Emtek, a South Korean manufacturer, has revamped one of its GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card designs to offer it at a lower price tag. Now that Nvidia is replenishing its board partners with GeForce RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti dies to offset the impact of recent shortages, it begs the question of whether other big brands will put out more affordable models.
As spotted by Twitter user (Harukaze5719), Emtek sells the new GPU as the GeForce RTX 2070 Storm X Dual Basic D6 6GB graphics card. Putting heavy emphasis on “basic,” the revised model features a downgraded cooling system and power delivery subsystem.
Starting with the cooling, the original GeForce RTX 2060 Storm X Dual D6 6GB employs a copper cold plate that makes direct contact with the GPU and up to four copper heat pipes that transfer the heat to the heatsink. The individual cold plate is gone on the revised model, and Emtek reduced the number of heat pipes to two. The power delivery subsystem suffered the same fate: The original version sports a 6+2-phase design, while the new version makes use of a 4+2-phase design.
Despite the cutbacks, the GeForce RTX 2070 Storm X Dual Basic D6 6GB comes with the same 1,365 MHz base clock and 1,680 MHz boost clock as the regular version. It’s reasonable to think that this model should run hotter and, consequently, louder than the non-basic model, considering that it lost half of its heat pipes with its new haircut. However, the GeForce RTX 2070 Storm X Dual Basic D6 6GB does has one thing in its favor – a lower price tag.
The GeForce RTX 2060 Storm X Dual D6 6GB retails for 655,500 KRW ($592.65). The GeForce RTX 2070 Storm X Dual Basic D6 6GB, on the other hand, sells for 580,000 KRW ($524.39). It’s only an 11.5% price reduction, but it should be attractive for desperate consumers who need a graphics card upgrade.
No one knows when the graphics card shortage will start to improve. Nvidia’s stopgap solution to reintroduce the GeForce RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti back into the market doesn’t inspire much hope.
