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In a very similar fashion to other cards we have seen from MSI, the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G ships in a dark box, with a large image of the card itself visible on the front.
On the back of the box, MSI highlights key features of the card and the 7th generation Twin Frozr cooler.
As for the accessory bundle, MSI continues to bundle two coasters and a Lucky the Dragon cartoon with its graphics cards, while we also find a quick start guide, driver disk and ‘thank you' note in the box.
Moving onto the card itself, if you saw our recent review of MSI's RTX 2060 Gaming Z then you will instantly recognise this GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X. That's because the plastic shroud of the card appears to be identical to the RTX 2060 model, with the same black and gunmetal grey colour scheme and the same angular sections around the fans. It's certainly not ugly, and the colour neutral design also means this won't clash in a colour coordinated build.
The two fans are MSI's Torx 3.0 models, the same we have seen on all of MSI's latest cards – including the 2080 Ti Lightning Z. These measure 85mm (blade-to-blade) and have a fan-stop mode where the fans stop spinning during low loads.
The card is also quite compact, measuring in at 247 x 127 x 46 mm. That means it is only slightly thicker than a standard dual-slot card, while being less than 25cm long makes it smaller than average by 2019 standards.
The front side of the card is home to the MSI logo, and this is also one of the RGB zones on the card. The ‘GeForce GTX' branding is also printed on the side of the card's shroud, just to the right of the MSI logo.
As for the backplate, this carries over the same brushed metal finish we have seen from MSI's other Gaming-series cards. It's a lovely silver look and I think it just looks very classy. There's no RGB on the backplate, with just the MSI logo printed on the right hand side.
The card only requires a single 8-pin PCIe connector for power, while display outputs are pretty standard with 3x DisplayPort 1.4, and 1x HDMI 2.0b.
Taking the card apart is very easy – it's just four screws that need to be removed from the backplate. After that, the heatsink will come free and we get a look at the PCB. It is mostly covered by a die-cast metal frame that acts as a heatsink for the VRAM chips and the VRM, while also providing some structural rigidity to the card as a whole.
Once that is removed, we get a look at the bare PCB. Bear in mind that there is no Founders Edition GTX 1660 Ti so we don't have a point of comparison with a reference design, but MSI has used 4+2 phases for the power delivery and I would guess that will be pretty standard for GTX 1660 Ti cards – but we will have to see.
Elsewhere, the GDDR6 memory comes from Micron, labelled ‘8UA77D9WCR'. The new TU116 GPU is also visible, with the die measuring 284 mm². Interestingly, Nvidia has said there are no ‘A' and ‘non-A' versions of TU116 – meaning there are no restrictions on what GPUs can be sold with a factory overclock. It will be interesting to see if this has any affect on the overclocking capabilities of other cards we get for review.
Lastly, the heatsink is a compact unit with a single aluminium fin stack. It uses three nickel-plated copper heatpipes, each measuring 6mm – so it's clearly not a high-end cooling solution. That being said, this 1660 Ti only has a 130W TDP anyway, so the cooler doesn't need to be that sophisticated. In any case, we will reserve judgement until we get to temperature testing later in the review.
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