Gigabyte GTX 1060 D5 6GB Video Card Review

Gigabyte rarely releases a video card without including a custom cooler and this card is no exception.  The card comes fitted with the Windforce 2X dual fan heatsink with a black and orange color scheme.  The fans feature the Windforce blade design for better airflow and if you look carefully you will notice that they do not spin in the same direction.  The fan on the left spins in the normal direction while the right most fan has its blades reversed.  Maybe this is to control fan induced harmonics or just to look cool, that is difficult to know.

Flipping the card around you will find a very plain aluminum backplate to help protect and reinforce the PCB.  It also helps to remove excess heat and generally looks cool. 

Video output is comprised of a single DVI-D video output combined with a three Display Port connections and a single standard HDMI.  These connections are pretty standard across all Pascal based graphics cards and allow you flexibility in how you connect displays and/or a VR Headset.

RGB lighting effects have become very popular over the past year and the Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce 2X cooler features two RGB lights across the top edge of the cooler.  The first is behind the Gigabyte logo and by default will cycle though the RGB spectrum.  Next to that you will find a “Fan Stop” light that mimics the color of the Gigabyte logo but will turn off when the fans are enabled. 

Power is comprised of a single 8pin PCI Express power connector and you will find no SLI fingers on the PCB. 

Yes, it is a sad day when a correctly priced mid-range graphics card doesn’t feature that one technology marketed as a future proof upgrade path for gamers on a budget.  Keep in mind the lack of SLI is across all GTX 1060's so we can blame NVidia for that one.