MSI is invoking the past with several new RTX 5060 series SKUs unveiled at Computex 2025, Benchlife reports. The new RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro and RTX 5060 Cyclone take direct inspiration from MSI's GPU cooler designs dating back to the early 2010s.
The RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro is a callback to the TwinFrozer cooler design MSI invented in the early 2010s. This cooler nomenclature was responsible for cooling many of MSI's GeForce GPUs, including the GTX 500 series, 600 series, and 700 series. The RTX 5060 TwinFrozer Retro takes inspiration from the TwinFrozer II cooler on the GTX 400 and 500 series, featuring a metallic color theme with the heatsink exposed on the bottom of the shroud.
The RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro takes the original TwinFrozer aesthetic and weaves it in with MSI's latest cooling technologies. The card boasts copper-aluminum composite fins, a no-solder-hole design, 7-bladed Stormforce fans, a nickel-plated copper baseplate, and a metal backplate. MSI is also allegedly using a hybrid copper/aluminum fin design to improve cooling efficiency further.
MSI's RTX 5070 Cyclone is another model with "retro" roots. The original Cyclone-cooler was popular with the GTX 400 and GTX 500 series, sporting a large single-fan cooler design. The Cyclone coolers were infamous for their janky look, with a cooler that seemed tailor-made for function over form. These coolers only encapsulate parts of the GPU that need to be cooled, such as the GPU core and memory, leaving most of the PCB exposed to the naked eye.
Unlike the aforementioned TwinFrozer Retro, MSI rebooted the Cyclone series already with the RTX 40 series. The RTX 4060 Cyclone 8G OC marked the official reboot of the series, being the first Cyclone GPU made in twelve years. The RTX 5070 Cyclone Visual represents MSI's next-generation Cyclone coolers in this new era for the sub-brand, featuring several differences over the previous RTX 4060 model.
Most notably, the new RTX 5070 Cyclone Visual (as the name implies) sports a screen directly on the fan hub, where users can show images and presumably GIFs. The cooler itself is almost a perfect representation of the original Cyclone coolers with exposed heatpipes on the top and a circular heatsink design that mimics the fan in the middle. The PCB has been formed to fit over the heatsink like a glove with a circular protrusion on the right to align with the tip of the heatsink in that area.
