Let's take a look at what is in my opinion the biggest problem with this graphics card, which is the size of the heatsink. Now if you look at the plastic shroud it makes it look like the heatsink is quite big but if you peer underneath it you can see that there's not much aluminium going on there and it may have a huge fan on it but in certain areas the heatsink is actually smaller than the diameter of the fan. Honestly, the GTX 660ti is quite a powerful graphics card and this doesn't look like it's enough surface area to cool it.

Let's have a look at actual gaming temperatures now as you can see here I'm busy running Apex Legends right at the beginning of the match you can see the graphics card is sitting at about 72 degrees which isn't too bad but as you get further into the match you see that it creeps closer to the thermal threshold of 83 degrees and by the time that you're a couple minutes into the match you're sitting right at that limit of 83 degrees and it kind of stays there for the rest of the match. Every now and then it does have to throttle the boost clock back a little bit from 1800 MHz to about 1820 MHz.

Now this actually isn't that bad especially considering that the official boost clock of the graphics card is about 1800 MHz to 1820 MHz so it actually over clocks it above its official rated boost clock although you have to take into account that this is thermally the optimal situation to use this graphics card in because I'm using it in a Thermal Tech Core Five ITX case which has a big ventilated grille on the side and this very good airflow for the graphics card. And there's an ambient temperature of about 23 degrees Celsius which isn't very low but it's not very high.

So if you live in a hotter country it's gonna thermal throw a little more and if you put it in a case with worse air flow which for an ITX based graphics card design you're gonna do a lot the thermal start looking a lot worse. Let's look at what's thermally the worst-case scenario for this graphics card running in a Thermal Take versa H17 which is a thermally very restrictive case and running FurMark for half an hour and as you can see the thermals aren't great at all it's running over its maximum temperature and it's running very loud.

Now let's have a look at some benchmarks of the Aces Phoenix GTX 1660 TI and as you can see the graphics card performs really well you can play pretty much any game today at Ultra settings above 60 frames per second at 1080p. Now I could have used the faster gaming CPU but honestly I don't have one at hand and this I think is quite a good pairing for the GTX 1660 TI because of the budget that it falls in.

In conclusion, should you buy the Asus Fenix GTX 1660 TI I don't think it's the best purchase the heatsink just can't handle the GTX 1660 TI which is a really great GPU in my opinion if you have a different version of the graphics card available I would go for that instead. The reason that I ended up buying the graphics card is because I needed an ITX form factor GPU on short notice and this was the only GTX 1660 TI that fit that description that I could get my hands on.

And if that's your position as well it's not the worst purchase ever but bear in mind that you do need really good airflow for it and if your ambient temperature is above 23 degrees Celsius even with good airflow you're gonna have thermal throttling. And with that let me know in the comment section below which version of the GTX 1660 TI you would prefer over this Phoenix variant for any form factor doesn't specifically have to be an ITX graphics card anyway.

Thank you very much for watching if you liked the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one and until the next one bye.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow most people know that Asus generally makes very good products and some versions of their graphics cards actually command quite a big premium over the competition but did they drop the ball on a design of graphics card that they've been using for two generations the Asus Phoenix is a mid to low end graphics card design which they've been using since Pascal now today we're going to be specifically talking about the gtx 1660 TI phoenix which is the highest and GPU you can get in phoenix form factor now the graphics card is very short making it perfect for ITX builds but one thing to keep in mind though is that the actual PCB is taller than the PCI Express bracket in the back which could be an issue for compatibility and I actually had compatibility issues when I wanted to use this GPU for my ITX build in a Corsair a power supply box video which you can check out in the description below and another thing that makes this problem worse is the fact that the eight pin power plug is actually on the top of the PCB which means you still have to bend the power cable around the top to get it in so I actually think you would have had better clearance if aces had the eight pin PCI Express plug on the front of the PCB now the graphics card does have a dual slot cooler and on the back unfortunately it doesn't have a back plate but the PCB is a nice matte black so it doesn't look too terrible and then on the back as far as outputs go it's got two HDMI it's got a display port and a DVI connector now with the basic physical breakdown out of the way let's have a look at what is in my opinion the biggest problem with this graphics card which is the size of the heatsink now if you look at the plastic shroud it makes it look like the heatsink is quite big but if you peer underneath it you can see that there's not much aluminium going on there and it may have a huge fan on it but in certain areas the heatsink is actually smaller than the diameter of the fan and honestly the gtx 660ti is quite a powerful graphics card and this doesn't look like it's enough surface area to cool it now let's have a look at actual gaming temperatures now as you can see here I'm busy running apex legends right at the beginning of the match you can see the graphics card is sitting at about 72 degrees which isn't too bad but as you get further into the match you see that it creeps closer to the thermal threshold of 83 degrees and by the time that you're a couple minutes into the match you're sitting right at that limit of 83 degrees and it kind of stays there for the rest of the match every now and then it does have to throttle the boost clock back a little bit from a thousand eight hundred and ninety megahertz to about a thousand eight hundred and twenty megahertz now this actually isn't that bad especially considering that the official boost clock of the graphics card is about a thousand eight hundred and twenty so it actually over clocks it above its official rated boost clock although you have to take into account that this is thermally the optimal situation to use this graphics card in because I'm using it in a thermal tech core five ITX case which has a big ventilated grille on the side and this very good airflow for the graphics card and there's an ambient temperature of about 23 degrees Celsius which isn't very low but it's not very high so if you live in a hotter country it's gonna thermal throw a little more and if you put it in a case with worse air flow which for an ITX based graphics card design you're gonna do a lot the thermal start looking a lot worse now let's look at what's thermally the worst-case scenario for this graphics card running in a thermal take versa H 17 which is a thermally very restrictive case and running fur mark for half an hour and as you can see the thermals aren't great at all it's running over its maximum temperature and it's running very loud now let's have a look at some benchmarks of the aces phoenix gtx 1660 TI and as you can see the graphics card performs really well you can play pretty much any game today at Ultra settings above 60 frames per second at 1080p now the test system that I used for these benchmarks has an AMD 2400 G CPU in it and 16 gigs of 3200 mega ddr4 now I could have used the faster gaming CPU but honestly I don't have one at hand and this I think is quite a good pairing for the gtx 660ti because of the budget that it falls in in conclusion should you buy the Asus Fenix GTX 16 60 TI I don't think it's the best purchase the heatsink just can't handle the gtx 1660 TI which is a really great GPU in my opinion if you have a different version of the graphics card available i would go for that instead the reason that i ended up buying the graphics card is because i needed an ITX form factor GPU on short notice and this was the only gtx 1660 TI that fit that description that i could get my hands on and if that's your position as well it's not the worst purchase ever but bear in mind that you do need really good airflow for it and if your ambient temperature is above 23 degrees celsius even with good airflow you're gonna have thermal throttling and with that let me know in the comment section below which version of the gtx 1660 TR you would prefer over this phoenix variant for any form factor doesn't specifically have to be an ITX graphics card anyway thank you very much for watching if you liked the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one and until the next one byenow most people know that Asus generally makes very good products and some versions of their graphics cards actually command quite a big premium over the competition but did they drop the ball on a design of graphics card that they've been using for two generations the Asus Phoenix is a mid to low end graphics card design which they've been using since Pascal now today we're going to be specifically talking about the gtx 1660 TI phoenix which is the highest and GPU you can get in phoenix form factor now the graphics card is very short making it perfect for ITX builds but one thing to keep in mind though is that the actual PCB is taller than the PCI Express bracket in the back which could be an issue for compatibility and I actually had compatibility issues when I wanted to use this GPU for my ITX build in a Corsair a power supply box video which you can check out in the description below and another thing that makes this problem worse is the fact that the eight pin power plug is actually on the top of the PCB which means you still have to bend the power cable around the top to get it in so I actually think you would have had better clearance if aces had the eight pin PCI Express plug on the front of the PCB now the graphics card does have a dual slot cooler and on the back unfortunately it doesn't have a back plate but the PCB is a nice matte black so it doesn't look too terrible and then on the back as far as outputs go it's got two HDMI it's got a display port and a DVI connector now with the basic physical breakdown out of the way let's have a look at what is in my opinion the biggest problem with this graphics card which is the size of the heatsink now if you look at the plastic shroud it makes it look like the heatsink is quite big but if you peer underneath it you can see that there's not much aluminium going on there and it may have a huge fan on it but in certain areas the heatsink is actually smaller than the diameter of the fan and honestly the gtx 660ti is quite a powerful graphics card and this doesn't look like it's enough surface area to cool it now let's have a look at actual gaming temperatures now as you can see here I'm busy running apex legends right at the beginning of the match you can see the graphics card is sitting at about 72 degrees which isn't too bad but as you get further into the match you see that it creeps closer to the thermal threshold of 83 degrees and by the time that you're a couple minutes into the match you're sitting right at that limit of 83 degrees and it kind of stays there for the rest of the match every now and then it does have to throttle the boost clock back a little bit from a thousand eight hundred and ninety megahertz to about a thousand eight hundred and twenty megahertz now this actually isn't that bad especially considering that the official boost clock of the graphics card is about a thousand eight hundred and twenty so it actually over clocks it above its official rated boost clock although you have to take into account that this is thermally the optimal situation to use this graphics card in because I'm using it in a thermal tech core five ITX case which has a big ventilated grille on the side and this very good airflow for the graphics card and there's an ambient temperature of about 23 degrees Celsius which isn't very low but it's not very high so if you live in a hotter country it's gonna thermal throw a little more and if you put it in a case with worse air flow which for an ITX based graphics card design you're gonna do a lot the thermal start looking a lot worse now let's look at what's thermally the worst-case scenario for this graphics card running in a thermal take versa H 17 which is a thermally very restrictive case and running fur mark for half an hour and as you can see the thermals aren't great at all it's running over its maximum temperature and it's running very loud now let's have a look at some benchmarks of the aces phoenix gtx 1660 TI and as you can see the graphics card performs really well you can play pretty much any game today at Ultra settings above 60 frames per second at 1080p now the test system that I used for these benchmarks has an AMD 2400 G CPU in it and 16 gigs of 3200 mega ddr4 now I could have used the faster gaming CPU but honestly I don't have one at hand and this I think is quite a good pairing for the gtx 660ti because of the budget that it falls in in conclusion should you buy the Asus Fenix GTX 16 60 TI I don't think it's the best purchase the heatsink just can't handle the gtx 1660 TI which is a really great GPU in my opinion if you have a different version of the graphics card available i would go for that instead the reason that i ended up buying the graphics card is because i needed an ITX form factor GPU on short notice and this was the only gtx 1660 TI that fit that description that i could get my hands on and if that's your position as well it's not the worst purchase ever but bear in mind that you do need really good airflow for it and if your ambient temperature is above 23 degrees celsius even with good airflow you're gonna have thermal throttling and with that let me know in the comment section below which version of the gtx 1660 TR you would prefer over this phoenix variant for any form factor doesn't specifically have to be an ITX graphics card anyway thank you very much for watching if you liked the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one and until the next one bye