Prevented cannibal: MSI RTX 2060 Super Gaming X in review – quiet and cool

1 - Einführung und Übersicht 2 - Tear Down: Platine und Kühler 3 - Benchmarks mit 1920 x 1080 Pixeln 4 - Benchmarks in 2560 x 1440 Pixeln 5 - Benchmarks in 3840 x 2160 Pixeln 6 - Leistungsaufnahme im Detail 7 - Temperatur, Takt, Infrarot 8 - Lüfter und Lautstärke 9 - Zusammenfassung

Board layout

The board partner card relies on a pure in-house design on a 10-layer board, but remains with the 8-pin connector and a fairly short format. The power supply is a simplified design with 6+2 phases and inductor instead of MOSFET DCR. This is completely sufficient in this performance class, especially since MSI relies on Dr.MOS for the voltage converters.

We see six voltage converter phases for GPU power supply, and two more for memory. For the GPU, you rely on an NCP81610 from ON Semi that could generate up to 8 phases, but here only 6 generates. The memory is provided by a small uP1666 from UPI, which only has to deliver two phases.

For the six GPU phases, two asymmetric FDPC5018SG from On Semiconductor is used per phase, which realizes the high- and low-side. The MOSFET pair is controlled by an NCP81158, a Dual Synchronous Buck MOSFET Driver from ON Semi. The voltage regulation of the memory relies on a total of two FDPC8016S, i.e. Asymmetric Dual N-Channel MOSFETs from the same manufacturer, i.e. good Dr.MOS for the high- and low-side.

Also interesting is the NCP 45491, a quad-channel power input management IC for monitoring the input rails to maintain the maximum board power.

An ITE 8295FN acts as a microcontroller and takes over e.g. RGB control. The whole thing is smoothed for the GPU with the usual MSI-labelled 220 mH coils, with memory even those with 470 mH. As always, they are encapsulated and encapsulated ferrite core coils with the MSI dragon logo. The fact that the card has a single BIOS is no secret and I couldn't see any other subtleties in the pictures.

The memory is again the usual 8GB GDDR6 SGRAM modules (2 channels x 256 Meg x 16 I/O, 2 channels x 512 Meg x 8 I/O) from Micron, which have a bandwidth of 14Gb/s. Since a total of eight modules are installed, the memory expansion of 8 GB is also available. Which I would be able to get through with.

The following table contains the most important components:

GPU Power Supply
PWM Controller	NCP81610 ON Semiconductor 8-phase PWM controller
Gate Driver	6x NCP81158 ON Semiconductor Dual Synchronous Buck MOSFET Driver
Vrm	6x FDPC5018SG ON Semiconductor Dual-N-Channel MOSFET
Coils	Encapsulated Ferrite Choke 220 mH
Memory and power supply
Modules	MT61K256M32 Micron 8x 8GB GDDR6 SGRAM Modules 2 Channels x 256 Meg x 16 I/O 2 Channels x 512 Meg x 8 I/O 14Gb/s
PWM Controller	uP1660 UPI Semiconductor 8-phase PWM controller
Vrm	2x FDPC8016S ON Semiconductor Dr.MOS Dual Channel MOSFET
Coils	Encapsulated Ferrite Choke 470 mH
Other components
Bios	25WP080 Eeprom Bios
Shunts	1x shunt, 1x fuse and one coil per 12 V rail (2x)
Monitoring	NCP 45491 On Semiconductor Quad-Channel Power Input Management
Mcu	ITE 8295FN
More details
Other Features	8-Pin PCI-Express Connection for Power Supply

Cooler

Under the cover, two separately controlled fans rotate over the also two-part cooler, whose narrow-facing slats are arranged vertically and receive the waste heat from the nickel-plated heatsink via a total of eight nickel-plated 6 mm heatpipes, of which the two middles were bent again in the GPU block.

There are two mounting and cooling frames on the board, one of which cools all RAM modules, while the second, smaller frame cools the voltage converters and gate drivers. On the top, a 3 mm softpad then connects part of the surface to the cooling fins of the upper cooling block. MSI has learned and by the (often enough required in the past) two-division of the frame also prevents the voltage converters from heating up the memory. In addition, a separate fan control is possible.

The backplate absorbs the waste heat of the voltage converters at the back of the board and also includes the area of the coils. This large-area softpad sticks to the backplate, the insulating film has been cut out here. Loeblich.