MSI's GeForce GTX 1060 6GT OC is a cost-optimized custom-design variant of the GTX 1060 that still comes with 6 GB VRAM. NVIDIA launched a lower-priced GTX 1060 3 GB earlier this week, and we'll have a review on that soon. MSI decided to get rid of all the bells and whistles that are usually found on custom-design cards to be able to offer the card at NVIDIA's promised MSRP pricing of $249. MSI did still manage to squeeze in a 40 MHz overclock for a 2% performance improvement. While not much, it is pretty much the same as on other, more expensive custom-design variants which come with around a 3% boost to performance. This makes the card 12% faster than the Radeon RX480 and a few percent faster than the R9 Fury and GTX 980. NVIDIA's next-fastest, the GTX 1070, is 30% faster, but much more expensive. MSI should have overclocked their memory chips for an extra performance boost. In our manual testing, we managed 2370 MHz, up from 2002 MHz, so it's not like the memory chips can't take it.

For the GTX 1060 OC, MSI has engineered a new cooler that is not part of the company's famous TwinFrozr lineup. Under the hood, it is a really simple design with just a single heatpipe that runs double the length of a typical one. Also, the GPU makes direct contact with that heatpipe for improved heat transfer. Thanks to the low heat output of NVIDIA's GTX 1060 GPU, this approach is still a viable option. The card actually delivers very decent temperatures of around 70°C under load, but stays very quiet, with only 31 dBA at most. MSI's GTX 1060 Gaming X does much better here of course, but also costs $40 more. Even though idle fan noise is low, the card is lacking the highly popular idle-fan-off feature that's standard on nearly every new card these days. What's also not included is a backplate, but the low price is a perfectly reasonable excuse for that.

Just like on the reference design, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient. MSI's card only uses a little more power than the reference design, which is offset by higher performance out of the box, resulting in pretty much the same energy efficiency as the reference design, which is not so common these days since custom designs usually trade some power efficiency for higher performance. Unlike other board vendors, MSI has chosen to keep the 6-pin power input of the reference board, which is reasonable given their card only draws 130 W at worst. In my opinion, the board limit is set a bit too low at 125 W; a higher setting would have provided a little bit of extra performance while still staying well below the 150 W limit of the power input configuration.

The real highlight of the MSI GTX 1060 6GT OC is its price. It's available online for $249, which makes it the cheapest GTX 1060 6 GB available, only sharing this spot with one model each from EVGA and PNY. In my opinion, price is the most important metric for a card in the GTX 1060 performance class. MSI delivers here, which conclusively helps in overlooking the lack of such minor points as the idle fan-off feature, memory OC, and a backplate. Compared to the NVIDIA Founders Edition, this card wins in every metric. So unless you absolutely want the sexy edgy metal cooler of the FE and are willing to pay a premium for it, the MSI GTX 1060 OC should be on your shopping list. I'd probably also pick it over most other GTX 1060 variants because of its good pricing. For that fight between the GTX 1060 and RX 480, the card is also an excellent contender, offering better price-performance than AMD's card, better efficiency/noise and better OC potential. The only exception, if you can draw conclusions based on what few games apply, or just want to believe, is DirectX 12 and Vulkan performance, which might be better on AMD's side of things.