The Card

MSI's RTX 2060 Super Gaming X looks identical to the same model without the "Super", which of course make economical sense. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate. Dimensions of the card are 25x13 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.4 ports. Compared to the Founders Edition, the USB-C connector has been removed, probably to reduce cost.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz with a single cable or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.

At CES 2019, NVIDIA announced that all their graphics cards will now support VESA Adaptive Sync (aka FreeSync). While only a small number of FreeSync monitors have been fully qualified with G-SYNC, users can enable the feature in NVIDIA's control panel regardless of whether the monitor is certified or not.


The board uses a single 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.


The GeForce RTX 2060 Super does not support SLI.

Disassembly

MSI's cooler uses four heatpipes.


Once the main heatsink has been removed, a second cooling plate becomes visible, which provides cooling for the memory chips. In the first picture, note how the thermal pad on the coils doesn't cover all of them; I haven't noticed any negative effects because of it, but still found it worth mentioning.


A third cooling plate ensures VRM temperatures don't go too high.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.