MSI revives Cyclone Graphics Card Family
A MSI revives the Cyclone family of graphics cards. The new GeForce RTX 4060 Cyclone 8G OC (h/t Harukaze5719) is the first MSI Cyclone we have seen released in twelve years. While it shares the signature large fan design familiar to veterans, MSI has added an aggressive touch with its shift from monochrome to yellow and black.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane. The last review of an MSI Cyclone design on Tom’s Hardware was published in March 2011. At that time, we tested a pair of new Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti graphics cards, an MSI Cyclone II and Zotac Amp! Edition, and wrote about how the GTX 550 Ti filled a gap in Nvidia’s $150 range and directly addressed the threat of AMD’s Radeon HD 5770 cards. The newly released GeForce GTX 550 Ti featured key specifications such as 192 shaders, a 900 MHz GPU core clock, and 1GB of GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus.
Returning to the present day, MSI’s marketing is announcing the return of the Cyclone design with the claim that “the whirlwind rises again.” It may share the unique Cyclone design, but there have been underlying changes, says MSI. Specifically, the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Cyclone 8GB and 8GB OC (and other new SKUs) have a new efficient and high-performance heat dissipation design.
Fortunately, MSI provides a few more technical details to back up its marketing bravado. Detailing the cooler design, it describes how the Cyclone composite cooling module is made of a central extruded aluminum radiator and is flanked by two surrounding heat pipes, threaded by other sets of cooling fins. MSI has also added finned heatsinks to the GPU VRMs.
At the center of the storm is a custom 100mm PWM Cyclone fan. MSI claims the fan uses optimized blades for high airflow and pressure. A backplate that appears to be made of brushed metal (we are concerned it may be made of plastic) provides clean lines and PCB protection. Thermal pads are also installed over heat-sensitive components such as memory modules.
In other parts of their product pages, MSI claims that the new Cyclone features solid capacitors with aluminum cores for low ESR and long life. Small and efficient Hi-C CAP capacitors are used around the GPU socket area.
Checking the technical specifications of the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Cyclone 8GB OC, we note that this compact card (163 x 124 x 42 mm) follows Nvidia’s RTX 4060 reference specifications, except for the maximum GPU clocks which are slightly faster at 2490 MHz (instead of 2,460 MHz). MSI also allows users to switch to “extreme performance” mode reaching 2,505 MHz in their MSI Center software. These same options are available with the equally compact MSI RTX 4060 Aero ITX (167 x 111 x 43 mm). As for the RTX 4060 OC models, the larger Asus RTX 4060 Dual OC also comes with a 2505 MHz GPU clock. It would be great to get some GPU temperature and fan noise comparisons.
We do not have pricing or availability details for the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Cyclone 8GB OC at the time this article was written. Checking the product pages of MSI Taiwan, there is a non-OC version listed as well. It remains a possibility that these revived Cyclone cards are exclusive to Taiwan or Asia.