Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review

Inno3D surprises with one of the fastest custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards, ready to carve through 1080p and 1440p gaming.

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: Inno3D
9 minutes & 39 seconds read time
TweakTown's Rating: 88%
TweakTown award

The Bottom Line

Inno3D has a custom GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED that is perfect for some next-gen 1080p and 1440p gaming with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Introduction

NVIDIA has officially "launched" its new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, with the second custom RTX 3060 card going through the GPU lab is the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED graphics card.

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Inno3D uses a triple-fan 92mm Scythe blade fans on the GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED graphics card that keeps the card more than cool enough under load. There's of course RGB lighting here with Inno3D even including a cool acrylic tail fin module that can be attached to the card for some additional bling.

The new GeForce RTX 3060 itself has 12GB of GDDR6 memory, 2GB of VRAM more than the flagship GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The new GeForce RTX 3060 is a monster for gaming, with NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency support providing some incredible numbers in games like Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Fortnite, Valorant, and more. Not only that, but you also get great RTX ray tracing support as well -- if that's your thing.

You might be worried about miners buying all the cards, and yeah -- that's going to happen. NVIDIA is trying to get out and ahead of that, but crypto miners will just pivot and mine something else on the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. New tariffs are also seeing the price of the RTX 3060 skyrocket, from the $329 MSRP to $500+.

Everything You Need to Know About The RTX 3060

NVIDIA's previous-gen GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card was a super-popular mid-range graphics card, offering 1920 CUDA cores from its GPU compared to the 3584 CUDA cores on the new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

But the big upgrade comes in the VRAM with 6GB on the GTX 1060 blowing up into a huge 12GB on the RTX 3060, both on a 192-bit memory bus with the GTX 1060 rocking 336GB/sec of memory bandwidth the new RTX 3060 boasts 360GB/sec memory bandwidth.

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Inno3D marketing

You can read all about the card on the official Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED website.

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Detailed Look

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If you can find these on a retail shelf somewhere, the packaging looks great.

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Inno3D uses a pretty large cooler for the mid-range GeForce RTX 3060, with plastic used -- the style and design is like the other iCHILL X3 cards but I dig it. It has an interesting backplate as well, but there other higher-end coolers on the market. Don't let the cooler fool you though, because underneath you have some great RTX 3060 performance.

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It's pretty thick, where I would've preferred the same iCHILL X3 design but with a dual-slot cooler... that would be nice.

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You need just a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, which is a big highlight of the card as other custom RTX 3060 cards require a second 8-pin connector.

Test System Specs

Latest upgrade:

Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

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I've got a new upgrade inside of my GPU test bed before my change to a next-gen test bed, where I will be preparing for NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere graphics cards and AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

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Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

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Heaven - 1080p

Heaven benchmark

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

This is what you'd ideally be buying the GeForce RTX 3060 for: 1080p gaming. 60FPS is easy for AAA titles like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, or you can dive into high FPS 120-165FPS monitors and play esports games like Valorant, Apex Legends and Call of Duty with ease on the RTX 3060 at 1080p.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 119
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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 113
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

1440p gaming for the GeForce RTX 3060 is another source of strength, with AAA games running at 60FPS with a few details tweaked and once again Call of Duty, Valorant, Overwatch and other esports games should be able to hit 120FPS average with the right adjustments to in-game visual settings on the RTX 3060.

Overclocking also gains close to 10% here which is some nice free performance.

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 109
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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 118
Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 4013

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED Review 112
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

I don't recommend the GeForce RTX 3060 for 4K gaming but depending on the game you can hit 30FPS with Ultra detail and even 60FPS with Ultra detail. Enabling DLSS in games that support it -- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War for example, lets you get much closer to 4K on a mid-range card -- if you want to, that is.

Overclocking

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Out of the box the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED runs at around 1960MHz -- while the GPU sits at around 62C with the fans at around 36% or 1350RPM or so. It's pretty much silent for the most part if you've got your headphones or speakers on.

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When overclocked the card was topping out at around 2120MHz or so, while the GPU was sitting between 49-51C depending on the fans being at 80-100% if you don't want the noise levels cranked through the roof.

Power Consumption & Temps

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The temps on the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED are pretty damn good, with 62C under load out of the box and 51C when the fans are maxed out.

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The entire system power consumption of the Inno3D RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED inside of our AMD Ryzen 7 3800X GPU test bed is using up to 260W, and just 10W more when overclocked at up to 270W.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

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  • Great thermals: You're not going to need to worry about your Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED graphics card overheating -- at all. You can game all day and night and your card will have no issues with thermals.
  • A single 8-pin PCIe power connector: Inno3D requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector for its RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED graphics card where its competitors require another PCIe power connector.
  • 12GB of GDDR6 memory: This is a great amount of memory to have for the $329 MSRP that NVIDIA has set, but you won't find the card for that price unfortunately. Still, it's great to see mid-range cards with much more VRAM. Hopefully this means the Ampere refresh RTX 3070 has 16GB of GDDR6 memory and the Ampere refresh of the RTX 3080 has 20GB of GDDR6X memory.
  • Great HTPC graphics card: If you want all of the new Ampere GPU features that include HDMI 2.1 connectivity for high-res, high refresh rate monitors (4K 120Hz, etc) for a HTPC gaming rig then the GeForce RTX 3060 is a great buy. There's also AV1 decode abilities here, too.

What's Not

  • No price: Who knows what price you're going to see on the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED when you see it -- but it could be in the $500 range versus the $329 MSRP from NVIDIA and the usual 10-20% on top for a tuned custom variant.
  • Impossible to find: Good luck trying to find it.
  • 12GB of GDDR6 memory: This is going to be confusing to at least some people... the cheapest Ampere graphics card in the GeForce RTX 3060 has 12GB of GDDR6 meanwhile the flagship GeForce RTX 3080 has 10GB of GDDR6X memory and the GeForce RTX 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6.

Final Thoughts

It doesn't matter how good or bad the card is when it's impossible to buy... but the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED on its own, if it were easily available, is a good card.

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It's not the best, but if you really badly wanted a GeForce RTX 3060 and the Inno3D RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED was the only one you could buy... in this market I'd dive on it. In some markets these cards are going for at least $400 and upwards of $500 -- and in some cases, even more... all for an RTX 3060.

Right now NVIDIA is in an interesting position -- AMD has nothing to counter the GeForce RTX 3060 with until the Radeon RX 6700 and Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics cards. They're being unveiled on March 3 and will be made available later in the month... I guess. There's massive GPU shortages so they'll just fight each other with rock, paper, scissors except both of them are choosing paper (launch) every time.

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The single 8-pin PCIe power connector makes the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED stand out from the crowd, but other than that the RTX 3060 is a great choice for 1080p and 1440p gamers.

Performance

85%

Quality

90%

Features

90%

Value

N/A

Overall

88%

The Bottom Line

Inno3D has a custom GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED that is perfect for some next-gen 1080p and 1440p gaming with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

TweakTown award

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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