EVGA RTX 2060 KO Video Card Review and LN2 Overclocking

The EVGA RTX 2060 KO is a pretty amazing card.  It is smaller than most allowing it to fit into more builds and powerful enough to run most games at high settings with ease.  This card is also pretty special in that it is different than most RTX 2060 cards from a price and architecture standpoint. 

Most RTX 2060 GPUs are built from the TU106 chip which is the configuration designed for the RTX 2060 however the EVGA RTX 2060 KO we got features a TU104 chip indicating that it was basically a failed RTX 2080 or 2070 that has been reclaimed by disabling the broken parts of the GPU.  This enables NVIDIA to sell more chips and offer a discount to anyone willing to buy them.  As you can imagine EVGA is passing the savings on to the consumer with a very capable video card offered at an attractive price.

For the enthusiast that doesn’t really mean much as the chip is still at the RTX 2060 level but made from higher quality silicon. 

Before I started this interesting overclocking adventure I had the 2060 KO on the test bench playing Borderlands 3 and Deliver Us the Moon at high settings and never had an issue or noticed a drop in framerates.  The card delivered some amazing performance, cooled well and wasn’t that noisy.  In fact the D5 watercooling loop was louder than the GPU running full tilt.

In terms of overclocking the TU104 chip was pretty amazing offering a top speed of 2300Mhz under LN2 with a fully stable clock at 2280Mhz.  Unfortunately, EVGA limited this particular card to 170w with no option to push a power limit. That throttled my overclock to 2170Mhz on average.

To be honest I knew this card would be limted from the beginning.  It only featured a four phase VRM, smaller board design and no option to move the power limit above 100%.  Despite this I decided to have fun with the card anyway and see what it could to.  Some of the fun was finding a creative way to cool the card given its unique design.  I can thank one of my past overclocking friends for the idea which worked like a charm.

Despite the lackluster overclocking performance the KO card is still pretty amazing in that it delivers affordable performance in a smaller package allowing just about anyone to get on the RTX bandwagon.

Smaller form factor
Affordable RTX Performance
Dual Slot Cooler
Quiet Operation
Great Performance

Small cards get hot
Performance limited
Not the best choice for LN2 overclocking