Lots of news coming out ~tomorrow from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, so we'll be switching over to news coverage for a bit. Keep an eye out for that. If you want to see this GPU in its natural habitat, check out our two part review of the Dell G5 5000 prebuilt: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4DMg6hUudHE.html and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5N7aYtkzKJc.html Back-order a GN Volt Modmat here to guarantee getting one next round: store.gamersnexus.net/products/modmat-volt-large
Its why when I got a used Dell RX570 over a year ago in the last mining crash I bought a case with a side panel case fan...To pump extra air over mine.
why put copper in your heatsink anyways, with its weaksauce thermal conductivity I won't hold my breath for a diamond heatsink, but has anyone ever produced one in silver?
13:37 The pressure map overlaid into the GPU is exactly what I've wanted to see for the longest time for CPU cooler reviews. Would be great if you guys could start doing this.
Agreed. Overlaying the pressure map on top of a cpu or gpu die helps to better illustrate why it may be good or bad. Would also be neat for the cpu one to show the actual dies underneath the heatsink since that's where good pressure is critical for modern cpus.
This is just an example of how Dell couldn't figure out a way to make the GPU proprietary and unable to be reused in another PC, so they did the next best thing and made it so cheap that you wouldn't WANT to use it in another PC.
@@wes9451 100+ temperatures on the memory will increase the chance of it breaking, which could be prevented by them spending a few more dollars on cooling, but of course they cheaped out on everything...
Not so sure about that. At least the AMD FX could be equipped with a good enough cooler. Can that even be found for this card? I think they took the cake on that, as well (which is impressive imo, just not in a good way).
@@pauliusgruodis137 I don't think this perception is accurate. 9 series FX were very hot, but the FX8370 is the coolest chip I've ever owned (and I still use it). 15 degrees C on idle with a single 120mm fan tower cooler. My ryzen 3800x with a massive 140mm dual tower cooler, runs at 40 degrees on idle. FX absolutely trashes zen 2 thermal performance from my experience.
Yeah, but let's be realistic: a portion of them probably won't even last that long. And when they don't, customers will still get the run-around from Dell basically saying that they won't honor their own warranty. *_Because it's Dell._*
these PCs are typically good for medium to large places where they need a lot of computers at similar specs and would rather pay a small monthly fee for support rather than having a whole IT department. if one breaks, put in a spare nd send the broken one back to dell. that would be faster than fixing them in house. the problem here is they are selling these shit machines to regular consumers and trying to deceive them.
we're talking about Dell. they're figure out a way to make silicon out of cheap chineseium grade z 'plastics' it'll be put together with air and fake glue. they'll also put the Alienware logo on it and charge 1000 dollars
Guy has something against Dell. It's basic card, but again you don't need some fancy cooling for 1660 Super. 70 degrees Celsius is ok for this price range, and 110 Celsius on GDDR6 modules is bogus. DDR6 could endure at most 105 Celsius on T-junction, after that you get artifacts and there were none on this card. This channel probably has some agreement with companies selling super-duper OC versions of same cards for much more money, therefore this much spitting on basic models.
@@aleksazunjic9672 they are almost certainly getting those numbers from the boards thermal reporting. Even if it's not 100% accurate those temps are awful and will just lead to early GPU failure after a year or two of use. Most other systems in this price range have proper cooling solutions so just being a "basic" card isn't really an excuse.
It looks like you can just remove shroud completely, it doesn't hold anything, fans are screwed directly to the heatsink and heatsink is screwed to a PCB.
Thats because the cooler switched from blow to suck, and now its pulling heat from the case, into the cooler, and spreading it all around like a bad adult novelty experience.
honestly the heatsink on that thing looks like the intel stock cpu heatsink. Edit:wrote this when the video started playing, didnt realize it was Steve went straight for that lmao.
There's nothing more satisfying than seeing Steve talk about how bad a product is, and then watch him shifting in complete silence when one would have been expected to comment on redeeming features. Your silence speaks the loudest.
I was actually looking for this exact card so I could use it in a specialized system (I'd need to replace the cooling system for the project as it stands, so I want the crappiest thing possible) and they're still INCREDIBLY OVERPRICED.
I, for one, don't mind the info coming out being negative even for several uploads in a row. I enjoy bad products being torn apart (literally and figuratively) when they deserve to be.
@@すどにむ Not even close to the point. It's about holding these companies accountable. If they produce crap, then the review needs to say it's crap and hold them accountable to the DIY community. It's not about loving negative content. I love positive content for truly good components, just as I love negative reviews on bad components. It's that simple and not about emotions.
I don't mind it at all either, but as a media outlet like this one you do have to be careful not to become a rage-factory. Rage gets clicks, but GN doesn't need to pander, and people will stop taking you seriously too if you're just mad all the time.
Have only been watchin' GN for about a year, but had a "holy fuck" moment when I recently watched this version of Steve while I was stoned; it's a whole 'nother level.
Well just like a disappointed parent, Steve wants to be positive at least once in a while but often can't find a legitimate reason to be positive. That's why they included that EKWB AIO into the video lineup because it was something to be positive about. At this point Steve is desperate to review a good product because lately not much has been very positively reviewed. And it's not like he can review different versions of the RTX3080 or RX6800XT because nobody will watch those videos as there is no availability. Just look at Hardware Unboxed lately. Their monitor reviews now get over twice as many views as their GPU reviews.
This one doesn't deserve the mod mat or GN toolkit. "We're doing this today with Jay's automotive tools and we're using Paul's post pie kitchen for the teardown"
" the GPU doesn't look like much-------Clang!" Damn that was way too perfect. Actually that looks like a CPU cooler look there that's a cut out for ram! Or at least it looks it. Damn that's beyond cheap!
"This is what the bottom of the barrel looks like." - That is quite a bold statement. You always find new bottoms that you never ever really imagined it exists...
That opening really hurts just from seeing it, such a well thought out illustration for the value of the product lmao (Edit: used german spelling for for)
I mean i secured a normal 1660 for around $220 just right before the graphics card market bubble blowing up, was thinking about getting a mini sized gpu but after reading about bad performance reviews i decided against it. Good thing i did.
@@catnip202xch. if you use gpu that not need cable power then it is okay to use the mini version, but if it use use cable power you should consider using gpu that have good heatsink
"We wondered what the bottom of the barrel looks like. This is it. This is what bottom looks like. There is no lower." He's going to be so disappointed when he discovers "scraping of the barrel".
nope... noname prebuilds with fake cards are worse :D And they are pretty common at ebay, especially since this low aviability and high prices of GPUs you can make with such scam good money on casual users. Damn, i even felt like im a scammer myself as i sold my loved GTX 1070 a while ago... paid for it i think about 360€ (brandnew in 2016...) and sold it about a month ago for 400€ since im using a cheap RTX 2080 notebook now until proper GPUs are aviable for a fair price.
I was even chatting already with someone who did this and i knew it because i saw already on the pictures it isnt a legit GPU. After a while texting with multiple accounts accusing him of selling fake components with the PC this guy finally admit he is using fake GPUs he even bought INTENTIONALLY for this reason. He deleted his account and inserats and with a new account all systems went "online" again, but with tiny differences: The specs he listed in description were correct, at least for the data most people have no clue about (like the GPU name TU-xxx, Gxx and so) but he still tried to sell the parts as they are shown in the faked vBIOS. Others buy a bunch of cheap OEM (office) PCs with at least a "dedicated" (ultra low end) GPU and resell them as "Gaming PCs" for like 2-4x the price... whats wrong with the people, i dont get it... Even dare to say "all new AAA titles are playable".... playable? at 10-20 fps with heavy stutter? for real? and 30 fps is "high refresh rate" gaming or what?
He didn't yet realize that barrel is at ground level and CAN be thrown down a well. Then, at that point, beyond the bottom of the barrel there will still be the bottom of the well. And ofc you can still dig that bottom to go lower, but then we will be dealing with a GPU plugged on a wall outlet, I guess lol
We're excited that this coming week has some positive stuff lined-up. Found a couple good CPU coolers that are promising at their price points. Found one good pre-built system that might be good. Definitely need the break, and probably the audience does too.
@@GamersNexus just wait I’m sure the prebuilt will catch fire or be the start of skynet. With your luck on prebuilts I’m sure it will turn out to be terrible! Dont give up hope yet!
I just want to say that I truly enjoy and appreciate all the hard work you guys do. I have already made a few purchases to support your channel and will continue to do so. I can't wait to see all the amazing things Steve and Team will be able to do in the new building!
Gotta say as someone with an engineering background it's interesting to see how cheap you can make a GPU and still function inspec as such. I know this might sound silly but the amount of engineering done to make a GTX 1660 Super that just works and nothing more is impressive. The amount of thinking in terms of dollars in order to build this so it's as cheap as possible is pretty good. Dell made this GPU to last 1 year and nothing more which is why they cut costs anywhere they could.
I actually own one of those damn things was ok but my FX-8350 was *8* cores and I then got a Ryzen5 2600 and was like hope the less cores doesn't hurt too much then BLAMMMMMMMM I used the new one and knew from that day my beloved FX-8350@4.6Ghz was a permanent pornhub PC from now on.
Sadly I think these videos are a bit... unbalanced. Yes, it is possible to spend $4 more on cooling solution. It is fine. The increase in price wouldn't be $4, but the profit margins of any distributor and retail should be on top of it, also their own margin. Of course with increased price you would have increased credit card fees, increased costs of warranty (due to replacement parts), etc. so the price of the build would go up a bit more. Of course they can also improve CPU cooler, add case fans, etc. but as we add a lot of items to the list, these costs would add up. But not only in costs, but also it would add to weight, and all the forces originating from moving weight. Of course mounting hardware for your GPU and more would have to designed to deal with increased forces, or you would see a lot of damaged on arrival hardware, like you expect from some system integrators. And sooner or later that weight would be thrown away, for lots of reasons. What would you get? We see some competition, that is built from off the shelf components, yet it often arrives broken, sometimes with loose screws, etc. and often turn to ewaste anyway. This is supposed to be a budget build. A build where their job is to cut the costs, and sell you something that is compatible with your requirements at the lowest price possible for them. The market for these budget builds aren't for hobbyist, enthusiasts, etc. but people who might need a gaming PC for short term (maybe due lockdown, etc), and when a lot less people will need a PC the worst budget systems with gaming potential will turn to ewaste anyway. But they will turn into less ewaste as there are less materials used on them. Their propertiary form factor not only prevents reuse but reduces the risk of shipping damage. They try to reduce the loads on some components, they want a system you can start without opening it to remove packaging. They prefer if all the junk antivirus, driver updater, etc. apps the target audience tends to install comes from them, and they can easily support the system, as the core target audience needs that support and that is where they are trying to upsell, where they are trying to lock you in into support contracts. OEMs like Dell, ASUS, hp, etc. has the ability to almost full customize their designs for a specific purpose and to save all the costs others would normally spend on unwanted features. It is true for Apple too. But the moment you need something more, something different, etc. these optimizations will work against you, and will make these OEM options worse for you.
Dell has always been the most underwhelming when it comes to hardware, let it be specs or design, but they charge for a higher than average price just for their brand name, which doesn't have much credits left at this point. They also destroyed Alienware by continuously cutting corners everywhere for years.
This is what I can't understand. I've bee around computing for 35+ years and in Dell's entire existence I've never heard good things. I know no-one that recommends them, how are they still around?
@@Nicksanders99 lobbing and getting into government contracts... My company has a 5 year free RMA & maintenance agreement... That means for us 5 years of $0 expense in office computers abd laptops
I think Dell mostly thrives on the enterprise and government sectors. I have no idea what percentage of their market is direct to consumer these days, but it can't be high. In terms of enterprise, they make a pretty decent product at a reasonably low cost. It'll last the service life of the equipment, and then some. I have no complaint with their ultra-vanilla tiny desktops, monitors, servers, and so on. The service contracts have always been perfectly adequate. I don't think there's anything they can do to move the needle to a higher tier without disproportionate expense, when the highest factor is "how easy is this to deploy and maintain?" and "how cheap can we buy them?"
@@Nicksanders99 I used to work I.T for the Government 10 years ago, the entire state was outfitted with Dell shitbox systems including schools, I believe they still have the contract there. Schools at the time also had a thing where for a small fee every student could get alocated a laptop, they were also Dell. I distinctly remember the amount of Dell 2100 laptop screens I had to replace every week being ludicrous, the back part of the lid was made of rubber and students with a backpack full of books would constantly crush the screen through the lid on top of the destructive types that just broke them for the hell of it.
I'd be interested in seeing this card 'improved'. Fixed as in - Slap on some thermal pads on the Vram, and the other bits that usually have it, take away the shroud, apply some.. Better thermal paste and.. somehow improve the mounting pressure? Is that even possible? You could even call it 'Dellving into the barrel 2: Improving Dell's bullshit.'
Even Nvidia should be concerned here, that this could harm their brand image if these absolutely garbage Gtx/Rtx cards are roaming around, particularly with ill informed pre-built buyers.
@@fuckoffyou There is such a thing as brand reputation. If the memory module overheats and dies, that can actually reflect on Nvidia too, not just Dell. There’s all kinds of examples where a big brand like Nike, Coke or something else will drop an athlete or celebrity sponsorship because of some public controversy involving said athlete or celebrity. Brand image is a big deal.
At the moment it doesn't matter, GPU's are so hard to get / expensive they'll sell out regardless. If they cared about brand image they would prevent their resellers charging above RRP. I can understand 3rd party stores and places like Amazon & Ebay charging more, but when the main resellers are scalping its just ridiculous.
@@danielsatko- You are factually correct but you are missing the point. People who buy pre-built PCs and laptops do not often have as much knowledge. They can associate dying/defective parts with a brand just because it's there. This could work both ways, for example if Nvidia made defective chips that tend to die and sold them to Dell to use in PCs/Laptops then the customer might think "Oh, Dell sucks" when it is NOT Dell's fault, and in this case if the graphics card overheats the memory and dies then the customer might think "Oh, Nvidia graphics card sucks" when it is NOT Nvidia's fault. There is however, a degree of responsibility for every company to ensure that such unjust damage to reputation does not happen. Nvidia could easily have a "spec" requirement for anyone who buys their chips just to set a reasonable minimum for quality. It's kind of like why software has system requirements, so you don't blame the software if it's not their fault. BMW does not tell you it's okay to mix sand with your engine oil, why should Nvidia be okay with this garbage implementation of their chip?
00:24 the clang and that shrug are just killing me. I can simultaneously see Steve's soul being sucked out of his body and the fact that he seems to be enjoying it after all the pre-build videos recently.
Thank you for making a 20 minute video instead of your usual 30 minute videos. I enjoyed the 20 minute one quite a bit more, the pacing was faster, all the information I needed was there.
That cooler (minus the shroud) looks fairly similar to other Dell heatsinks on server parts, my guess is that they reused an existing design and just adapted it to add a fan and shroud. Remove the shroud and you get a design philosophy that seems to mostly fit the server parts design - VRMs and other parts in servers relying on high case airflow to cool instead of using heatsinks, with the PCIe bracket well perforated for airflow egress. Further adding to the possibility that it's a modified server design - the shroud look pretty much like an afterthought to the heatsink with blocking air paths, while the PCB is the regular green color like on all their server parts
not at all - server part designs are streamlined - and while the PCB are green they resemble teh quality of teh cheapest of server parts aka entry level.
I would like to see if it could be improved cheaply. Maybe washers to improve the pressure, themal pads on the VRAM to make some contact with the fins and remove the shroud.
my first gaming pc was a Dell in the early 2000’s, how little I knew back then. $1500 and would barely play the game i bought it for, and that’s when I learned about their proprietary parts and inability to upgrade.
Dell engineer at an interview (translated into plain language) : We design our products for maximum performance and least cost. Why design something to run so cool that the components will last 10 years of continuous use? Our products run hot enough that they will perform well and last enough. Not doing so is a waste (of our money). If you have a problem, That's what the guarantee is for.
@@r34ztune11 Pretty much. Still the amount of work needed to be able to build something as cheap as possible and and last just enough the warranty period is over is pretty interesting.
I'd love to see Steve try to make this cooler decent. Remove the plastic shroud to allow exhaust, add pads for the memory and then see if thermals are still garbo.
When you get your new thermal test chamber, one thing that could perhaps be interesting to test might be to gradually raise the temperature and see at what point a card starts throttling. Not sure how time-consuming it would be, but I think it would be an interesting and quite practical metric of differentiation between different card/cooler designs. It seems this might start throttling at a much lower ambient temperature than more full-fledged 1660 Super models.
If Michael Dell didn't have such an overinflated ego, he'd take his name off the company, and return to the original name of PC's Limited. That name certainly fits better, given the limited quality of their products.
This brings back memories of the 2000s where such excuses for cooling were the norm leaving people to glue and strap on whatever improvements that were available. I would even do double sided cooling back in the day using fairly thick thermal pads and scrap heatsinks to cool vram and vrms from both sides of the pcb which worked out pretty well.
The VRM thermals were done in their standard test system... Inside the "computer" from Dell it would be cooking away at 120C unless you have powerfull AC running all the time...
Give it half a year and the card will cook itself everytime somebody is gaming on it for longer period of time. Whoever bought this PC has to go full Russia cooling and stick the whole PC into the fridge.
I would love to see you add thermal pads to the memory and then cut the shroud to allow better air flow. Then retest and see how/if that improves the temps.
To be completely fair ASUS Phoenix cards are just as bad. But yeah I too wish it could just have some budget 2 fan Gigabyte cooler or MSI cooler. Would be so much more reasonable.
I would love to see a follow-up video about how one might improve the card through very basic means. Specifically, I wonder if just some basic thermal pads would fix the memory temp issues...
That overlay on the die was amazing and what we need to see more of You should have "fixed" the cooler with a few washers, quality thermal paste and some tiny VRAM heatsinks and shown dell how to do it for cents more
Would be fun to see how much performance could be squeezed out of this card with some modding. Ie: filling in blank slots with appropriate components if possible, better cooling, ect...
@@stellarproductions8888 Yeah I noped out 6 months ago bought a basic laptop 3500u and vega 8. Been building computers for 28 years never seen anything close to this bs. Absolutely disgusting and now someone comes out with gigabyte 3080ti rumor @ $2600 usd!
@@alreed2434 So have I BTW, been building computers for 25 years for me. PC parts were always plentiful, prices may have sucked, but at least there was no void of inevitability as Agent Smith might say. I too had to cave. But if I have to cave, I'm going to do it right. So, before these machines disappeared like the fat guys lunch at the local DMV, I bought an MSI GE76-231 notebook, with a 8-core 16-thread I7 CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Nvidia 3080 GPU with 16GB VRAM, and a Samsung 1TB PCIE NVME SSD. 17" 300 hertz screen. Basically it takes one look at Dell and does a HULk smash.
Well you gotta give Dell props for taking the packaging of their own 2.5 " SSD's and scissor cutting a fan and shroud out of em. And to the mind boggling creativity of the Dell Graphics Dept for that eye catching "GeForce" livery.👏👏👏👏👏
I'm curious how much you could "fix" the design by spending $1 to $2 more. Take a dremel to the shroud, add the cheapest possible thermal pads to the memory, and maybe add some washers to the mounting bracket.
Companies are always applying the "Salami slice" method. A dollar here, a dollar there and you got yourself half a million. They don't care much about the quality as long as it works (unless you pay extra). And hey, there are always customers that would buy their stock in these days, aren't there. :D
the shroud is held by 3 small screws by the fan. Takes less than a hot minute to remove. Removing it did nothing to gpu temp. If you believe it helps then remove it, its so easy.
When I bought my gtx 1070 gigabyte day one at around $500 and at that time I thought it was very expensive. Oh poor naive me, compared to today it was very reasonable priced. Now that same gtx 1070 is more expensive today than it was when it first came out.
@@grahamfahlman if you live in a first world country you can still get away with used or lower tier hardware... here in the slums you'll literally pay a kidney for an i5 with a 1050
This series of videos is crazy, its very entertaining and hilarious to see how bad these systems and its components are... but always leaves me sad that these systems actually end up in peoples homes
6:30 The Airflow is not competley blocked off there, if the cooler is mounted, there is as much space between the shroud and the PCB as on the motherboard side. edit: at 11:58 you can see the actual gap. Could be bigger, but we've seen smaller ones.
i ran my 8350 at 5.0ghz at 1.51v for 7 years, playing every 1080 game i had on ultra with a gtx 1080. i have very little bad i can say about that chip, especially since i got mine secondhand and it STILL ran like a champ. i actually have that board (sabertooth 990FX) and chip mounted on my wall, shelf queen style
I upgraded from an FX-8350 to a Ryzen 3800X in January 2020 right before SHTF...I love the Ryzen, but that FX-8350 held up pretty well for the 7 years of service it gave me. It aged very well. I made a lot of money on that computer over 7 years doing work and played a ton of AAA gaming titles on it. It's still being used as a gaming PC right now by my son. That PC just keeps going.
I've worked with various Dell EMC machines (i.e., Precision Rack, Poweredge, etc.) and they fit together so nicely and actually appear to have... y'know... *care put into them.* It's a shame that never has and likely never will trickle down to any of their consumer devices to any extent. This is a case in point.
You know, this whole graphics card famine that we find ourselves in may have had some unintentional silver linings, have any of you noticed the improvement in Steve's delivery of his content ? He seems to be reveling in taking some of these cards and their makers down a peg or two. And he does it so well.
I recognise that colling "solution" anywhere - it's almost the same as in an ASUS Phoenix. The anemic heatsink does almost nothing of favour and the card ramps up in temperature after 5 minutes, I guess, without seeing the Thermal Testing yet. I know it because I had a 1660 of the Phoenix line. It was so bad I got tired and changed it for another Graphics Card 6 months after purchasing it.
The really sad part is, some poor engineer had to design this knowing full well it would be rubbish. Had the budget just been a few bucks more, had the team had a bit more resources they might have designed something decent. The "invisible hand of the market" all too often turns out to be a race to the bottom.
You guys need to do a “making it better” mod video for this card to see if it’s something that can be improved… I bought a DELL RX550 with similar issues that was going cheap some time ago - I added a 1U heatsink to make the cooling effective. And replaced the single fan with 2x 40mm fans :-)
