Moving on to the star of the show. When you first open the electrostatic / EMI protective baggie and take a good look at the MSI 5060Ti 16GB Gaming OC you are pretty much instantly going to like what you see. But before we go over the aesthetics, we do feel it necessary to go over our personal biases, as this will be a bit of a controversial looking model. So here is ours. Every reviewer has a favorite card. Every reviewer judges every card’s aesthetics against that ‘ideal’ card. We personally are highly conservative. So it should come as no surprise that our all-time favorite GPU design was the old school GTX 10-series era PNY “industrial” looking models that came clad in aluminum and consisted of all smooth and graceful curves with nary a sharp corner to be seen. Our other favorite is the ProArt line. Once again, because of its clean, crisp, almost “industrial” vibe to it… But we always instinctively judge a card against those older PNY models.
Put simply, we don’t like Las Vegas strip glowy-showy models. We don’t like plastic-clad cards. We don’t want them to exude “PC Gaming enthusiast” vibe… as filtered through an Otaku Instagram filter. Above all else, we loathe models that are covered in pure cheese (or in certain ‘waifu’ vibe models… cringe). These days, cards are even coming with scents baked into their design. Scents. Yeah. That, to our conservative nature, is pure cringe.
The MSI 5060Ti Gaming OC is not conservative enough to dethrone our top two favorite designs, and yet it is not going to really be a home run with the 1337 crowd either. Instead, what it has going for it is… well… it’s gorgeous. Furthermore, it is surprisingly flexible in its aesthetics. So much so, we can easily see this model working in a lot of builds. Maybe not as many as some cards, which are a bit more conservative-looking. But certainly a lot of builds. Enough builds that pretty much everyone, except the extreme ends of the spectrum, will be satisfied by it.
We say this as the top fascia is multi-faceted and angular looking, but at the same time not too aggressive… and certainly not in the ‘try hard’ end of the spectrum like many a card does these days. Put simply it is an interesting-looking card whose “lines” remind us strongly of a modern exotic sports car, compared to our preference for old school muscle cars. So still sexy. Just in a more… modern way than we prefer. Mix in multiple shades of gray with two large – 95mm – black fans and this is an interesting-looking card.
Better still, there are six LED diffusers baked into the central area between the two fans. Three on the ‘top’ that will be front and center when this card is installed in a system, and three at the bottom that will give more “ambient” lighting. These diffusers are, of course, connected directly to 16+ Million LED arrays whose output is easily adjustable. In our case… that includes “off”.
Before we move on, there is one more feature to go over. That is the 16-pin “12v-2×6” header. It is nicely recessed by ~19 millimeters, and while it is smack dap in the center of the card, this header is tight. No loosey-goosey connector here, folks. Instead, you have to put a bit of elbow grease into it, and thus the audible ‘click’ when the cable is fully seated is on the louder end of the spectrum. Which is a Good Thing™. If you know how to take advantage of this feature, that is.
To be candid, we would rather a header be tight than loose. Especially a header that is known to have… troubles at higher amperages. Of course, as this is a piddly little sub-200-watt card we have no concern over melting cables. Just make sure to fully seat it, and when in doubt, use the adapter, which will help make this an even safer card to run than its higher amp brethren!
Taken as a whole, the features baked into the top half of the card prove that MSI’s Gaming division is all grown up with a more mature approach to card design. One that can still talk the talk (to teenagers), but can walk the walk (of adults). Just the way it should be. Color us highly impressed. So much so, we wish that more than just ‘vertical GPU’ builds would show off all this goodness. Now, with all that said, when one does flip the card over and take a look at the back, MSI’s “GAMING” roots do start to show a bit more than we would like…
