PNY GTX 1070 XLR8 OC 8GB Review

The PNY GTX 1070 XLR8 OC is a good GTX 1070 solution thanks to a worthwhile out-of-the-box overclock and an effective triple-fan cooling solution.

Out-of-the-box core speeds are up by around 100MHz (114MHz for the boost clock) against a reference-clocked GTX 1070 model. This gives PNY's card a small performance improvement in games that made it consistently faster than the GTX 1070 FE by a slight percentage. The XLR8 OC card didn't use much extra power, either, and system-wide energy usage stayed below 250W while running Unigine Heaven.

Overclocking performance was fine – we added 100MHz to the GPU core clock and took the memory up to 8.6Gbps effective. The actual core clock was only around 50MHz higher due to the way in which GPU Boost 3.0 scales the default frequency. But adding the increased memory bandwidth to the slightly higher core clock gave a performance boost of 6% in Gears of War 4 and 8% in Rise of the Tomb Raider. At those 4K resolutions, every additional ounce of performance is a good thing.

The XLR8 cooler is where PNY's card shows very good performance. Attention was paid to cooling of the MOSFETs and memory chips, which is always good to see. Temperatures were always held below 60°C in our testing and the fans never had to push past the 50% speed mark. This resulted in superb acoustic performance that makes the card highly likely to be quieter than one's chassis fans or AIO cooler.

With that said, the lack of a 0dB fan mode is disappointing from the perspective of moving towards complete elimination of fan noise under low load. Stopping the fans when they aren't required also has benefits such as improving the lifespan of their bearings and also reducing the amount of dust drawn into the heatsink fin array.

Another disappointment comes in the styling. We can't complain about the red and black heatsink as it is implemented well and its appeal is down to individual taste. But the decision to use red LEDs in today's world of RGB-everything is bizarre, especially when PNY is pricing the XLR8 OC as one of the premium GTX 1070 partner boards.

The PNY GTX 1070 XLR8 OC sells for around £455 in the UK. Amazon have the card listed at just over £470. This is towards the highest point for GTX 1070 pricing and PNY is going to have difficulty competing with faster out-of-the-box models from the likes of ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte or even EVGA's liquid-cooled GTX 1070 Hybrid solution. With that said, the strong performance of PNY's XLR8 cooler should not be ignored and the card's styling may appeal to certain buyers.

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Pros:

• XLR8 cooling solution delivers good performance with low load noise output.
• Inherent power efficiency from the GTX 1070 is retained, despite PNY's overclock.
• MOSFETs and memory chips are actively cooled by the large heatsink.
• Can boost over 1900MHz out of the box.
• Reference GTX 1070 PCB and similar dimensions – good for aftermarket cooling and mini-ITX usage.

Cons:

• Red LEDs only – not RGB or able to be switched off.
• No 0dB fan mode to preserve bearing lifespan and minimise dust accumulation in the heatsink.
• Priced against models with higher out-of-the-box core speeds or even liquid cooling solutions.

KitGuru says: A solid factory-overclocked card outfitted with PNY's effective XLR8 cooler. A good GTX 1070 offering but a price drop would aid its competitiveness.

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