Please note: Due to a short testing period, we will be adding updates to this article please check back regularly.
The embargo is over for the RTX 5060 Ti, and I can finally post the results of our review. It’s been an interesting launch for Nvidia as they have chosen not to sample the 8GB models of the RTX 5060 Ti. This is likely due to the fact that 8GB is simply not a sufficient amount of memory in 2025, and really should not have been launched as a 60 series card. Regardless of the reasoning, today we will be looking at the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB model.
I want to thank Zotac for sending us their Zotac Gaming RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC model. Zotac has long been a supporter of small form factor PCs and SFFN in general by providing us industry contacts, news, and review samples. They have never asked us to edit or change any criticism, nor has Zotac placed any pressure on any SFFN staff for an expected review. This is excellent behavior from a company, and an indicator that Zotac is looking for a fair review.
Let’s be very clear before we begin: we are looking at the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti from a small form factor perspective. Small Form Factor users accept a lot of compromises to get their systems to their desired size, and we’re looking at this from a different angle than a traditional review. We will, of course, have game performance numbers for the card, as well as performance samples. However, our conclusion will be focused more on how the card allows for small form factor builds than raw performance and value.
As I said in past reviews: Small Form Factor users aren’t immune to wanting a good value. However, it’s hard to take a moral high ground on value when we decided to pay three times as much for cases that use one-quarter the metal, to house components that have half the function at twice the price. What do we do we these spacing saving builds? Put them prominently on our desks to take up space, and complain about how loud they are.
My own personal bias includes a general like of the Zotac esthetic, and I purchased a Zotac Magnus EN1070 SFF PC for myself approximately half a decade ago, that I reviewed favorably. I had a single support related issue with the EN1070, and it was resolved with a positive outcome.
That said, let’s begin.
The TLDR: The 5060TI is what the 4060TI probably should have been from the outset. It’s 10 to 20% faster than the 4060TI, sometimes a bit more. Pricing is reduced from an MSRP of $499 for the 16GB 4060Ti to $429 for the 16GB 5060Ti. While there is a cost reduced 8GB model, I do not recommend it for anyone considering this card. If you buy an 8GB card now in 2025, it will cause issues in modern games relatively soon. Nvidia does have their memory compression technology, however it’s not an industry standard and as such, is subject to developers implementing it as well as Nvidia continuing to support it.
Unfortunately, I’ve had only 3 work days to test our RTX 5060Ti. As such, this will be a living article with future updates being added. Notes will be made at the top of the article for changes.
First, let’s discuss the new Twin Edge card vs the last Twin Edge that I tested; the Zotac GAMING RTX 4070 Super Twin Edge OC. This model has improved substantially upon the performance of the last Twin Edge. I was skeptical at first due to the general aesthetic of the card, but it appears Zotac has made strong progress to improving both the thermal and sound profiles of their GPUs.
Size, Specs, and Dimensions
Not only is it cooler and quieter, it’s also smaller. The card has shrunk to 220.5mm in length from 234.1mm for the RTX 4070 Super Twin Edge, and 225.5mm from the RTX 4060Ti Twin Edge. The card has grown slightly from 40.2mm thick to 41.6mm thick so watch your clearances. Unlike the older RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge, there is not a bulge in the middle that takes up additional space. The card is flat.
I test fit the card into two variations of the Densium 4 case. The first Densium was a generation one unit that fit the card by length, but the side panel warped and touched one of the fans. The second Densium was the revised model, and it had no fan issues. I will be test fitting this card into both a Ghost S1 and a Dan A4-SFX in a follow-up to this review at a later date.
Users should be wary of their side panels to ensure they aren’t bowing inward.
Coil Whine
Our last Zotac card, the 4070 Super Twin Edge, had a notable coil whine. For the ZOTAC GAMING RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC our test unit for the RTX 5060Ti has remarkably little. While this can vary from setup to setup and card to card, it’s refreshing to get a sample with so little.
To determine this, we first look at the fan speed 40dBA noise normalized performance, and then add a load to the GPU. The difference is the coil whine.
Below is our Coil Whine scale.
Coil Whine Scale
- Inaudible – Cannot be heard. The coil whine is either not present or too low to heard or measured against the noise produced by the fans.
- Barely Audible – Can barely be heard and requires close inspection to determine if the whine is coming from the GPU itself. The noise is immediately drowned out by music or games at even low volumes.
- Moderately Audible – Can be heard from a typical seating position and is clearly coming from the GPU. However, the sound is drowned out by gaming and music at normal listening volumes, and cannot be heard through closed back headphones when no sound is playing, while in a normal sitting position. Steel Series Arctis Pro Wireless headphones were used during testing. Most GPUs I’ve tested recently are at this level.
- Audible – Clearly coming from the GPU and clearly audible at seating position. Can be heard while listening to music or games at normal volumes through speakers in a desktop position. Cannot be heard over music or games at normal listening volume while using closed back headphones except in silent moments. Can be quietly heard through closed back headphones when no sound is being played.
- Very Audible – Audible at seating position and disturbing to games or gaming at all volumes while using speakers. Can be heard through closed back headphones while playing music and games at even loud volumes. Would cause most users to return the GPU even if supplies are limited.
- Defective – Loud and clearly defective component. Can drown out conversation, and make even loud gaming and music impossible.
Based on the testing conducted on the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC, show BARELY AUDIBLE coil whine on the above scale. This is a better rating that my own personal EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 achieved, and was far quieter than my AMD Radeon RX 6900XT Reference design. The Zotac RTX 4070 Super Twin Edge OC we previously tested rated as Audible. Other samples may vary.
Acoustic Performance
The acoustic performance of the Zotac GAMING RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC is very good. Under stock conditions, I recorded a barely audible rise from the ambient of 34.9 dBA of my office to 36.7 dBA at 75mm distance on-axis to the fans. At 90 degrees off-axis, I measured 36 dBA for the same load.
Temperature at fixed RPMS
The Zotac GAMING RTX 5060Ti Twin Edge OC cooling performance scaled well from 30% fan speed at 79.0C to 100% fan speed at 53C. 75% appears to be the point of diminishing returns in terms of more performance per RPM. In the other direction, below 40% RPM the card begins to heat rapidly, but never exceeded thermal design limits.
Of course this is an open bench. Placing the card inside a restrictive case will diminish the results seen here. In other words: GPU get hotter and fan go faster.
Clock Speed and Temperatures
Given that the 5060Ti draws usually between 160 to 180 watts under load compared to the RTX 4070 Supers 220 to 230 watts, the card being easier to cool was a given. The performance was impressive none the less. At a noise normalized 40 dBA, the card was able to achieve a temperature of 62C at 1,921 RPM. The sound profile itself was smooth, and did not suffer the audible oscillations of the older 4070 Super Twin Edge. Core clocks were a stable 2,775 MHz.
The Zotac Gaming RTX 5060Ti Twin Edge OC performed admirably in our temperature vs core clock test. Unlike the RTX 4070 Super Twin Edge which had a 200 MHz deviation at stock power levels, there was only a 45 MHz difference between 100% fan speed, and 30% fan speed at full load. Left to its own devices, the card settled in at 2,775 MHz.
Overclocking Potential
There appears to be good potential to overclock the Zotac Gaming RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC. The fan speed was set to the noise normalized 40 dBA for this test. Achieving a +100 on the core was as easy as dialing it in. This was stable for 20 loops of 3DMARK Speedway. Temperatures did not rise more than 2C compared to stock with both +10 core power and +100 MHz. While I was time restricted, I found the card to be stable at +150 core and +500 memory.
Undervolting
Unfortunately, there was little shown during undervolting attempts, and I believe this to be a driver error with the review drivers. Reducing the power to 83% yielded 149 watts power consumption vs 162 watts at stock, and a 2,715 MHz core clock under load.
Performance
As we mentioned above, the general consensus is that the 5060TI is about 10 to 20 percent faster than the RTX 4060Ti at 1080P and 1440P resolutions. However, this changes when memory bandwidth becomes the limiting factor at high resolutions. The 5060 Ti has substantially more memory bandwidth than the 4060 Ti, and can use that bandwidth to open up some gaming opportunities at 4K resolutions. These will be at console like frame rates, but it’s better to have the option. This is even more pronounced in games with ray tracing and large texture pools that exceed 8GB, which can effect all resolutions. While the 4060Ti did offer a 16GB model, the 8GB was the far more popular choice by consumers, and the 16GB model didn’t offer any additional bandwidth.
Upgrading solely for performance from the RTX 4060 Ti to the RTX 5060 Ti is not particularly advisable, but those SFF users still using the RTX 3060 or RTX 3060 Ti will see a nice improvement in the same power envelope. Our objective benchmarks will be added as the charts are completed, but we saw substantial uplifts over the 8GB RTX 3060 Ti in many modern scenarios. We will be adding our charts over the next day as we refine them.
That said, lets look at a few game examples of pushing the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB hard.
Keep in mind that we recorded this videos using the internal GeForce recording on the RTX 5060 Ti. This does effect performance by 5 to 10%.
Immortals of Aveum
In this example, we have a cinematic cut-scene that pushes all of the effects of the UE5 engine. The resolution was set to 4K, and DLSS mode was set to performance. I found the Image quality to be very good, especially if you’re playing from a living room HTPC distance, and exceeded that of the PS5.
In this next example, we changed it to 1440P Resolution, and moved to DLSS Quality mode. This provided an excellent experience playing the game with well above 60FPS performance. There are some notable stutters, but I believe they are linked to the test driver at this time.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk is still a bear to run for most people especially for the Path Tracing mode. Let’s look at some gameplay examples. In these examples, I chose an area with lots of lighting, geometry, and picked a fight with multiple factions. This is a tough spot for any GPU.
Our first test is pure rasterization at 4K Ultra Settings. DLSS was set to performance. The game was able to get a solid 50 to 60FPS in this scenario, and again looked great, especially from a couch gaming perspective.
Next we looked at 1440P Ultra Ray Tracing with DLSS Balanced. Again, we’re getting a solid 50 to 60 FPS. It looked good, and was very playable to my eye.
What does it take to get Path Tracing running on the RTX 5060 Ti? Well, this might be pushing it for this card. Resolution was set to 1080P with DLSS Balanced. It didn’t look bad, and the YouTube compression makes it look worse than it is, but I would hesitate to play this on a desk monitor. This would be better served at living room couch-viewing distance to hide some of the visual flaws.
For this next example, we will use Path Tracing and 1080P resolution again. However, we’re going to bump up to DLSS Quality, and activate Frame Generation 2X. This will render one AI frame for every real frame. It does cause some visual distortions, but it was better than expected when I recorded it. Again, best served at livingroom couch-viewing distance.
The Ascent
The Ascent is a three-quarter perspective twin-stick shooter with some very impressive graphics that include ray tracing. For our first example we have 4K with RT and DLSS Performance on. The game looks excellent from both desk and couch-viewing distance. It played very well between 50 and 60 FPS.
For our next example of The Ascent we set the resolution to 1440P with RT and DLSS Quality. The game played extremely well, looked great, and was running well above 60 FPS.
We will have far more performance information over the upcoming days. The article will be updated with new performance charts and video links as they become available.
Case Pairing
So what case should you pair the ZOTAC GAMING RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC with? There is a real opportunity to break out some of the foundation cases to the modern SFF community. Cases such as a the Dan A4-SFX, original NCASE M1,and Louqe Ghost S1 come to mind. The card would also work well with the Thorzone Mjolnir, and the thermal performance would work well for the Louqe Raw S1. Even the original Silverstone SGO5 would work with this GPU. Unfortunately, the case my mind first went to, the Jonsbo T6, is 5mm too short, however the Silverstone Sugo 16 would pair nicely with it.
Personally, I lean toward the Sugo 16 as far as powerful air-cooled cases. You could easily put any Ryzen AM5 CPU in it with a larger air cooler, and the Twin Edge could draw fresh air from the top.
Alternatively, I like the idea of using the Densium 4 Plus as sold by Overtek. It’s down to the mm, and you are limited to 39mm CPU coolers with Flex-ATX PSUS, but that would be a very potent 5.49L build; something I may experiment with later.
Image Credit: Overtek
Overall:
Do we recommend the ZOTAC GAMING RTX 5060 Ti Twin Edge OC if you’re looking for a RTX 5060 Ti? Absolutely. Zotac has done a great job with this card, and continues to improve with each generation. I strongly encourage Zotac to consider a single fan SOLO model for the RTX 5060 TI, and to continue to push closer to 200mm length for each upcoming revision. We also appreciate the single 8-pin power cable.
As for the RTX 5060 Ti itself, well that’s another story:
I wish it had come in at $399 or even $349 for the 16GB model. $429, while better than the $499 of the 4060TI 16GB, is still a hard price for the average consumer to swallow. We’ve seen a lot of price creep and inflation. However, a 100% rise in price since Pascal (GTX 1060) is excessive. There are market factors, but generally speaking, prices in technology have always moved downward. Now we’re seeing them rise up at staggering rates.
What the actual street price will be is anyone’s guess now.
It’s a tough sell to 4060TI owners who aren’t seeing VRAM limits in their games. The new media engine is excellent for creators that can take advantage of it, but the mere fact there is an 8GB model, which wasn’t sampled, is ridiculous in 2025.
Additionally, if street prices and tariffs put it deep into the $500 or even $600 range, then the RX 9070 and RX 9070XT become the obvious choice.
However, from an SFF perspective, and with the death of the 4070 series availability, the RTX 5060Ti is likely going to be the fastest card you can get for the Sub 6L cases. It does only pull about 180 watts max when under full load, while also providing the best performance at that power level we’ve ever seen.
I’m confident that several single fan units will eventually arrive on the market, though I expect them to be hotter and nosier than the Zotac Twin Edge model which are recommending.
