressive than they really are. More importantly, it is one of the first low-profile RTX 4060 cards we have seen.

And then there's Palit and their RTX 4060 with physical x8 PCIe connectors: ...... Why? Because it's outrageous." Most cards these days use standard PCIe x16 to connect to the motherboard, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti didn't have to. Such cards work perfectly in any x8 slot, opening up flexible options with regard to component configuration.

So why is there more variation in the RTX 4060 AIB design than in other high-power graphics cards?

Built on TSMC's 4nm process, the heart of the RTX 4060, the AD107 GPU, is the fifth chip in the Ada lineup. With just 24 streaming multiprocessors and 3072 CUDA cores, this 8GB card is somewhat underpowered compared to its predecessor, the 3584-core, 12GB RTX 3060. We found in our review that the 4060's specs were close to what we expected from the RTX 4050.

Where the specs fall short, however, Nvidia has left room for experimentation.

Thanks to the GPU's low-power operation, manufacturers have a bit more freedom to play around when it comes to aftermarket designs. It has a TGP of 115W compared to the 170W of the previous generation RTX 3060 and a per-watt performance that outperforms Nvidia's previous generation cards.

The RTX 4060's maximum temperature is also 70°C, or at least it was on the Ventus Black 2X we recently tested; a sweet spot that keeps noise levels low while maintaining a boost clock of 2,460 MHz.

The best way to take advantage of this kind of headroom is to change settings in the name of science.

Such experimentation is not limited to the RTX 4060. There used to be plenty of weird and wonderful GTX 1050 Ti's out there. For example, the Palit GTX 1050 Ti KalmX with its bizarre passive cooler and the low-profile MSI GTX 1050 Ti are both prime examples of AIB tomfoolery.

Like the creator of the clever passive cooler for the RX 6400, Modder is also on the AMD card experimentation train. I admire his proactive energy, "If the manufacturers won't do it, I will.

I am glad that experimentation is not dead. Not only are they keeping a valuable tradition alive, but they are breathing life into the otherwise bleak entry-level RTX 40 series. In other words, GPU makers, keep up the eccentricity.