GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3050 OC Low Profile 6G Graphics Card, 2X WINDFORCE Fans, 6GB GDDR6 96-bit GDDR6, GV-N3050OC-6GL Video Card

This card is amazing. I'm running nearly all my PCVR games on a SFF dell 7010.A few tweaks here and there and a touch of After Burner and voila' . You cant go wrong im. When I say "running" my games I mean Quest 3 just slightly under native resolution.

I bought several of these to add to tower and small form factor computers. It can support up to 4 monitors and will work without any additional power cable from the video card to the computer's power supply, which means you can install it and not have to also upgrade the power supply. On a small form factor HP computer I did have to trim some interior metal that wasn't in use (for holding a sata hard drive), so double-check the measurements and the space available for any mini or small form factor desktop computer to ensure that you are not short by a few millimeters.

I wanted a better graphics card for CAD and video editing but needed CUDA capability for computationally intensive photogrammetry software so that meant an Nvidia chipset. I've avoided Nvidia because in the early days they didn't have native Linux drivers and were problematic with Linux. Fortunately, that's changed. I'm running Ubuntu 22.04. I simply installed the Nvidia drivers while using the old video card, powered down, removed the old video graphics card, installed this new graphics card and rebooted.Installing the Nvidia video drivers was easy but took some time for the computer to do all of the work.sudo apt updatesudo apt install nvidia-driver-470I didn't want to run another power cable to the graphics card and this is one of the more powerful graphics cards that can be powered by the PCI-e bus. My computer is in a slim enclosure so I also needed a low profile card. This card is low profile but ships with back plates for both a standard and slim case so it fits either height. This is one of the faster graphics cards with a low profile.Before ordering, make sure you have two adjacent slots available and 7.2 inches clear for the width of both slots. This card only plugs into one PCI-e slot but the card with two cooling fans and shroud is double wide.

(Tldr: If you need more power than a 1650 in a small form factor office PC build, this is really one of your only options. Plus DLSS is nice to have.)To be frank, this GPU is not really great in terms of raw price to performance. If you're not limited by size and power consumption, there are muuuch better options out there for the same or lower price (used on eBay or Facebook) for amazing value. But when you have specific constraints, this card turns out to be a great value, especially as a new card competing against used ones. In the case of the 3050 6gb, I'm okay paying a premium for the high power efficiency and low profile form factor.From my personal testing, It has a little more power than the 1060 6gb, and a little less than a 1660 (non super). Considering you can pick those cards up for under a hundred bucks, you're paying around $100 extra with the 3050 6gb for just downsizing and lower wattage. In my case, I was fine with this, but you may not be.(Side note: I have a big gripe with the name. I feel like it should have just been called the 3040. It's a completely different card from the 3050 8gb)My constraints are a little specific, but not unreasonable. I have a cheap used HP EliteDesk 800 G2 (i7-6700) off of eBay for around 80 bucks. It only has a 240w power supply, so cards above the slot powered 75w ones are out of the equation.The 3050 6gb shines in the small form factor space, where you're restricted to slot-powered low profile cards. The alternatives are between an RTX A2000, AMD RX 6400, GTX 1050 TI, and a GTX 1650. (The 4060 low profile is a bit out of the price range)- The RTX A2000, if found used at around 200 dollars, would have been my choice. But the fact is that prices aren't anywhere near that for me at the moment.- The RX 6400, while a decent performer, only has 4 PCIe lanes, meaning it would be bottlenecked pretty bad by PCIe 3.0 (about a 15% decrease in performance from what I have read). In a used SFF office PC build with only PCIe 3.0, it's not suitable at all.- The GTX 1650 is cheaper than this card, but overall still not a great value. I could only find them about 20-30 bucks cheaper.- The GTX 1050 TI is really cheap, I could find them for about a hundred bucks less than the 3050 6gb. It's just much weaker than I'd like. In my case, I was not comfortable going slower than a GTX 1060, which both the gtx 1050 TI and the GTX 1650 are. It is a decent competitor, but the fact that the 3050 6gb has DLSS really sealed it for me. With these slower cards, I would be concerned I would not be able to run some games I like at a playable frame rate. With DLSS, I have the peace of mind that I have the option to punch above the GPUs weight if needed.To conclude:The 3050 6gb, while not a great value when compared to similarly priced full-sized alternatives, fills a great niche and is actually pretty competitive within it. For me, it was my only real choice.(A note about my EliteDesk build:I did have some issues with my specific build in the EliteDesk, as the card just barely interfered with the USB 3.0 header. I had to unplug it, and ordered a right angle connector that will hopefully fit. It also has some issues with the PCIe slot, as they only expect single slotted cards. Trying to fit a double slot card, I had to modify the case slightly by pushing the bar between slots back slightly. But now that it fits, it's running great and am extremely happy with my sub-300 dollar build!)

This review is not a performance review, just a unique notification for others who want to purchase this card for the MS-01 mini pc/server. This low profile graphics card can NOT fit inside the case of the MS-01 (even without the port shield) . The card is too wide to even fit inside the case to plug it in the pci express slot. I should have checked the dimensions of this unit. It seems the only RTX 3050 low profile that can fit perfectly inside the case is the Yeston RTX 3050 Low profile. I am keeping this card for a later build or if I plan to get a external GPU hub/adapter. Hopefully the Rufus amazon can learn from this and able to answer questions regarding this card.I did not want to to give this review a low star mark, because no one is a fault here.I can give a proper review once I am able to test the performance of this card

I've got a small form factor HP computer that while older, is still a good system. After doing some lookups via Google, I found that this was pretty much the only higher performance video card that would fit into it. Note that I am not using it for video games.While it was one very tight fit, it did indeed fit, and it's been providing good quality video ever since.

I hesitated to buy this card because it only had 6gb onboard ram, but with the shared 16gb of ram from my system, it has a total of 22gb Vram. Just make sure you have enough system ram that sharing the ram won't effect system performance. I coupled it with 32gb of system ram. I built a SFF mini-itx build and this video card was a perfect match for my system. It does not require additional power so no power connecter needed. I am running a Ryzen 5 5600GT processor and the whole system runs of a 300W power supply. Great performance, low power, I'm very happy.