A Chinese manufacturer has developed a single-slot, low-profile version of the Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card that operates without external power connectors. The device draws its entire power supply directly from the PCIe x16 slot, which is limited to 75W. This modification requires a shunt mod to force the card to operate well below its standard 170W power limit.
The hardware features a compact blower-style cooler, a single HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. A teardown reveals a lack of thermal pads on memory chips and a basic metal shroud for heat dissipation. The card lacks a backplate and a traditional fin stack, relying on a single fan for airflow, which fails to provide adequate cooling for the components.
In performance tests, the card reaches a boost clock of just over 900 MHz, significantly lower than the standard 1,770 MHz. It achieved a Time Spy score of 4,821 points, which is less than half the score of a standard RTX 3060. The GPU also experienced thermal throttling, with hotspot temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Celsius during operation.
The performance of this modified RTX 3060 falls behind older hardware, including the AMD RX 580 and Nvidia GTX 1060. While the card is designed for compact systems, current mini PCs offer comparable or superior integrated graphics performance. The device demonstrates that extreme power constraints severely limit the capabilities of the Ampere architecture.