I had a budget version of the 1050 Ti with similar aluminium heatsink. And it was really cool (~56°C under load) and fairly quiet. But this card consumes less than 75W of power...
The heatsink is cut from an extruded aluminium fin profile rather than machining from a block. Its the cheapest and most common method for basic heatsinks.
I can't say I'm surprised with a biostar card... I have honestly never seen or heard anything that wasn't a terrible compilation of bad choices in 1 product
They have occasionally made a good motherboard. Mostly because they're always cutting corners, and sometimes those corners are just useless shit. This was around 15 years ago though, when you weren't normally pushing things THAT hard yet. Nowadays, cheap VRMs = death.
In the Philippines where Biostar was prevalent years back, we called it "Bayot"star. Bayot is a derogatory term which shows how low end their quality is.
After looking what it's a derogatory term for, if I'm reading google correctly, that doesn't make sense, it'd be like English countries calling them '"trans"star' or '"gay"star' which has nothing to do with being a crap product.
@@wallacesousuke1433 Not anymore to my knowledge and even back in my day it was used more as something being lame or boring not for something being piece of crap.
@@Puremindgames It's still relevant where I came from though I assume the occurrence is lesser nowadays. Oh yeah, it doesn't make sense if translated. It's local wordplay so the homonym and negative brand sentiment makes the joke.
Biostar, we get that the 6600 XT is a shoe in for the 5700 XT, but that doesn't mean it should outperform the 5700 XT reference model in operating volume.
Steve: "It's about the loudest graphics card I've ever come across" The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra: "Good, they have forgotten about me. I can finally rest in peace!"
@@Ren-vt2qq The card with an external power supply that you are referring to was the Voodoo 5 6000, which was never actually released - there are only a few hundred engineering samples in the wild, and they now cost more than $10k. Also, no, that card is not as loud as the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. The latter was called the "dustbuster" for a reason. :-)
I was gonna say, this is the worst ever graphics card because it's loud? The GFFX 5800 Ultra was legendary. Also, my MSI Airboost OC Vega 64 was also excruciatingly loud. Looking at those fans I don't know how this 5600XT could possibly be louder. Also where's the raw audio of the fan noise? So many questions unanswered.
"Lets sell a card without a heatsink for people who want to just put a waterblock on" "But people will try to use it straight out of the box, and then try to warranty it after it melts" "Fine, you can spend $6 on some sort of cooler that'll at least prevent death"
Waterblock? For 6600xt "budget" 1080p card? This really doesn't sound like a reasonable solution. I think everyone would prefer to have better card rather than waterblock, even if we take into account current botched gpu market
@@mingyi456 Yeah, this makes sense, I didn't think about it. For any sleeper/mini pc it might be beneficial to use waterblocks. It doesn't mean, that these mini/sleeper pc are that popular. However, If someone wishes to assemble one, this card won't be any worse than any other 6600xt (assuming you will use waterblocks).
Theres AIO's for GPU's (from ID-Cooling) which can be re-used. Then on Chinese Taobao theres quite a lot of custom CNC'd AIO adaptor cooling plates for various GPUs for reasonably small amount of money for you to then slap a cheap AIO on it. So im guessing this GPU really isnt for the western market.
I'll be honest and say that I didn't even know that Biostar made graphics cards. I always thought they only made motherboards and even then, I haven't seen one in the flesh since the late 90s.
@Backflipping Concealed Carry Enthusiast Association I'm not sure if I'd trust any PC components that cost twenty quid or less, except maybe cables or a case... I've paid about that on shipping, an Airsoft rifle you're interested.
@@kaushiknatarajan2637 Yea my brothers old PC with a i3-2100, which I've turned into my mining rig, uses a biostar mobo. It's actually quite a trooper. Ugly though, even for a mobo.
Biostar somehow managed to survive in socket A era, then they've returned in socket 754/939 era, and then they've got quite spread in AM2 era/LGA 775. I just don't understand, why cool companies like Abit, AOpen, Soyo and DFI left, while Biostar, which sucked much more, survived. Would have never change any of those companies for Biostar. Hell, even Soltek was more cool.
@@warrax111 I know right?... My experiences with the brands you mentioned I was quite sad to read about Abit's demise, even if I never bought or saw their products. They were a top tier mobo maker as far as I knew so not really sure why they went under. I had an Aopen CD drive at some point. I knew they had moved to mainly chassis/SFF and actually was quite tempted by one but got a Shuttle instead. Never really looked at/knew about Soyo stuff. I think they were/are not distributed here in the UK. DFI? Well let's just say that I just pulled the bright green retail box from its place on top of my cupboard to look at, a Lan Party NFII Ultra B, ahh memories! This was the ASUS ROG gamer brand of its day!
F. I recently bought a used DDR3+DDR4 combo board from Biostar, as I wanted to be able to switch between DDR3/DDR4 on the same testbench. Unfortunately it arrived doing.. nothing. I looked for defects and completely cleaned it and its pins, but it's just dead. Worst part is the seller is a dick so he won't even give a partial refund.
I have a Biostar B450MH and it is…rough. Only two DIMM slots, one CPU fan and another fan header, front io was weird and not clearly labeled, pretty bad Ethernet port, and to top it off I’ve tried a few things to fix CMOS and still says “CMOS fail” on boot
Good review Steve, imagine how this card would go in Adelaide's 40c degrees plus, summer in a poorly ventilated case ugh! Liked the cooler swap, really highlighted the difference between a good and a crap cooler. Quality content from you and Tim as always. Cheers mate.
Back in our student days, a mate used to buy cheap biostar cards and installed an arctic freezer aftermarket cooling kit - it ended up semi acceptable...until he started getting artifacting...
"I'd just recommend you avoid it like the plague" was probably not the advice for these times, given people's track record with avoiding a literal plague ^^'
Biostar probably makes the worst motherboards on the market, I guess they have to keep their reputation intact. I see Biostar on a box and I just walk away.
they have a few decent mobos, b450gt , x370gt7, x470gt8 have a very good VRM system, the bios is very poor, but the electric constrution is very decent.
I know a guy who made the mistake of buying a biostar b550 board a couple months ago, and they didn't even bother pre-flashing the bios with zen 3 support, and it had no usb flashing support. real grade-A stuff there.
I am buying a 4gb Chinese 550 that costs 140 euro so I can wait for a decent later model. This $hit is ridiculous. Don't give them your money, they don't deserve it.
@@GTFour Yeah worth noting that the human ear detects a 10 decibel difference as a doubling in volume. Going by Steve's numbers, then, the Biostar card @ 52 dB will sound more than three times as loud as the Powercolor card (@ 36 dB). But even leaving aside the cooler's performance, seeing this kind of build quality on a $380 GPU blows my mind. The heatsink looks like something you'd fish out of a kid's cereal box. I'm actually impressed at Biostar's cheek.
Describes pretty much my impression of this company. When I look at their Mainboards and Graphics Cards, most of the time they are cutting down cost as much as possible. There are sometimes good looking products (from what I saw) like the Biostar RX 5700 XT Extreme Gaming but most of the time compared to other AIBs, they are the bottom of the line as far as their products go.
Seems like the perfect card for me! The reference PCB makes it easy to find a suitable water cooling block while the crappy air cooler helps keeping the price low.
I wish more testing was done in warmer climate temps. I always see the wonderful temps reported by reviewers, but because South Africa is usually 25C-30C+ C, we never see those temps. Cards that are reported to never go over 67C are well over 75C.
Room Ambient temperature matters - which is why any thermal testing should always start with the ambient temperature of the room first so that everyone has a clear reference point
Those times are over, even if 380€ is too much, prices for materials also gone up, it's just how resources are working, I think that we will never get back to the days of the (nvidia) 700, 900 or 1000 series
I remember buying my fir Biostar motherboard in the 90s... the plastic parts of the SATA ports would rip off the board with the cables... cheapest build ever... I see nothing changed.
I just got a used Biostar RX 6600 last week at ~164$, really impressive with the performance at this low price range, so far no heating issue when pushing it to full power. Did some research on the internet, mine is probably the 2nd gen which does not have issues from XT version mentioned in this video. But the fan is really loud, even at low-medium utilization, not sure if that's current gen config or it's just me, time to look for a working fan curve software. Well, you pay for what you want.
LMFAO biostar, I remember that brand back in the geforce 8800GT era and their build quality was so bad that the thin crappy heatsink that had zero copper whatsoever (honestly I think it was made out of tin or something with how bad it was) would often lift off of the PCB because it'd warp under the heat.
oh jeez, this kind of heatsink I remember being on my 2c4t processor two motherboards ago 🤦♂️ back when they didn't need fans... _it was a really old CPU I was stuck with for ages..._
That heatsink looks primarily extruded. They usually extrude a length, say 5m, and cut sections to the length of one heatsink. Then slot, cut sections, and drill it.
The reason it climbs from 3400 to 3800 rpm, eventhough both are 100% duty cycle, is i think due to the oil heating up over time. It reduces viscosity and the fans have less mechanical reisitance.
The fan noise issue brings back memories of owning a reference cooled AMD R9 290X, it literally sounded like a hair dryer was switched on inside my case.
A technical corrections - fins are not milled from a block of aluminium, this would make it more expensive than the fin stack. It's called an aluminium extrusion - metal is pushed trough a matrix that makes the fin shapes.
That's junction temperature that's designed to stay under 110 C. Honestly, anything below 100 C is not a problem. The problem with this card is the fan noise.
Even if I was desperate for a GPU, I probably wouldn’t get this model. Embarrassing. Edit: I noticed it’s only running at 130W, isn’t the TDP of 6600xt 160W? So it runs 15C hotter, and it uses 30W less.
Thank you, I was going to buy a Biostar Rx6600 at my local shop,since they sound like a deal which is as cheap as a 1660s .But i'm living in tropical climate,with a minimal itx case with no support exhaust fan ,this clearly made my itx case become hell really quick
The biostar heatsink is not milled out of a single block of aluminium, that would be prohibitively expensive. Think of cold paltes in water blocks. These heatsinks are made by extrusion, where a bar of aluminium is forced through a die. Good for producing components with a fixed cross section, like the heat sink in this example.
I was thinking the same thing, There would also be noticeable milling marks (there is no way something like that would be put to a high level of craftsmanship to remove those). I was like there is absolutely no way that milling that is cheaper then stamping some fins together.
You made the reviews very interesting. Usually they are a lot of bar graphs but with your channel those are interesting too. Very nice changing the coolers. Cheers, probably the best pc reviews on TH-cam
Amazing! It's like they are planing for them to only be sold to miners where noise is much less of an issue, then thought about the bad press and put "Gaming" on the box to help.
Steve goes on about the horrible vacuum cleaner fan noise from Biostar 6600xt… My old GeForce Fx5800 ultra in my display cabinet: “after 18 years, finally a worthy opponent…”
If anyone is brave enough for a diy you can fix that cooler yourself, take the fans off and drill it everywhere or go for a fin-like type of layout, it should improve the cooling capability by a lot. It def is doable as a one hour job.
i think the last bare alu cooler i had was on my old voodoo3 3000, i had my own 40mm fan straped on for cooling, ok there were no fancy heatpipes then but that was 20 years ago
It would be interesting to know if you acted all naive and asked Biostar about the fan noise and thermals and if they could confirm if HB had a faulty unit before releasing this video. That would make for an entertaining email back and forth.
Nah… it is working according the specks! Was this the device they use it JET planes… yes? And don`t whisper to me talk ALOUD PLESE MY HEARING IS NOT SOMGOOD AS IT USED TO BE!
Well, I have a GTX1070 from AXLE from last year and I can say that its performance is excellent and with temperatures not exceeding 70 ° C at full load and with little noise from its fans, I was quite surprised to be an unknown brand but I got a good price and couldn't be more satisfied. I recommend this brand over BIOSTAR without a doubt
1st 6600 XTs arriving in Europe (Based on 369€ MSRP) XFX 392-412-432€ (For some reason, the MERC 308, allegedly the best is the cheapest and the most expensive the SWIFT 210) Sapphire 445-470€ PULSE and NITRO+ Powercolor 394-442 Fighter and Red Devil
If you bought one of these cheap on eBay. AliExpress sells powercolor 6600XT coolers. (New). $50Aud for me. If the Biostar is cheap enough, the $50 still keeps it budget. Runs much quieter
*fan RPM noise. ugh.* I added Noctua fans to my GTX1080. I can play SOTTR at near-max settings (at 2560x1440, 60FPS) with an almost-silent PC. My Noctua fans are at roughly 800RPM during gaming.
Back in 2014 I had Radeon 7970 graphics card which was reaching around 90 - 92 degrees under load. After 2 years the screen started to go black every hour and it was broken. And 100+ degrees it's really high. I think that this card will be done soon...
I have an MSI Radeon RX 580 ARMOR It can hit 3k+ RPM in my microATX case in 27C ambient temp. I use it undervolted, so it runs with 2200mhz in the same ambient temp. And most of the time the ambient temp is lower, so its around 1700rpm. I never thought it could get worse than this.
That cooler looks like a machined piece of extruded aluminum rather than starting with a billet. I could be wrong though, it just seems like the machine time to do that would be cost prohibitive.
The biggest trolling in the GPU market would be if the biostar card was the only card that was widely available. :)
And it would still get all bought up :'(
or it might be the only GPU at MSRP. but that is wishful thinking at best.
@@idkwhatname3133 probably only 1% of users do undervolt
it will be cheaper to buy that crap + cooler
3rd party coolers go brrrr
At least if you’re playing a jet flying game you’ll have close to real flight noise.
🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️✈️😂😂😂😂
DCS immersion be like
Flight Simulator Edition
WHAT!? YOU NEED TO SPEAK LOUDER!
@@FM-kl7oc I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER MY GPU MATE WHAT WAS THAT?
Dell would be proud. 😼
At least they cooled the memory chips. 🤣
Dell is probably already using Biostar stuff in their Alienware machines
THE DELL AWARD!
@@ofon2000 sky tech gaming uses biostar mobos 🤣
But does it have Dell's financing and guarantee?
If you could reverse the fans it be a good way to counter GPU sag. The card can probably hover above ground at this speed.
Well, he said it only weighs 675 grams so there prob won't be gpu sack. But still would be fun😄
XD
3.. 2.. 1..
LIFT OFF!
lol
it will instead sag upwards
Can confirm, when there's no "Gaming" on the box and no RGB, I immediately assume that the GPU is intended for doing taxes and disregard it.
RGB = FPS
Of course! Those Government Payment Units are critical in the spring, when taxes come due.
Damn, I have an RTX 3080 without RGB.... Better pair it with the old quad core i5 office computer.
@@StrikersUK You better not get caught gaming on that non-rgb disgrace
why bother RGB or fan noise when miners can just stack em up in their racks
Im pretty sure iv seem better coolers on the Fake 1050Ti's on Aliexpress that end up being a flashed 550Ti
That cooler on the 6600XT was about the same as those on the fake GPUs as well.
I had a budget version of the 1050 Ti with similar aluminium heatsink. And it was really cool (~56°C under load) and fairly quiet. But this card consumes less than 75W of power...
The heatsink is cut from an extruded aluminium fin profile rather than machining from a block. Its the cheapest and most common method for basic heatsinks.
Yeah, milling is expensive and time-consuming (plus materials intensive). This is very much an extruded aluminum part.
and fins as large as that are meant to be used for passive convection cooling, not active.
I can't say I'm surprised with a biostar card... I have honestly never seen or heard anything that wasn't a terrible compilation of bad choices in 1 product
Their 6800 were just reference design
Biostar Makes nice Camping Toilets, oh wait nvm...
Yea they did some quite good brading motherboard.
They have occasionally made a good motherboard. Mostly because they're always cutting corners, and sometimes those corners are just useless shit.
This was around 15 years ago though, when you weren't normally pushing things THAT hard yet. Nowadays, cheap VRMs = death.
@@Grimmwoldds they have some good recent motherboards. They have a new Z590 with 22 phase VRM up to 1800 amps lol.
In the Philippines where Biostar was prevalent years back, we called it "Bayot"star. Bayot is a derogatory term which shows how low end their quality is.
After looking what it's a derogatory term for, if I'm reading google correctly, that doesn't make sense, it'd be like English countries calling them '"trans"star' or '"gay"star' which has nothing to do with being a crap product.
@@Puremindgames isn't "gay" used as derogatory term everywhere?
@@wallacesousuke1433 Not anymore to my knowledge and even back in my day it was used more as something being lame or boring not for something being piece of crap.
@@Puremindgames It's still relevant where I came from though I assume the occurrence is lesser nowadays.
Oh yeah, it doesn't make sense if translated. It's local wordplay so the homonym and negative brand sentiment makes the joke.
@@SeraNeph Oh, it's one THOSE words, lol.
Swapping the cooler to prove your point was definitely an impressive touch! Great review!
I guess the card was intended to play flight sim games exclusively, especially those where you can only fly jets.
It adds more realism to the sim. Even better if you play without headphones.
@Tamamo They could include molex connectors. A modern, elegant solution.
@Tamamo I'll take molex AC mains power sockets.
a heatsink like that is barely enough for a 1050 ti.
I thought it was a 1050ti it looks so much like my 1050ti MSI OC it's uncanny.
One would assume, before trying. Have you used GB GV-N105TOC-4GL? Stopped judging size after it. 😁
My first reaction was "that looks like a 1050 Ti cooler". :D Except it's actually smaller.
This is very similar as Intels new gpu!
Maybe they did borrow the design from Intel?
Budget 1060 had similar cooler.
"What specs are you looking for in a GPU?"
"It has to sound like an a jet engine."
Vega 56/64 have entered the chat.
@@sopcannon Blower 3090 has entered the chat!
what would win?
the infamous Nvidia FX 5800?
the equally infamous AMD R9 290X?
or the new kid on the block, the Biostar RX 6600 XT?
"Would you like to add a set of Hotas to your purchase?"
Motorcycle owners be like
Biostar, we get that the 6600 XT is a shoe in for the 5700 XT, but that doesn't mean it should outperform the 5700 XT reference model in operating volume.
Only biostar could made a dual fan cooler worse than a blower cooler.
I just want to say good for Biostar for not having multiple cards in the segment.
But that's all I have to say for it.
Steve: "It's about the loudest graphics card I've ever come across"
The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra: "Good, they have forgotten about me. I can finally rest in peace!"
That one sure was loud.. so if this is louder… it is in league of its own! Does the Steve even remember that old champion?
Wasn't one of the Voodoo cards extremely loud? The one with external power supply?
@@Ren-vt2qq The card with an external power supply that you are referring to was the Voodoo 5 6000, which was never actually released - there are only a few hundred engineering samples in the wild, and they now cost more than $10k. Also, no, that card is not as loud as the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. The latter was called the "dustbuster" for a reason. :-)
Interestingly the FX5800 Ultra was another $379+ 128 bit bus GPU, the last one I think before the 6600XT made it new again.
I was gonna say, this is the worst ever graphics card because it's loud? The GFFX 5800 Ultra was legendary. Also, my MSI Airboost OC Vega 64 was also excruciatingly loud. Looking at those fans I don't know how this 5600XT could possibly be louder. Also where's the raw audio of the fan noise? So many questions unanswered.
The cooler make it look like the one of those fake GPUs you see on ebay lol
Yeah exactly 😂
"Lets sell a card without a heatsink for people who want to just put a waterblock on"
"But people will try to use it straight out of the box, and then try to warranty it after it melts"
"Fine, you can spend $6 on some sort of cooler that'll at least prevent death"
Waterblock? For 6600xt "budget" 1080p card? This really doesn't sound like a reasonable solution. I think everyone would prefer to have better card rather than waterblock, even if we take into account current botched gpu market
Yeah I don't think a waterblock makes sense at this performance level but whatever. Maybe it's an aesthetic
@@kamiladamski5715 Maybe for some custom mini itx builds with a full custom water loop?
@@mingyi456 Yeah, this makes sense, I didn't think about it. For any sleeper/mini pc it might be beneficial to use waterblocks. It doesn't mean, that these mini/sleeper pc are that popular. However, If someone wishes to assemble one, this card won't be any worse than any other 6600xt (assuming you will use waterblocks).
Theres AIO's for GPU's (from ID-Cooling) which can be re-used.
Then on Chinese Taobao theres quite a lot of custom CNC'd AIO adaptor cooling plates for various GPUs for reasonably small amount of money for you to then slap a cheap AIO on it.
So im guessing this GPU really isnt for the western market.
Dell has new compedition in the category of badly engineerd products!
I’m pretty sure that heat sink is extruded aluminium. If it was machined/milled it would be crazy expensive.
Exactly what I was going to say
Yep, definitely agree. Slots are machined, fins and base are extruded.
I'll be honest and say that I didn't even know that Biostar made graphics cards. I always thought they only made motherboards and even then, I haven't seen one in the flesh since the late 90s.
I last used a Biostar motherboard in 2018 and it was good.
@Backflipping Concealed Carry Enthusiast Association I'm not sure if I'd trust any PC components that cost twenty quid or less, except maybe cables or a case...
I've paid about that on shipping, an Airsoft rifle you're interested.
@@kaushiknatarajan2637 Yea my brothers old PC with a i3-2100, which I've turned into my mining rig, uses a biostar mobo. It's actually quite a trooper. Ugly though, even for a mobo.
Biostar somehow managed to survive in socket A era, then they've returned in socket 754/939 era, and then they've got quite spread in AM2 era/LGA 775. I just don't understand, why cool companies like Abit, AOpen, Soyo and DFI left, while Biostar, which sucked much more, survived. Would have never change any of those companies for Biostar. Hell, even Soltek was more cool.
@@warrax111 I know right?... My experiences with the brands you mentioned
I was quite sad to read about Abit's demise, even if I never bought or saw their products. They were a top tier mobo maker as far as I knew so not really sure why they went under.
I had an Aopen CD drive at some point. I knew they had moved to mainly chassis/SFF and actually was quite tempted by one but got a Shuttle instead.
Never really looked at/knew about Soyo stuff. I think they were/are not distributed here in the UK.
DFI? Well let's just say that I just pulled the bright green retail box from its place on top of my cupboard to look at, a Lan Party NFII Ultra B, ahh memories! This was the ASUS ROG gamer brand of its day!
A lot of effort has been done for the pose on the thumbnail
Drake is proud
This thumbnail looks similar to Jarrod's Tech's thumbnail haha
Got me Laughing at the sight of the thumbnail!
that heatsink looks like straight from those scam gpus at wish xD
lmao
Biostar in a nutshell.
that's common for low end cards even from some known brands
@@notchipotle even a 1650 Super with an MSRP of $160 has a better heatsink than this $380 GPU
Gpu market is still going into downward spiral...is this ever going to end or idiots will still buy anything that got thrown at em
When I worked at Micro Center I didn't even bother to commission sticker their motherboards - they always got returned so what was the point lol
F. I recently bought a used DDR3+DDR4 combo board from Biostar, as I wanted to be able to switch between DDR3/DDR4 on the same testbench. Unfortunately it arrived doing.. nothing. I looked for defects and completely cleaned it and its pins, but it's just dead. Worst part is the seller is a dick so he won't even give a partial refund.
@@HazewinDog doesn't he... has to?
I have a Biostar B450MH and it is…rough. Only two DIMM slots, one CPU fan and another fan header, front io was weird and not clearly labeled, pretty bad Ethernet port, and to top it off I’ve tried a few things to fix CMOS and still says “CMOS fail” on boot
@@Treble_V2 to be fair 2 ram slots is actually better in some cases (i think?)
@@Treble_V2 Load optimized defaults then reset it should stop showing "CMOS Fail."
"It is frankly unsatisfactory." Steve you are such a respectful man in the face of such frustration. Bless you and bless your channel mate
I feel disgusted just by looking at it... There is something about cheaply made gpus that make me sick on the physical lvl
Quick note: the heatsink is actually extruded instead of machined. It's significantly cheaper and less time consuming to manufacture.
My first graphics card ever was a Nvidia MX400 32Mb and that had a solid green aluminum heatsink, biostar is going oldschool.
The heat sink is extruded aluminium. Some sections may have received a finish, but it isn't milled or cut out of a block of aluminium.
Yeah, machining this out of a block would be extremely wasteful.
Good review Steve, imagine how this card would go in Adelaide's 40c degrees plus, summer in a poorly ventilated case ugh! Liked the cooler swap, really highlighted the difference between a good and a crap cooler. Quality content from you and Tim as always. Cheers mate.
and its going to be in bundles configs most of the time probably with cheap everything,...awfull,...
I guess it will just slow down....just like Adelaide in general :)
"Just avoid it like the plague"
People don't avoid plagues any more, and these days people don't avoid buying bad graphics cards either.
Just let you know Steve. We might need you to make approved pose for another thumbnail so we can use it for meme.
Asus did something similar with their Phoenix line. The PCBs are passable, but the coolers are basically hockey pucks.
That's why the chose the bird that sets itself on fire.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Back in our student days, a mate used to buy cheap biostar cards and installed an arctic freezer aftermarket cooling kit - it ended up semi acceptable...until he started getting artifacting...
"I'd just recommend you avoid it like the plague" was probably not the advice for these times, given people's track record with avoiding a literal plague ^^'
Yeah, that does seem to suggest it will sell rather well in some markets 🙄
That's extruded aluminum, but yes it came from a block of aluminum from the start.
You just know this is gonna go into prebuilt pc's and the sad part is that people who do end up with it won't know better.
This product makes the Trident VGA cards look interesting.
Trident, now that's a name I haven't heard in a minute
The Gpu market been so bad made me learn to ride a Motorbike. Still just as fun!
It is better. Welcome in the club.
holy shit those coolers. I had one of those coolers in a 1050Ti before. That cooler was slapped on top of 160W card? damn.
Biostar probably makes the worst motherboards on the market, I guess they have to keep their reputation intact. I see Biostar on a box and I just walk away.
I bought one years ago, never again!
hahaaa
they have a few decent mobos, b450gt , x370gt7, x470gt8 have a very good VRM system, the bios is very poor, but the electric constrution is very decent.
@@RuaninhoBR id rather just pay extra 20$ to never deal with it
I know a guy who made the mistake of buying a biostar b550 board a couple months ago, and they didn't even bother pre-flashing the bios with zen 3 support, and it had no usb flashing support. real grade-A stuff there.
I am buying a 4gb Chinese 550 that costs 140 euro so I can wait for a decent later model. This $hit is ridiculous. Don't give them your money, they don't deserve it.
But, no one care...things change and we couldn’t stop them, people still buying it none the less
Not like we have a choice.. It's the cheapest recent card on release
This is basically the same issue as the MSI Mech 5700XT was (I had that card for a year because I didn't watch the review all the way to the end).
I still have it, i have tamed it with open chassis plus undervolting. Didnt have a better choice and my country was nosediving.
Imo you should've included an audio sample for this kind of extreme fan noise, would've been great if we could've had a comparison of 2 gpus.
Agreed, the db scale is poorly understood by many, viewers maybe don’t have reference for just how loud that really is. 😞
@@GTFour Yeah worth noting that the human ear detects a 10 decibel difference as a doubling in volume. Going by Steve's numbers, then, the Biostar card @ 52 dB will sound more than three times as loud as the Powercolor card (@ 36 dB).
But even leaving aside the cooler's performance, seeing this kind of build quality on a $380 GPU blows my mind. The heatsink looks like something you'd fish out of a kid's cereal box. I'm actually impressed at Biostar's cheek.
Describes pretty much my impression of this company. When I look at their Mainboards and Graphics Cards, most of the time they are cutting down cost as much as possible. There are sometimes good looking products (from what I saw) like the Biostar RX 5700 XT Extreme Gaming but most of the time compared to other AIBs, they are the bottom of the line as far as their products go.
I had no idea biostar even made GPU. Although tbh I'm not sure why they bother to make anything or how they stay in business.
Awful GPU and awful price. Hot, loud, low end quality, overpriced. Nice!
Great! I'll get one…
For my worst enemy
Seems like the perfect card for me!
The reference PCB makes it easy to find a suitable water cooling block while the crappy air cooler helps keeping the price low.
And still, if the actual price is comparable, you'd be better off having a card with a decent cooler for when you eventually sell it or hand down.
Why watercool a 6600xt?
why even watercool a 6600xt lol, why not just spend that extra money on a better gpu ....
@@TrippedAlien Because the cooling solution for my computer is built around a custom loop. Currently I have a watercooled GTX 1060...
@@Lishtenbird When I'm finished using this card it will be so obsolete that recycling, not re-use, is the only option.
It has been years since I heard of 'Biostar" gpu... I had one that was back with the ATI Radeon 5750... back ten years ago... and that was crap then.
I wish more testing was done in warmer climate temps. I always see the wonderful temps reported by reviewers, but because South Africa is usually 25C-30C+ C, we never see those temps. Cards that are reported to never go over 67C are well over 75C.
Room Ambient temperature matters - which is why any thermal testing should always start with the ambient temperature of the room first so that everyone has a clear reference point
Those heatsink fins look like something from a $150 graphics card...
Bc it is...
this is because this tier of performance should be around 150-250$....but no...we get it at 400 -.-"
Looks like a Dell gpu
more for a passive 70 bucks card which draw 60W max.
Biostar for motherboards is like Gigabyte for power supplies.
You should Google Aerocool power supplies. That's a definitely a bomb.
@@ArteriusSaren ;)
This is evidence that this model of card is absurdly priced at 379$ and that it's a low end model, therefore, its msrp should be 250$.
Yep
This kind of cooler is for nVidia GT710 30$ cards, not for 250$ cards.
Those times are over, even if 380€ is too much, prices for materials also gone up, it's just how resources are working, I think that we will never get back to the days of the (nvidia) 700, 900 or 1000 series
"Back to you Steve." Can we get Schlieren imaging done on this?
when i saw “worst ever” i had to watch, this one has to be entertaining :)
I remember buying my fir Biostar motherboard in the 90s... the plastic parts of the SATA ports would rip off the board with the cables... cheapest build ever... I see nothing changed.
In an ideal world, I'll be using a Sapphire AIB if I were using a Radeon card. I swear on the brand because of its consistent quality.
"In an ideal world, I'll be using a Sapphire AIB if I were using a Radeon card. I swear on the brand because of its consistent quality." QFT
Sapphire or Powercolour for AMD
I got the Saphire Nitro and it runs nice and cool
I just got a used Biostar RX 6600 last week at ~164$, really impressive with the performance at this low price range, so far no heating issue when pushing it to full power.
Did some research on the internet, mine is probably the 2nd gen which does not have issues from XT version mentioned in this video.
But the fan is really loud, even at low-medium utilization, not sure if that's current gen config or it's just me, time to look for a working fan curve software.
Well, you pay for what you want.
LMFAO biostar, I remember that brand back in the geforce 8800GT era and their build quality was so bad that the thin crappy heatsink that had zero copper whatsoever (honestly I think it was made out of tin or something with how bad it was) would often lift off of the PCB because it'd warp under the heat.
oh jeez, this kind of heatsink I remember being on my 2c4t processor two motherboards ago 🤦♂️
back when they didn't need fans... _it was a really old CPU I was stuck with for ages..._
So they basically put a heatsink from a gt 710
That heatsink looks primarily extruded. They usually extrude a length, say 5m, and cut sections to the length of one heatsink. Then slot, cut sections, and drill it.
At this Point I think I lost all hopes in Sub 200$ MSRP Budget GPUs
That boat sailed years ago
You are like...5 years late to lose hope
The reason it climbs from 3400 to 3800 rpm, eventhough both are 100% duty cycle, is i think due to the oil heating up over time. It reduces viscosity and the fans have less mechanical reisitance.
Here in Brazil the ambient temp. is 32cº imagine how this card will be in here
giving you more realistic experience when you play Microsoft flight simulator lol
@@lewislu8533 hahahahah 😂
The fan noise issue brings back memories of owning a reference cooled AMD R9 290X, it literally sounded like a hair dryer was switched on inside my case.
Loved the cooler swap, awesome work Steve!
A technical corrections - fins are not milled from a block of aluminium, this would make it more expensive than the fin stack. It's called an aluminium extrusion - metal is pushed trough a matrix that makes the fin shapes.
Over 90°C on stock prolly would make this card died in no time, even the zotac single fan gtx 10 series card has way better temp than this one.
That's junction temperature that's designed to stay under 110 C. Honestly, anything below 100 C is not a problem. The problem with this card is the fan noise.
Every time he says Hellhound, I get an image of Crocodile Dundee saying Hellhound out of the side of his mouth with a big ass knife in hand
Even if I was desperate for a GPU, I probably wouldn’t get this model. Embarrassing.
Edit: I noticed it’s only running at 130W, isn’t the TDP of 6600xt 160W? So it runs 15C hotter, and it uses 30W less.
130W for core, the other 30 is for VRAM
Take a shot every time steve says hell hound 🐕
Even my old Biostar RX580 had a better cooler...
Thank you, I was going to buy a Biostar Rx6600 at my local shop,since they sound like a deal which is as cheap as a 1660s .But i'm living in tropical climate,with a minimal itx case with no support exhaust fan ,this clearly made my itx case become hell really quick
Hey Steevo! If you're gonna chuck that card in the bin, could you throw it my way ?? Its still better than my aging GTX 670 !! :)
You live in a world that doesn't exist, buddy.
The biostar heatsink is not milled out of a single block of aluminium, that would be prohibitively expensive.
Think of cold paltes in water blocks.
These heatsinks are made by extrusion, where a bar of aluminium is forced through a die.
Good for producing components with a fixed cross section, like the heat sink in this example.
Yep
I was thinking the same thing, There would also be noticeable milling marks (there is no way something like that would be put to a high level of craftsmanship to remove those). I was like there is absolutely no way that milling that is cheaper then stamping some fins together.
so technically within spec, is this a preview of dell's oem 6600xt?
Guess who was the OEM manufacturer for Dell...
Whoa I almost bought it yesterday, this card was so cheap, I got Zotac 2070 Super instead tiny bit more expensive. Both of em still have warranty.
Gamers should never buy a card for at least 3 years. Until the scalpers and miners have given up.
You made the reviews very interesting. Usually they are a lot of bar graphs but with your channel those are interesting too. Very nice changing the coolers. Cheers, probably the best pc reviews on TH-cam
Amazing! It's like they are planing for them to only be sold to miners where noise is much less of an issue, then thought about the bad press and put "Gaming" on the box to help.
Perhaps they should have put 'Mining' on the box 🤣
Great Channel. I love your reviews! Can you make a review of the Biostar RX 7900xt and the RX 7900xtx "custom" gpu's?
Wow- you have to work pretty hard to be “the worst ever”
Steve goes on about the horrible vacuum cleaner fan noise from Biostar 6600xt…
My old GeForce Fx5800 ultra in my display cabinet: “after 18 years, finally a worthy opponent…”
as usual, Biostar delivers
If anyone is brave enough for a diy you can fix that cooler yourself, take the fans off and drill it everywhere or go for a fin-like type of layout, it should improve the cooling capability by a lot. It def is doable as a one hour job.
i think the last bare alu cooler i had was on my old voodoo3 3000, i had my own 40mm fan straped on for cooling, ok there were no fancy heatpipes then but that was 20 years ago
It would be interesting to know if you acted all naive and asked Biostar about the fan noise and thermals and if they could confirm if HB had a faulty unit before releasing this video. That would make for an entertaining email back and forth.
Nah… it is working according the specks! Was this the device they use it JET planes… yes? And don`t whisper to me talk ALOUD PLESE MY HEARING IS NOT SOMGOOD AS IT USED TO BE!
Well, I have a GTX1070 from AXLE from last year and I can say that its performance is excellent and with temperatures not exceeding 70 ° C at full load and with little noise from its fans, I was quite surprised to be an unknown brand but I got a good price and couldn't be more satisfied. I recommend this brand over BIOSTAR without a doubt
1st 6600 XTs arriving in Europe (Based on 369€ MSRP)
XFX 392-412-432€ (For some reason, the MERC 308, allegedly the best is the cheapest and the most expensive the SWIFT 210)
Sapphire 445-470€ PULSE and NITRO+
Powercolor 394-442 Fighter and Red Devil
If you bought one of these cheap on eBay.
AliExpress sells powercolor 6600XT coolers. (New). $50Aud for me.
If the Biostar is cheap enough, the $50 still keeps it budget.
Runs much quieter
Steve should overlay the fan noise (with a baseline floor and range) of the cards over the gaming/test sections.
*fan RPM noise. ugh.*
I added Noctua fans to my GTX1080. I can play SOTTR at near-max settings (at 2560x1440, 60FPS) with an almost-silent PC. My Noctua fans are at roughly 800RPM during gaming.
Back in 2014 I had Radeon 7970 graphics card which was reaching around 90 - 92 degrees under load. After 2 years the screen started to go black every hour and it was broken. And 100+ degrees it's really high. I think that this card will be done soon...
I have an MSI Radeon RX 580 ARMOR
It can hit 3k+ RPM in my microATX case in 27C ambient temp. I use it undervolted, so it runs with 2200mhz in the same ambient temp. And most of the time the ambient temp is lower, so its around 1700rpm.
I never thought it could get worse than this.
That cooler looks like a machined piece of extruded aluminum rather than starting with a billet. I could be wrong though, it just seems like the machine time to do that would be cost prohibitive.
I was just looking through all the 6600 XFs on Newegg and it looks like all the MSRP cards have those sub 100W machined aluminum heat sinks.
At first I was like only able to heat your office to 25 Celsius then I remembered this Australia’s winter