Nvidia RTX 3050 Review ft. Gigabyte and Palit

Palit's RTX 3050 StormX OC ships in a white box, with ‘3050' lettering visible on the front. On the back, a much of key features are listed in multi-lingual text.

The only included accessory is a basic user manual.

Looking at the card itself, the design is identical to the RTX 3060 StormX we looked at last year. That means we find a glossy, black plastic shroud with little in the way of design frills. A single 100mm fan dominates the front of the card.

In terms of the dimensions, the StormX OC is absolutely tiny, measuring in at 170 x 125 x 40mm. It should fit in basically any case on the market.

The side of the shroud is home to the GeForce RTX and Palit logos, but there is no backplate so we get a direct look at the back of the PCB.

Power is supplied by a single 8-pin PCIe connector, while we find three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 video outputs.

What strikes me most about the PCB is just how small it really is – it extends no further past the PCIe retention slot, so realistically I don't think it could be any smaller at all. Palit is also using a 4+2+1 VRM setup, with four phases feeding the GPU. We can also note four 2GB GDDR6 modules from Micron, carrying the D9ZPM model code.

As for the heatsink, this appears identical to the one Palit used for the RTX 3060 StormX OC. That means a single aluminium fin-stack, but with three heatpipes – two more than the Gigabyte Eagle. Both the GPU die and VRAM modules contact with a single baseplate.

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