The new SRhonyra RTX 3060 Low Profile Graphics Card, available on Newegg for $495.59 USD, is a GeForce RTX 3060 12GB graphics card that isn't really built for PC gaming. It's a low-profile, single-slot design that differs from most RTX 3060 GPUs on the market, mainly because it doesn't feature a PCIe power connector. The 70-watt TDP makes this a bus-powered RTX 3060, a considerable reduction from the 170W of every other GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.
Naturally, this makes it more of an entry-level GPU for running local LLMs, even though the product description mentions ray-tracing and DLSS for PC gaming. This custom bus-powered GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GPU design looks similar to one recently spotted on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili. There, we learned that the 70-75W power limit required a shunt mod to fool the GPU into accepting the lower power draw.
As for performance, with that model's GPU clock speeds barely crossing 900MHz, the card's 3DMark Time Spy score failed to match the GeForce GTX 1060. According to the SRhonyra RTX 3060's specs, its Boost Clock speed is listed at 1320MHz, still substantially below the 1777MHz reference spec; however, with 100W less to work with, gaming performance will undoubtedly suffer.
Again, with its low-profile design, blower-fan cooling, and no PCIe power connector requirement, the SRhonyra RTX 3060 Low Profile Graphics Card makes more sense as an AI GPU. SRhonyra notes that it's ideal for running 7B-13B parameter LLMs, and from what we can see, the 12GB of GDDR6 memory maintains the same 15 Gbps speed as standard RTX 3060 cards. The slim design also means that you could pair two SRhonyra RTX 3060 Low Profile Graphics Cards for even more AI performance.
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Can this bus-powered RTX 3060 run safely from a motherboard slot alone without extra power cables?
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It's an interesting design, and even though the $496 price point is definitely way too high for a mainstream 8nm Ampere-era GPU from 2021, it reflects the current memory-crisis-and-shortage pricing affecting the wider industry. Even with NVIDIA producing GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GPUs as a way to offset the issue, with standard models starting from $460, gamers are better off looking for a GeForce RTX 5060 at the same price, as even with 8GB of VRAM, its 1080p gaming performance sits a lot higher than the aging RTX 3060.
