COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC Review

Introduction

We don't get to see enough reviews of COLORFUL products so it's happy days when another COLORFUL graphics card arrives on my doorstep, with today bringing the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC 12G-V graphics card.

It's the third custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card that I've reviewed now, after the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 GAMING X TRIO and Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 iCHILL X3 RED graphics cards. COLORFUL brings in a unique look with an Iron Man-style Arc Reactor-infused style that makes it stand out from the custom RTX 3060s that you can't buy.

The last COLORFUL graphics card I reviewed was the iGame GeForce RTX 3080 Vulcan OC 10G-V which I loved, and think is one of -- if not the best RTX 3080 on the market. It's an awesome card, but the new iGame RTX 3060 Advanced OC is lower in the rung on the iGame family, but still rocks a solid RTX 3060 at its core.

What we have here is a stylish mid-range GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card done in COLORFUL's style -- love it or hate it -- the card will be virtually impossible to buy worldwide. We're in the greatest GPU shortage of all time, and it sucks.

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.

COLORFUL marketing

You can read all about the card on the official COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC 12G-V website.

Detailed Look

I think COLORFUL has some of the best packaging you can get, even for its mid-range iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC graphics card. If you are a box collector -- I am... don't worry -- then the COLORFUL retail packaging will look great in your growing collection.

COLORFUL doesn't go too over-the-top with its iGame RTX 3060 Advanced OC graphics card, but the Iron Man style of the card with an Arc Reactor-like design does look ace. When it's lit up from the RGB lighting inside of your gaming PC, the card really pops.

It's a pity the same style isn't applied to the back, which is kind of plain.

It's a near triple-slot card which I'm not a fan of, there's no reason we can't have thinner dual-slot RTX 3060 cards.

Another thing is the dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors, most of the custom RTX 3060s have them but I feel like it's a little overkill for a mid-range card to require this.

The usual 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.1 connector are on the back for I/O, but COLORFUL also includes a physical Turbo button that enables the built-in OC.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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.

3DMark TimeSpy

Heaven - 1080p

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.

Benchmarks - 1080p

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.

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.

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.

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.

1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Performance falls in line with all of the other GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards at 1080p, where it will easily give you 1080p 60FPS in all of the latest games with a few adjustments to in-game details. You can hit high FPS in esports titles if you had a 1080p 120-165Hz panel for games like Valorant, Apex Legends and Call of Duty with ease on the RTX 3060 at 1080p.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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.

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.

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.

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.

1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

1440p 60FPS gaming is also achievable for the GeForce RTX 3060 depending on the game, but if you're looking to game on something like Call of Duty, etc then you're going to need to dial down some settings to drive over 100FPS. Thankfully you've got the Ampere-powered DLSS technology here which will also help out at 1440p.

Benchmarks - 4K

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Out of the box the COLORFUL iGame RTX 3060 Advanced OC ticks along at around 1920MHz while running at 62C -- not bad at all, you can't ask for much better than this.

The most that I could squeeze out of the card was 2115MHz or so before it began to artifact and/or crash.

Power Consumption & Temps

Power consumption on the COLORFUL iGame RTX 3060 Advanced OC falls in line with other custom RTX 3060 graphics cards, with the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X test bed consuming a total of 260W at stock settings and up to 270W when overclocked.

The card also runs nice and cool, at just 62C under load at stock settings and then under 55C with the fans maxed out.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

• Great Iron Man-inspired style: If you are an Iron Man fan or even an Avengers fan, then the Arc Reactor-style design that COLORFUL has used on the card will be right up your alley.
• Physical TURBO button: This is seriously cool, and while it is mostly useless as I would use and probably recommend manually overclocking the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC -- it's cool to see a physical TURBO button on a graphics card in 2021.
• 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.

What's Not

• No price: Who knows what price you're going to see on the COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC 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 -- this is the same thing I said in my review on the Inno3D 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

At the end of the day you're getting a great custom GeForce RTX 3060 with the custom job COLORFUL has done with its iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC. The Iron Man style design with the Arc Reactor-inspired aesthetic looks great in a gaming PC... if you could buy the card that is.

COLORFUL has some good OC headroom with the iGame RTX 3060 Advanced OC that gives you a nice boost in performance, while staying quiet for the most part during gaming and benchmark loads. I don't even want to mention the price because who knows what price you're going to find this card for, if it even exists in your market.

You can't buy COLORFUL graphics cards in the US or Europe, they're only available in select markets. But if you can find the card in your market then you won't regret it. A great upgrade from an older-gen GeForce GTX 1060 or even the older-again-gen GeForce GTX 960.

AMD will strike back with its Radeon RX 6700 XT to combat the GeForce GTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 in the next couple of weeks that will make the RTX 3060 an even more interesting topic of discussion.