Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3060 OC
If you want a premium 3060, look no further.
You can always rely on Asus to produce a card that’s worthy of being described as a flagship. The ROG Strix RTX 3060 OC has the lot. It’s the fastest, the coolest, the quietest and it has the best feature set. But it carries a significant price premium. We’re trying not to judge current pricing too harshly as all GPUs will certainly drop over time, but do be aware that the Asus will cost you a pretty penny. When normal times return, it will likely remain the most expensive of all RTX 3060s.
The Asus Strix is packed to the hilt with top shelf specs and features. Its boost clock is 1,912MHz in its maximum software applied OC mode, though out of the box it clocks in at 1,882Mhz, easily the highest of the roundup. There’s a large RGB section across the front of the card along with an RGB ROG logo on the backplate. The backplate has a cutout to allow air to pass through. This seems to be an increasingly common design feature.
The custom PCB is powered by an eight-pin PCIe power connector. It comes with dual BIOS, which offers a performance and a quiet mode. The clock speeds are the same with both BIOS’ and we could hardly hear the card under any circumstance so there appears to be little to really differentiate them. Asus includes a pair of 4-pin PWM fan headers which can react with the GPU temperature. It’s a nice additional feature if you have a case with an adjacent fan or two. The 3060 Strix is one of very few modern cards to include five display outputs consisting of a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports and three DP 1.4a ports. You can only use four at a time but this kind of flexibility will be appreciated by many users.
The cooler performs exceptionally well, though we’d expect nothing less with its price premium. The highest temperature we saw was an incredible 59°C which is about as low as any card we can remember that’s not entry level. This meant the card was always boosting to very high level, with a 1,960MHz average recorded after about 15 minutes of continuous running. Despite this high boost clock, the card didn’t blow away the competition, with just a frame’s difference here or there. More relevant is the comparison to the RTX 3060 Ti, which is much faster. This begs the question, do you want a premium 3060 that’s quiet with a great feature set, or a much faster 3060 Ti that lacks a few bells and whistles and runs a bit hotter and louder? We report, you decide.
While the Asus Strix is easily the best card in this roundup, and perhaps of all 3060s, we question the wisdom around such a card. It’s too good for its own good. To put it another way, it’s a bit like powering a Corolla with a V8 engine. The monstrous Strix cooler is best suited to the likes of the 3080 or 6800 XT with their 300W+ TDPs. By all means, grab one if you want something top tier, but you’d be better off with a 3060 Ti, the cheaper MSI or one of Asus’ own slightly saner RTX 3060 variants.