Colorful GeForce GTX 1050 Review

I will be looking at Colorful GeForce GTX 1050 Review. This is a dual slot design with dual fans cooling solution on a custom PCB. The shroud design makes me think of the MSI design as it has a close resemblance to that.The card has a DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectivity options and it has a 6-pin power intake. Overall, the card looks bold and aggressive. Does it perform the same as its design? Let’s find out.

Colorful GeForce GTX 1050 NB 2G Graphics Card Review

• Item:                              Colorful GeForce GTX 1050 Review
• Manufacturer:                  Colorful
• Price:                              Check Price on Amazon

GeForce GTX 1050 Specifications

GeForce 1050 Review Packaging and Unboxing

The graphics card comes in a cardboard box retail pack. The top side has a dragon picture on the main section. Colorful is printed on the top left side. Nvidia GEFORCE GTX branding is printed on the top right side. Graphics card’s model is printed on the bottom side in a typical Nvidia color scheme.

Salient features of the Pascal series are printed under the model of the card. The backside has Nvidia brand name and logo printed on the top left side. Colorful is printed on the top right side. GEFORCE GTX 1050 is printed in between. Picture of the graphics card is printed under the model of the card. It has three more pictures printed beneath it depicting the salient features of the card. The right side of the main section highlights these features. We will cover them in the closer look section.

Company’s contact info is printed on the bottom left side. The card is made in China. Conformance information of various regulations is printed on the bottom right side. The left side of the main packaging box has COLORFUL printed on the top.

GTX 1050 is printed on the bottom. The right side of the packaging box has Colorful printed on the top side. Two stickers are pasted under it. Serial no is printed on the top sticker. GTX 1050 is printed on the bottom. The rear side has an Nvidia brand name and logo printed on the left side followed by the GTX 1050.

COLORFUL is printed on the right side. The front side of the box has the salient features of the Pascal series printed in the bullet format on the left side. Minimum system requirements are printed in the middle and the box’s contents are printed on the right side. System requirements are:

• PCIe compliant motherboard with a dual-width x16 slot
• Minimum 300W or more PSU
• 350MB of storage space for the driver
• Minimum 2GB of System memory with 4GB or more recommended
• Microsoft Windows 7,8,10 [x32,x64]
• Internet Connection

Opening the box would show the soft dark gray color Styrofoam padding covering the contents. Removing it would show the graphics card nicely tucked inside the anti-static plastic sheet. The user manual and installation disk are placed on the top of the graphics card. There is Styrofoam padding on the bottom of the box for further protection.

Nvidia 1050 Review Accessories

Following are provided with the box:

• Operation Guide
• A 6-pin PEG cable with two Molex connectors in case PSU does not have a PEG cable. Personally, I don’t prefer this implementation.

GTX 1050 3GB Review Closer Look

The colorful geforce gtx 1050 review is one of three options in their gaming solution in the GTX 1050 category. Before proceeding further, I would like to mention one thing about the shroud design that it immediately without a split thought reminds me of the MSI Frozr design as it has a close resemblance to the MSI design.

Though there are variations to make the design look different but anyone who has used or is aware of the MSI design would spot it. Let’s take a look at the design of the card. Due to the warranty consideration, I did not open the card to take a look at the PCB and VRM/MOSFETs.

The graphics card out of the box speaks for its bold yet beautifully designed shroud. The dimension of the card is 210mmX130mmx40mm (LxHxW). There are two 90mm fans on it which the dragon picture is printed. The left side fan has a sticker in the red color to mix match with the left side’s shroud color whereas the right side fan has a black color sticker to mix match with the shroud part on that side.

So, stickers have dragons as well! Majority of the other solutions boast 80mm fans for the cooling need but colorful geforce gtx 1050 review seems to have taken the cooling perspective seriously. The shroud is made of the metal and plastic and is nowhere cheap from anywhere. The red color part is metallic whereas the black part is of the plastic.

The red color part is connected to the black color part using 3 screws with one on the top side and the two on the bottom. The overall design of the shroud gives the diamond cutting style impression and it looks stunning in person. Build quality is top notch. Each fan has 9 blades and they are a rigid design which is a plus.

Each shroud has an X design under the fan and there is a fifth axis which is connected to the middle of the shroud. Each of these arms is in red color for the red color shroud part and black color for the black color shroud part. Each fan has three arms in the black color which are screwed on the shroud arms/axis. Both fans are PWM controlled.

Focusing on the cooling solution, this card has a single aluminum heat sink which to my liking is in black color. Hats off to the design team. We saw the same design concept with their iGame GTX 1050Ti that we reviewed earlier. There are total 64 fins made out of this aluminum heatsink. The card has a single 6mm copper heat pipe in nickel plating implemented in an S design.

It is making a direct contact with the chip. This is done to ensure the direct contact for effective heat dissipation. There is a single copper base in nickel plating with the heat pipe implemented in the middle of it. The heatsink has a stepped design. The left and the right sides have less height to them and they don’t make contact with the PCB but with the fans. The shroud is not fully covering the rear side of the PCB as there is a gap of approximately 4mm there.

Let’s take a look at the backside of the graphics card. We can see that the color of the PCB is black. There is no backplate on this card.  PCB is secured to the heatsink using 4 small size screws and there are 4 spring loaded screws connecting the GPU to the base of the heatsink.

Four stickers are pasted on the PCB. The top sticker has a serial no of the card printed on it. The card is made in China. This info is printed on the left side of the PCB. Two QC passed stickers are pasted on the right side of the PCB. The bottom has the standard PCI connector. We can see that shroud and heatsink both are extending the length of the PCB. One of the spring-loaded screws has a covering paper, removing which would void the warranty. Take care while working with this card as this paper can be easily torn unintentionally.

The bottom part of the shroud shows that the red color metallic portion of the shroud is connected to the black portion using 2 screws. Heatpipe can be seen coming out of the left side heatsink and going inside the base portion of the heatsink. On the right side, we can see the terminating end of the heat pipe.

There is a 4-pin header on the right side of the PCB. Both fans are connected to this header. The black portion of the shroud has a large size cutout for airflow.

Let’s take a look at the top side. From this angle, you can clearly see the black color heat sink. There is a screw securing the metallic shroud with the black color portion of the shroud. The heat pipe is coming out of the heatsink and has more height making it visible on the top of the shroud. GEFORCE GTX is printed on the black color shroud part. This part does not have any LED under it.

The heat sink is secured with the PCB using the long tabs. The 6-pin power header is on the right side of the PCB. The PCB has no SLI finger as Pascal based GTX 1050 does not have SLI support. The red and black combination is sublime. There are vents on the red color shroud part for better airflow towards the heatsink.

The front side of the card shows that the fan shroud and the heatsink extend the length of the PCB. This is the same design concept that what we saw on the iGame GTX 1050Ti that we have reviewed earlier. The far end of the black color heatsink is visible. The power cable for the fan is being routed on the right side. There are cutouts on the front side of the shroud for better airflow.

The I/O shield has a typical vented design. Following connectivity options are available on this card:

• DisplayPort 1.4
• HDMI 2.0
• DVI-D

The card is using advanced silver plating technology PCB as compared to the traditional copper-based PCBs. This technology helps in reducing oxidization and improving the PCB integrity for superior stability up to twice as compared to the traditional PCBs.

The PCB is using the I.P.P Digital Power Supply which enables the power delivery components to achieved lower DC impedance than same size inductance with lower working temperatures and lower EMI. This card is using Japanese capacitors and has 3+1 power phase design.

Gigabyte Geforce Gtx 1050 2GB Testing

Following test bench setup was used to test the performance of the graphics card:

• Intel i7 6850k
• Asus Rampage V Edition 10
• Ballistix Elite 4x4GB @ 3000MHz
• Noctua NH-U14S
• Corsair AX1200i
• Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD for OS
• Seagate Barracuda 2TB
• Asus VX24AH

Previously, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 and Gear of Wars 4 were the part of the test games. They have been dropped. Metro Last Light Redux will continue to be featured as this game based on its rich environment and taxing effects on the graphics card are handy to measure the performance of any given graphics card. Following games have been tested: –

• Battlefield 1
• DOOM
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Metro Last Light Redux
• Ashes of the Singularity
• Mass Effect Andromeda
• Call of Duty: World at War

The settings on which the games were tested are mentioned in the graphs. Microsoft Windows 10 x64 version 1709 was used. Nvidia graphics driver version 388.13 was used. FPS were monitored using MSI AfterBurner 4.4.2 Game settings were set from within the games, not from the colorful geforce gtx 1050 review Experience. All the reported framerates are average FPS.

Following synthetic benchmarks were used:

• 3D Mark
• Unigine Superposition

Previously Unigine Heaven and Valley were a part of our testing but they have been dropped and only superposition will be featured.

Let’s take a look at the performance graphs.

3D Mark

These are the graphics score only.

Unigine Superposition

The card is right where the GTX 1050 should be in comparison with the GTX 1050Ti.

Grand Theft Auto – V

The card was tested with the High settings and 2x MSAA and GTX 1050 averaged out on 31.1 FPS on the 1080P resolution which is not a bad performance for this budget entry level card.

Battlefield 1

The card was tested on the Ultra settings. 51.4 FPS on the Ultra settings at 1080P is a good performance out of this card.

DOOM

DOOM was tested using the High settings. The performance is right on the money for this card.

Metro Last Light Redux

Metro Last Light Redux was tested on Very High graphics settings with AF 4X and SSAA off. Motion Blur and the tessellation were set to Normal.55 FPS are a remarkable performance for this card.

Mass Effect Andromeda

The card was tested on the High settings.

Ashes of Singularity

The game was tested on High settings with 2x MSAA.

Call of Duty: World at War

The game was tested on Extra high settings. And 46 FPS are a damn good result on the 1080P resolution.

 Overclocking

The card boosted to 1759Hz out of the box. During my overclocking session with this card, it reached 2000MHz boost clock with +160MHz on the core clock and the +380MHz on the memory clock. This was for once and it was doing 1946MHz most of the times during the gaming.

Here are the results of the synthetic benchmarks with overclocked graphics card:

3D Mark

Superposition

Thermals

Room temp was 29C at the time of the testing. In an open bench table, the maximum temperature hit by the graphics card was 57°C. With overclocking, the max temperature was 62°C. Mind you this temperature reading is taken after 15 minutes run of the Furmark and the CPU was also stressed test at the same time using AIDA64. Thermals are very good and are speaking for the cooler’s performance which is right on the money.

Acoustics

Fans were left on default fan curve. Foneso Digital Sound Level Meter version A0 was used to test the sound level. 34dB is heck impressive for the cooling that this card provides.

Power Consumption

The Corsair AX1200i is a digital PSU with monitoring enabled on the power consumption. Corsair Link was used to checking the power consumption under stock clocks and overclocked clocks. The Furmark and AIDA64 were run at the same time to check the power consumption of the system.

Conclusion

The colorful geforce gtx 1050 review features Nvidia’s 14nm GP107 chip with Die size of 132mm² and 3300M transistors. It packs 32 ROPs and 40 TMUs with 640 CUDA Cores. It has a pixel fill rate of 45.8 GP/s and texture fill rate of 57.2 GT/s. The card has 2GB of Micron GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1752MHz with 128-bit interface and bandwidth of 112.1 GB/s. Default Clock is 1430MHz with the boost clock of 1544MHz.

The card has a bold yet stylish shroud which reminds me of the MSI Frozr cooling shroud in the red and black colors. Not to mention the stickers on the fans have the dragon pictures as well! The cooling department is strong featuring two 90mm fans and an aluminum-based black color heat sink having a 6mm nickel coated copper heat pipe.

The left side fan has a sticker in the red color to mix match with the left side’s shroud color whereas the right side fan has a black color sticker to mix match with the shroud part on that side. The shroud is made of the metal and plastic and is nowhere cheap from anywhere. The red color part is metallic whereas the black part is of the plastic. The red color part is connected to the black color part using 3 screws with one on the top side and the two on the bottom.

The overall design of the shroud gives the diamond cutting style impression and it looks stunning in person. Build quality is top notch. Each fan has 9 blades and they are the rigid design which is a plus. Each shroud has an X design under the fan and there is a fifth axis which is connected to the middle of the shroud.

Each of these arms is in red color for the red color shroud part and black color for the black color shroud part. Each fan has three arms in the black color which are screwed on the shroud arms/axis. Both fans are PWM controlled.

The heat sink has joint less fins assembly and the stack has stepped design. There is no LED gimmick on this card though the black mount on the top side of the shroud would have looked badass with the RGB lighting solution. The dimensions of the card are 210mmX130mmx40mm (LxHxW). The build quality is rock solid. In terms of connectivity, we have a DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 port and DVI-D port.

The card is using advanced silver plating technology PCB as compared to the traditional copper-based PCBs. This technology helps in reducing oxidization and improving the PCB integrity for superior stability up to twice as compared to the traditional PCBs.

The PCB is using the I.P.P Digital Power Supply which enables the power delivery components to achieved lower DC impedance than same size inductance with lower working temperatures and lower EMI. The card is using Japanese Capacitors and has a 3+1 power phase design.

It is expensive but given the current pricing all over the market, there is no complain what so ever. I have tested the card on the Full HD resolution using the graphics settings High. The graphs are speaking for the good performance of this graphics card. The new drivers coupled with this card are too damn good for any gamer playing on this resolution and yet on the budget. The performance is right on the money.

We are thankful to Texon-Ware for giving me the opportunity to review colorful geforce gtx 1050 review for the review.

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