With this generation of graphics cards, Palit has transitioned their lineup to use a triple-slot cooler instead of the dual-slot configuration that's found on most other cards. This promises better temperatures and lower fan noise, which is a great idea for especially the GTX 1060 because it doesn't support SLI, making the fact that a third slot is used a non-issue. Also, most motherboards have plenty of spacing between their PCIe slots, so you won't even lose access to the second PCIe x16 slot on your motherboard.

Out of the box, Palit's card comes with a large overclock to 1620 MHz on its base clock, which is higher than most other GTX 1060 custom variants that have been released so far. This clock increase turns into an average in-game clock of 1958 MHz, which is similar to the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X that's just running at a base clock of 1569 MHz - NVIDIA Boost 3.0 takes care of the rest and brings both cards to similar performance levels. Out of the box, the Palit GTX 1060 Super JetStream runs 3% faster than the NVIDIA GTX 1060 reference design (Founders Edition), which is less than what we are used to from the reference-to-custom transition. The underlying reason for that is that the reference design does not suffer from thermal throttling, a first for NVIDIA in many years. It will be interesting to see where other custom designs will end up performance-wise. I do wish Palit had overclocked the memory, which would have provided an additional performance increase; the memory chips can certainly take it, which our manual overclocking section confirms.

Palit's large triple-slot cooler works well, and as mentioned before, I see no issues with its large size because SLI is not available on the GTX 1060; the only problem would crop up in small-form-factor cases since those usually only have up to two slots for the graphics card. Palit's cooler works well in terms of cooling performance, reaching slightly lower temperatures than the NVIDIA reference design. In heavy gaming, the card reaches a quiet 32 dBA, which is lower than the Founders Edition, but nowhere close to the 28 dBA we saw on the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X, which achieves this feat with only a dual-slot cooler and runs cooler than the Palit card at the same time. Palit has also included the idle-fan-off feature we love so much since it provides a perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, and even light gaming. Also included is a metal backplate, which improves the card's overall looks and protects it against damage during handling.

Palit's card ticks a lot of other checkboxes. It, for example, has a dual BIOS, which will protect you against a failed BIOS flash, and the PCB comes with voltage measurement and tuning points for those modders who are not afraid of a soldering iron. Software-controlled RGB lighting is included too, and it can be disabled if that's the color you like best.

Just like on the reference design, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. Palit's card only uses a tiny bit 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, Palit has chosen to keep the 6-pin power input of the reference design, which is reasonable given the card only draws 140 W at worst. It does potentially affect customer perception, though, since many think that when it comes to 6-pin vs 8-pin, 8-pin makes the better card, which is often not the case, especially for the GTX 1060 with its low power draw.

Unfortunately, Palit's cards are not available in the United States; in Europe, the card retails at the GTX 1060 Founders Edition pricing of €319. We converted this number to $299 for our calculations. Given the numbers in this review, I'm convinced the Palit GTX 1060 Super JetStream is definitely a better buy than the Founders Edition. However, when compared to the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X, which retails at $290, the MSI card is the clear winner thanks to lower noise and lower temperatures while still offering similar performance at lower pricing. If Palit manages to get their card's pricing down by 8-10%, the card would become a great option. Also, the company has the regular GTX 1060 JetStream in their lineup, which is cheaper and only differs by its GPU clock that is at the NVIDIA reference.