GIGABYTE RTX 3050 WINDFORCE OC 6G GV-N3050WF2OC-6GD Graphics Card

Purchased this a few days ago to replace an AMD RX 6400 I purchased a couple months ago. Like any other low profile card, you’ll have the usual pros and cons, such as heating and space consumption. In terms of heating, it does get pretty hot, like any other video card, but It never reaches 80 centigrade. As for fitting in the case, it was a perfect fit; I didn’t need to move around wires, or make room inside.

All of my games work beautifully, at a very good frame rate, much better than on a console. The fans are very quiet, even under a heavy load.

The 179.00 price tag was a tad pricy, but well inside my budget. I recommend it to any DIY PC gamer or someone on a budget.

Pros:
Do not require extra cables to power up. Draws power from the pci slot itself.
Works well with all new games and photo editors in high settings.
Cons
I have seen sometimes the display is blank. So make sure the card is inserted and secured properly. (Even though I secured it properly I see that the weight causes the card to detach from the slot partially. So better to keep the cpu horizontally.)

(Tldr: If you need more power than a 1650 in a small form factor office PC build, this is really one of your only options. Plus DLSS is nice to have.)

To be frank, this GPU is not really great in terms of raw price to performance. If you’re not limited by size and power consumption, there are muuuch better options out there for the same or lower price (used on eBay or Facebook) for amazing value. But when you have specific constraints, this card turns out to be a great value, especially as a new card competing against used ones. In the case of the 3050 6gb, I’m okay paying a premium for the high power efficiency and low profile form factor.

From my personal testing, It has a little more power than the 1060 6gb, and a little less than a 1660 (non super). Considering you can pick those cards up for under a hundred bucks, you’re paying around $100 extra with the 3050 6gb for just downsizing and lower wattage. In my case, I was fine with this, but you may not be.

(Side note: I have a big gripe with the name. I feel like it should have just been called the 3040. It’s a completely different card from the 3050 8gb)

My constraints are a little specific, but not unreasonable. I have a cheap used HP EliteDesk 800 G2 (i7-6700) off of eBay for around 80 bucks. It only has a 240w power supply, so cards above the slot powered 75w ones are out of the equation.

The 3050 6gb shines in the small form factor space, where you’re restricted to slot-powered low profile cards. The alternatives are between an RTX A2000, AMD RX 6400, GTX 1050 TI, and a GTX 1650. (The 4060 low profile is a bit out of the price range)

– The RTX A2000, if found used at around 200 dollars, would have been my choice. But the fact is that prices aren’t anywhere near that for me at the moment.
– The RX 6400, while a decent performer, only has 4 PCIe lanes, meaning it would be bottlenecked pretty bad by PCIe 3.0 (about a 15% decrease in performance from what I have read). In a used SFF office PC build with only PCIe 3.0, it’s not suitable at all.
– The GTX 1650 is cheaper than this card, but overall still not a great value. I could only find them about 20-30 bucks cheaper.
– The GTX 1050 TI is really cheap, I could find them for about a hundred bucks less than the 3050 6gb. It’s just much weaker than I’d like. In my case, I was not comfortable going slower than a GTX 1060, which both the gtx 1050 TI and the GTX 1650 are. It is a decent competitor, but the fact that the 3050 6gb has DLSS really sealed it for me. With these slower cards, I would be concerned I would not be able to run some games I like at a playable frame rate. With DLSS, I have the peace of mind that I have the option to punch above the GPUs weight if needed.

To conclude:
The 3050 6gb, while not a great value when compared to similarly priced full-sized alternatives, fills a great niche and is actually pretty competitive within it. For me, it was my only real choice.

(A note about my EliteDesk build:
I did have some issues with my specific build in the EliteDesk, as the card just barely interfered with the USB 3.0 header. I had to unplug it, and ordered a right angle connector that will hopefully fit. It also has some issues with the PCIe slot, as they only expect single slotted cards. Trying to fit a double slot card, I had to modify the case slightly by pushing the bar between slots back slightly. But now that it fits, it’s running great and am extremely happy with my sub-300 dollar build!)

I threw this cheap gpu in my dell optiplex 3060 sff and DAMN. I went from struggling to load gta 5 at like 5fps to averaging 75 fps!!!! All of that and the damn thing averages around 55-60 degrees UNDER LOAD. This gpu was definitely worth every penny. I would buy another one if sli was still a thing!

Hola de momento todo va super bien por un momento creí que ya habia valido la gráfica porque llego sin pcie peeero no sabia que esta gráfica no la ocupaba jaja ya una ves instalada todo fue super bien

Funcionó a la perfección, fácil instalación, los drivers se instalaron automáticos debido a que fue upgrade, o cual es bueno, no requiere conexión a la fuente y es super silenciosa s culparon con mi mother a320m-k y un Athlon 3000g, de ahí para adelante