PNY GeForce RTX 4060 XLR8 Gaming VERTO Review

A compact triple-fan design with a performance edge

My first NVIDIA card was a PNY VERTO, a PCI version of the GeForce4 MX440 purchased from my local Circuit City twenty years ago for a little Dell system that lacked an AGP slot. PNY was the brand that had affordable versions of NVIDIA GPUs at big box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City, and my eye was drawn to the borg-like face on the VERTO boxes (and the distinctive purple PCBs within).

These days PNY offers consumer graphics cards under their XLR8 Gaming umbrella, and we received one in advance of the RTX 4060 launch – and while I wanted to feature it with our launch coverage, we were forced to wait an extra day because NVIDIA had a separate embargo for cards at $299 (June 28) and cards above $299 (June 29). This card is the second model up in PNY’s RTX 4060 product stack, and it features a triple-fan cooler with RGB lighting effects.

Could I have been mistaken, and convinced myself that I had the MX440 when in fact it was only an MX420? They later offered an MX440-SE on the PCI bus, but I don’t see any mention of the PCI VERTO GeForce4 MX440 on archived pny.com pages. I sold the card nearly 20 years ago so I can’t be sure anymore. But this isn’t important. It’s just supposed to be a caption under a photo I found after a google image search.

If you are curious about the RTX 4060, which is the first NVIDIA product to sport their tiny AD107 GPU, here’s a look at the same specifications table I made for yesterday’s RTX 4060 review:

The PNY GeForce RTX 4060 8GB XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB Triple Fan DLSS 3 card

Yes, the full name of this product is actually the PNY GeForce RTX 4060 8GB XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB Triple Fan DLSS 3, and while it does have a triple-fan cooler it is not as big you think it is from the photos. I’ll use a Coke can for scale:

The card measures 10.24 x 4.41 x 1.57 inches, and is a dual-slot design. It has a backplate, RGB lighting along the top, and features the robust 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Performance Testing

Let’s take a look at some benchmark results from this PNY card, and compare them to the stock ASUS card from yesterday. And please, try to contain your excitement.

There you have it – a slight but measurable performance edge over the entry-level ASUS DUAL card we tested yesterday. Pricing will be the key here, as a couple of FPS are probably not worth much of a premium to most buyers, but the card does have a nice cooler (with backplate) – and you have the option of running PNY’s Velocity X software to control overclocking and RGB lighting effects.

Next, we will look at power draw:

Impressively, the slightly higher performance in our testing came with slightly lower power draw than the ASUS DUAL card! The squiggly lines above indicate only modest reductions here and there, but it’s still interesting.

I have not conducted extensive thermal testing with the PNY card as yet, but I did find it interesting that the card’s fans spun constantly at 30% (around 1200 RPM), and did not go into any zero-RPM mode at idle. I enjoyed the sub-30 C idle temps, and max load temps were very, very low after my little benchmark runs (~55 C core, ~67 C hot spot in a ~22 C room). The PNY card was inaudible over the system’s liquid CPU cooler.

Final Thoughts

The GeForce RTX 4060 is NVIDIA’s first AD107 GPU, and NVIDIA just keeps making influential people happy with their branding and attractive pricing this generation! Oh, wait. Sorry, I had that backwards. Anyway, speaking of price, is it as pesky a topic for this launch as it was for the RTX 4060 Ti? The RTX 4060’s $299 starting price places it below the $329 RTX 3060, and the RTX 4060 is a faster card with more features – though it has less VRAM. Vote with your wallet. I’m not going to tell you if it’s a good value or not.

As to this PNY GeForce RTX 4060 8GB XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB Triple Fan DLSS 3 card, I like it. It looks like a miniature version of the giant cards I’ve grown accustomed to, and it’s very cool and quiet running.

A small PCB, with a cooler nearly twice its size

I did not have final pricing for this particular model from PNY before publication, but it will likely be in the area of $339 USD. Partner models with factory overclocks and overbuilt cooling solutions generally command a bit of a premium over MSRP, of course. Cards will already be listed for sale by the time you read this, and time will tell if the current pricing will be successful.

So there you have it. Another RTX 4060, and this time with slightly lower power draw and slightly higher performance than the ASUS model we looked at previously. Curious. As to this PNY card, it’s a nice piece of hardware that occupies far less space than any mainstream graphics card I’ve tested this generation. It runs cool and quiet, it has that robust 8-pin connector (hopefully all RTX 4060s will), and the RGB implementation is not over the top. If you are shopping for an RTX 4060, check this one out.