APC Australia

MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8G

RTX 2070 turned up to 11.

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Comparing the RTX 2070 Founders Edition to the MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z is almost like comparing a Tonka truck to a Hummer. The MSI is a huge card that positively dwarfs the Founders Edition.

The Gaming Z is MSI’s highest tier of Gaming card, surpassed only by the limited edition OC focused Lightning series. It comes with an out of the box boost clock of 1830MHz. This is a big jump over the Founders Edition card, though it does come with a power consumptio­n penalty as MSI states the 2070 Gaming Z can use up to 225W. To put that into perspectiv­e, that matches the RTX 2080 Founders Edition power consumptio­n. The PCB is a fully custom design featuring an 8+2 phase VRM all cooled via thermal pads.

Its physical dimensions mean that some considerat­ion needs to be given with regards to the case it will go into. At 307x155x50­mm, it’s a big triple slot card but also very tall. It has a lovely brushed metal backplate that assists with cooling while looking great as well. There’s a large metal support plate attached to the PCIe bracket that doubles as a RAM cooling plate while also adding rigidity to the card, preventing any sagging. It certainly needs it! The Gaming Z features a fairly typical complement of three DP 1.4 ports, a HDMI 2.0b port and the Type-C USB port. It is powered by 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z features the latest Twin Frozr cooler that MSI has been continuall­y refining. Now in its 7th iteration, the latest version uses two very large double ball bearing fans that do not spin up at all when the card is idle. The shroud features a healthy adornment of RGB lighting as is standard among all high-end graphics cards in 2018.

The MSI was able to boost to very high levels beyond the official boost clock. The monstrous cooler meant the MSI was able to consistent­ly deliver the best performanc­e out of all the 2070’s we tested (even if the margin is tiny). If a GPU cooler can keep a card cool and maintain a very high boost clock while staying effectivel­y silent, then it’s doing its job very well. The MSI Twin Frozr 7 does just that.

MSI has taken the TU106 GPU and given it the full aftermarke­t treatment. It’s marginally the fastest 2070 we tested and it’s also pretty good value. It’s still quite a jump in price over the budget oriented 2070s though (if there is such a thing). Whether the bells and whistles are worth the extra money is up to you and the state of your bank balance. MSI has carved a strong reputation for itself thanks to a long line of highly recommende­d graphics cards and the RTX 2070 Gaming Z adds to that reputation. It extracts the maximum power from the RTX 2070 GPU.

 ??  ?? GRAPHICS CARD $1,069 | WWW.AU.MSI.COM
GRAPHICS CARD $1,069 | WWW.AU.MSI.COM

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