MSI Gaming Z RTX 2070 Graphics Card Review

Overclocking, Noise, Heat and Power

With the impressive Twin Frozr 7 cooler fitted to this card, we knew it was going to be running pretty cool and quiet. It’s a fast chipset, and that does make a lot of heat, but Twin Frozr series coolers have often proved to be some of the best around. However, manufacturers like to play it safe, and rarely push the maximum OC on their hardware to improve reliability. We managed to squeeze the boost clock with a +175 MHz overclock. The memory was happy to push higher too, with a +625 MHz overclocked. This is a big speed boost and pushed our 3DMark score from 20543 to 21113, and our graphics score 22751 to 24201.

Power and Heat

At low load, the card is passive cooled and completely silent. However, even at full load, it was only 42 dBa stock, and 43 dBa once overclocked. At stock clocks the chipset was an insignificant 62c, and even when overclocked it only hit 66c which is pretty safe for this chipset. Meanwhile, it’s able to score close to some high-end previous generation cards while using fewer watts in the process. Overall, a huge win for MSI.

3DMark Firestrike

Acoustic Performance

Stock

Overclocked

Thermal Performance

Stock

Overclocked

Power Consumption

Stock

Overclocked