NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB — 2026 relaunch review

NVIDIA resurrects the RTX 3060 12GB, a five-years-old architecture for 2026?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB, relaunched in 2026 at full MSRP

NVIDIA originally launched the RTX 5050 on September 1, 2021, with an nominal MSRP of $329. I say "nominally" because that was right in the middle of the GPU crypto-mining era and almost none of the RTX 30-series Ampere GPUs sold at anything close to MSRP right up until the follow-up RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace GPUs appeared. It was one of the potentially best graphics cards available in terms of bang for the buck, with double the VRAM of its predecessor (the 2060) and plenty of bandwidth, along with a decent upgrade in computational power and features.

When the RTX 4060 arrived about two years later (June 29, 2023), people were pissed. NVIDIA chopped the memory interface down to 128 bits and reduced the memory capacity back to 8GB. There were still plenty of instances where the 4060 offered improved performance, but a lot of that also depended on support for the then-new DLSS 3 frame generation. Simply put, FG remains far more marketing hype than an actual performance improvement. It's frame smoothing, pure and simple — and yes, backed by AI computations to make it "better" the previously existing algorithms. It's not bad, but the performance claims made by NVIDIA are at best exaggerated in regards to how a game feels with FG enabled. At worst? It's blantant false advertising. But that ship has sailed.

Now NVIDIA even has the RTX 5060 GPU, released on May 19, 2025 — still over a year ago! It still has 8GB, like the 4060, which means even the relatively ancient 3060 12GB still offers 50% more VRAM capacity. Then you toss in the massive spike in memory costs thanks to the AI sector, and of course the newer GPUs from NVIDIA have switched to GDDR7 (except for the RTX 5050), and suddenly the idea of re-releasing the RTX 3060 12GB starts to make sense. Except it's still at that original $329 MSRP. So much for depreciation. Let's hit the specs.

GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Mining Performance

Continuing through the current crop of graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is an interesting 'value proposition' card for Nvidia miners. It's relatively low power, though the EVGA model I have still includes an 8-pin power connector. That can actually be a good thing for people using PCIe risers, since it means the card will draw nearly all of its power from the PEG connector and not from the x16 PCIe slot. Trust me, you don't want to try pulling 75W over the PCIe slot when you're using Molex or SATA power connectors!

In practice, I find the 1060 6GB is reasonably fast, but there are better cards for the money -- the RX 570 and RX 580 being the main competition. Still, there are algorithms where the 1060 does better, and it does use a bit less power (and thus runs quieter/cooler). Here's a snapshot of performance, using a Ryzen 5 1600X testbed with the EVGA GTX 1060 SSC.

The current estimated income for the EVGA 1060 6GB SSC is around $1.75-$2.25, with power using about $0.25 per day. That means net profits of $1.50-$2.00 per day, which means for a single card the ROI time is around 125-167 days. So that's worse than several of the competing cards, but again, I'd like to stress that I haven't burned out any of my Nvidia GPUs during mining. I can't say the same for AMD's GPUs....

Something else that's nice about Nvidia cards is that you usually don't have to fiddle as much to get them up and running at good performance values, and you can easily tweak clocks and performance with utilities like MSI Afterburner. (I like to set the cards to 90 percent power target to keep them running cooler.)

If you're looking to put together 6-GPU mining rigs, you could safely run the 1060 cards with a 1000W PSU, which is a bit easier to find than the 1200W and higher models I recommend from some of the other builds. EVGA's 1000W T2 is a great Titanium rated power supply with a 10-year warranty -- sure to outlast your GPUs for mining purposes!

The quick and dirty math:
Basic PC setup: $870 (no case -- use a wire shelf)
Ryzen 5 1600: $230
Asus Prime-X370 Pro motherboard: $150
16GB DDR4-2667: $97
240GB SSD: $63
1350W PSU: $240
PCIe riser adapters: $50
Six GTX 1060 6GB cards: $240 each = $1,440
Total = $2,310, income of $12 per day ~= 192 days to ROI

And that's why building a 'budget' mining rigs isn't as effective as building rigs with the fastest GPUs.

GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Mining Performance

One of the best graphics cards around right now, in terms of gaming performance as well as mining performance, is Nvidia's GTX 1070 8GB. There are many reasons why this is a great card, the most important factors being:

1. Availability -- you can find GTX 1070 cards all over the place
2. Price -- the latest price cuts bring the 1070 down to less than $350
3. Power -- the 1070 needs a single 8-pin power connector at most
4. Temperatures -- the 1070 runs relatively cool and quiet

If you're in the market for a bunch of GPUs to use for mining, right now I'd give serious consideration to the 1070, specifically EVGA's GTX 170 SC, which is one of the least expensive models right now and still comes with a decent factory overclock. I've got several of these cards, and while they're not the fastest option, they're some of the best overall rate of return. Here are the stats for one of the factory overclocked cards:

Currently, the GTX 1070 is averaging $3.00-$3.50 per day, with a power draw of 150W -- yes, about the same power requirements as an RX 470/480 or RX 570/580. It costs more, but it also earns more, with a power cost of around $0.35 per day.

With a current price of $344 on the EVGA SC model, that works out to 109-130 days to hit ROI on each card. Even better, due to power requirements you could actually hook up six of these to a single system, provided the motherboard supports such a setup. Which of course you can certainly find. As I did with the GTX 1080 Ti recently, let's look at the complete PC ROI numbers.

Here's the quick math:
Basic PC setup: $870 (no case -- use a wire shelf)
Ryzen 5 1600: $230 (I like the 6-core/12-thread models, for when you're doing other stuff)
Asus Prime-X370 Pro motherboard: $150
16GB DDR4-2667: $97
240GB SSD: $63 (boot faster, install updates faster)
1200W Titanium PSU: $280 (efficiency is really important!)
PCIe riser adapters: $50 (don't use the SATA to Molex power adapter, though!)
Six GTX 1070 cards: starting at $344 each = $2,064
Total = $2,934, income of $18 per day = 163 days to ROI

If you want to cut costs, you could probably go with 8GB RAM and a cheaper CPU, but I wouldn't go too low -- at some point, you might want to do something else with the PC, and having a better processor is really nice. But if you want to go with a Pentium G4560 and a Z270 motherboard, that will save about $170. If you do that, you could hit ROI potentially in 155 days.

Either way, that's a bit faster than building a GTX 1080 Ti mining rig. Another thing I like about going the Nvidia route instead of AMD is that there tends to be more flexibility on algorithms when you're mining via NiceHash. Most of my AMD rigs don't seem to like certain algorithms, and outside of DaggerHashimoto, they're outperformed by Nvidia equivalents. If Ethereum weren't so big, AMD mining would be far less useful.

Building a Haswell Desktop

I know lots of people are moving to laptops for most of their computing needs. I use laptops plenty, but for use with my older 30" HP LP3065 display I still need something with a dual-link DVI output. There were a few gaming laptops that had such a connection, but these days? Yeah, too bad for me! So I tend to do nearly all of my home computing on a desktop still. If you're like me and prefer to stick with a traditional desktop, and if you happen to be running a system that's several years old or more, the recent launch of Intel's Haswell (4th Generation Core Series) processors may be giving you the itch to upgrade.

Here's a system I'm recommending to a friend. It's pretty easy to put this all together and having a speedy setup for the next five years. I've included a couple options on three key parts: the GPU, the CPU, and the RAM. At the high-end, you might want to go all-out on the performance aspects, and that's where we get the GTX 780, 16GB RAM, and an i7-4770K processor. The nearly as fast but quite a bit more affordable configuration opts for GTX 770, 8GB RAM, and an i5-4570K. For the even less demanding, we can also go with a GTX 760 graphics card -- and if you don't care about gaming, you might just save yourself hundreds of dollars by going with the integrated Intel HD 4600 Graphics. Here's the list of parts:

Intel Core i7-4770K processor ($339)
Intel Core i5-4670K processor ($230)
Corsair H80i Cooler ($75)
ASRock Z87M Pro4 motherboard ($142)
Zotac GTX 780 3GB GDDR5 ($610)
EVGA GTX 770 4GB GDDR5 graphics card ($440)
Gigabyte GTX 760 4GB GDDR5 graphics card ($300)
16GB (2x8GB) G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1866 DDR3-1866 memory ($153)
8GB (2x4GB) G.Skill Sniper DDR3-1866 memory ($83)
256GB Corsair Neutron solid state drive ($190)
2TB Western Digital hard drive ($87)
ASUS DVDRW ($22)

Cases:
Rosewill mATX case ($36)
Corsair Obsidian 350D ($80)
Silverstone PS07B ($79)
Bitfenix Prodigy ($80) (White)
Silverstone Tek TJ08B-E case ($100)

Power Supplies:
600W Enermax Platimax 80 Plus Platinum ($184)
450W Antec 80 Plus Platinum ($84)
Corsair RM650 80 Plus Gold ($118)
Corsair CX430 80 Plus Bronze ($40)

Operating System:
Windows 7 Home Premium OEM ($89)
Windows 8.1 OEM ($110)

You'll note that I've gone with a mATX motherboard and case, mostly because I feel the larger cases these days are just way bigger than they need to be. I cheaped out a bit on the case initially, so I added some higher-end options, plus the white Bitfenix Prodigy.

Similarly, the power supply has a few options now; go with the 600W/650W if you want to use the GTX 770 or GTX 780, and 430W/450W for lesser builds. The difference in efficiency between 80 Plus Platinum and 80 Plus Bronze is about 5-7%, so realistically you only save at best 25-50W under load by going with Platinum, and probably 5-10W or less at idle. Running 24/7 at load, that works out to $22-$44 per year, but a more realistic use would be loaded 10% of the time and idle the rest of the time, which would only be $6-$12 per year. Saving $40-$80 on the PSU in the short-term ends up being a wash over five years, but either choice is fine.

The CPU cooler is also optional, but overclocking is possible to if you want to give that a shot I'd grab the cooler. Windows 7 will also save  you $21 right not compared to Windows 8.1 (which is still whatever).

Here's what the totals come down to, using Platinum PSUs and Win8.1:

Maximum Performance (i7, 600W, GTX 780, 16GB, Silverstone, H80i): $2012
High-End Performance (i5, 600W, GTX 770, 8GB, Silverstone, H80i): $1663
Moderate Performance (i5, 450W, GTX 760, 8GB, Rosewill): $1284
Moderate Non-Gaming (i5, 450W, 8GB, Rosewill, no HDD): $897

So basically the total would be anywhere from $900 to $2000, depending on how high you want to go on the graphics mostly. The system is of course more upgradeable over the long terms, and it has room for multiple hard drives/solid state drives if you want. You could add more storage, a fast graphics card (two if your power supply and case can handle it -- I'd suggest switching to a full-size ATX case for that, though), or if something breaks down in a few years you can easily find replacement parts.

If you were to go out and buy a Dell, HP, etc. system, the initial pricing may seem much better than a custom-built PC, but there are a few caveats. First, Dell chooses most of the parts, without too many customization options available. One big item that's missing on many big OEM desktops is a good SSD (solid state drive), which is something I require for every system I build -- it just makes such a difference that I'm not willing to put together a system these days without an SSD. So if you take Dell's $700 configuration for something like the XPS 8700, you'd get a slightly slower CPU, a very mediocre GPU (the GT 635), a motherboard with no frills or overclocking, slower RAM, a smaller HDD, no SSD, and a lower quality power supply. If you wanted to get something close to the moderate build I've recommended, it's $890 just to get the SSD.

The problem with big OEM PCs is that Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, etc. make systems that are designed to hit a price point, and they cut lots of corners to get there. They're not as upgradeable in some respects, and the quality of the components is lower. As an example, I could get the price of the base level desktop I listed above down about $250 if I just use a lower quality, lower price motherboard (H81 chipset), power supply, RAM, SSD, and a slower CPU (i5-4430) -- but that's not something I am comfortable building, as long-term reliability is more of a concern. So if you've ever looked at OEM systems and wondered, "How can they get all those components into such a system at that price?", that's how. Buy in bulk, user lower quality parts, and you can save 20% on overall costs...and lose out long-term. Don't forget the bloatware software either!

Anyway, I'm working on a guide for my regular job with similar parts to the above -- I just need to do a bit more research before firming up the recommendations, so stay tuned....