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Zotac RTX 2070 Mini
The RTX 2070 mini has a more standard sized box compared to the stubby packaging we got with the Nvidia FE card. Zotac made some cool geometric complexity on the packaging which plays well for me and I think its a cool design choice as it grabs your eye. the outer box is merely a box sleeve with the main higher density box being the black internal one with some simple Zotac logo graphics. Slip it open and you get the small sleeve for the manuals.
Here is everything that comes in the sleeve.
- 2x small manuals to help get you started
There is no need for any sort of display adapter as the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini has all of the display options you could realistically need.
Here, you can see the full measure of the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini. It does not look nearly as diminutive as I expected as it is only about 3/4″ shorter than the Nvidia Founders Edition card. As you can see in the shot of the cards laying next to each other, the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini cooler much like the FE model is to blame for its length. That being said coming in at 8.3″ in length I still think this should fit in all but the tightest ITX enclosures without much issue.
Here you can see the rear I/O of the card and its bevy of connectors.
- 3x Displayport
- 1x DVI-DL
- 1x HDMI 2.0b
The Zotac RTX 2070 Mini has a pretty standard layout but most notably absent connection would be the Virtualink Type-C connector. Will this be a big deal? Im not really sure at this point as no VR HMD’s exist yet that use which I have seen, so this may be lesser of an issue and it also likely helps Zotac cut cost on the card due to not needing to provision the IC’s for the Type C port.
The power for the Zotac RTX 2070 Mini is fed by a single 8 Pin PCIe power connector. Thankfully this one is directly attached to the PCB unlike the cable lead version we saw on the FE model.
Here you can see the cooler and LED solution. The LED is single color only displaying white, so, no RGB and you can see it below. also note that the card employs two different style fans. The over VRM fan is a more straight balde fin design while the fan near the I/O is a swept blade design more like you see on most axial fans for GPUs and even case fans for the most part.
Here you can see the card in a crude testbench setup. the top Zotac Gaming LED is bright but not as extreme as it appears in images as it is well diffused by the plastic nameplate cover. Also there are dual V shapes above and below the center that make for a cool accented are without being obscenely overdone.
The Zotac RTX 2070 Mini employs a more standard Heatpipe based fin stack cooler with dual axial fans. They bucked the Nvidia design to go with something we expect from Zotac and the cooler seems well equipped with 5 heatpipes contacting the GPU cold plate.
Enough of the outside now, let’s tear her apart and take a look at the guts.
It seems that the Zotac LAGS the reference card in every single chart?
Yes, it does at stock speeds. This is because as explained in the review the “reference” or “Founders Edition” is a pre-overclocked card whereas this GPU uses a non A-die GPU which Nvidia spec’s as not designed for out of teh box overclocked card models. As you can see from my overclock testing it overclocks just fine so, im not really sure what the non A designator reasoning is or if its lower yield and possibly may have some that do not overclock as well.
This allows Zotac to price the card competitively while still being able to overclock to meet and even exceed the overclock of the FE model.
I hope this helps clear things up.
Thanks for this review. I have a 280X Corsair case and I was looking for a 2070 card that wouldn’t take over my build. I have a Strix 570 card now and the dimensions are almost identicle between these 2 cards. This looks like the perfect option for performance and size.