The days are getting brighter both in the real world and in the PC hardware space, as genuine component deals bloom in time for spring. Case in point, MSI has slashed the cost of its GeForce RTX 50 Gaming graphics cards, but there’s one in particular that I’d recommend.
Enter the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8GB Gaming OC, which just so happens to be the cooler design I went hands-on with during our launch review. Though there are some shortcomings to Nvidia’s GPU design worth knowing about, the graphics card still remains appealing to gamers on a budget.
MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8GB Gaming OC
A stylish, high-quality take on the GeForce RTX 5060, complete with a factory overclock. Read our review.
While this premium version of the RTX 5060 would have set you back £310 over the past several months, the pixel pusher is now available from both Amazon and Scan for £279.98. That’s its lowest asking price to date and translates into a tidy 10% saving.
Importantly, this discount proves as worthwhile now as it would’ve come launch. Graphics card prices have ballooned in the wake of the RAM crisis, the RTX 5070 Ti especially, so paying MSRP pricing for this design is a bargain under any circumstance.
The GB206 GPU inside the RTX 5060 packs plenty of punch for gaming at 1080p, and can even stretch to 1440p on occasion. You’ll just need to stay mindful of the card’s 8GB VRAM capacity, which you can quickly saturate through high-resolution textures and ray tracing effects.
Thankfully, Nvidia DLSS 4.5 can lighten the rendering load to combat this shortfall. The upscaler will also improve performance and delivers best-in-class image quality relative to its competitors according to our analysis. There’s room for Frame Generation too, providing you’ve got the buffer to spare and meet that all-important 60fps threshold.
To highlight the quality of MSI’s Gaming OC cooler for a moment, the company’s pushed core clocks up by 128MHz out of the box, stretching to 143MHz with MSI Center active. This does require an additional 5W from the wall, but the dual-fan cooler keeps the card cool and quiet with 62°C peak operating temperatures and an almost inaudible noise ceiling of just 36.4dBA.
Given how dire a lot of the consumer hardware market appears, the appearance of a deal like this is a welcome sight. Here’s hoping they’re not the last for a while, as we return to some semblance of normality through the passage of time.
