GIGABYTE GeForce GT 1030 Low Profile 2GB, GV-N1030D5-2GL

Pros: Purchased the GT1030 to supercharge a 5-year old Dell 790 small-form-factor system featuring second gen i3-2120 and 4GB DDR3-1333. The Gigabyte model is the most compact design of the bunch. The heat sink is so narrow that it does not interfere with the PCIe slot next to it which is a pretty significant feature in small cases that only have two expansion slots to start with.

I am extremely happy with this graphics card. I have been building budget-performance computers for over 20 years, and this is one of the finest components I have ever used.

Cons: This is no GTX 1070, so don't expect to try 4K gaming with any expectations. Know that as a budget gaming platform this card will give you the tools to do some creative tweaking in order to play almost any game out there at 1080p (or lower) resolution.

Overall Review: Overclocking software is a bit cryptic at first, but is very well worth figuring out. You can essentially disregard the 1228MHz core clock, since GPU Boost will automatically ramp up performance to 1509MHz under heavy GPU load. But that is not even where this card starts to get interesting. At stock settings, my card was barely hitting 50 degrees Celsius, so I set the GPU base clock to 1600MHz, and discovered that under load, this card GPU-Boosts to 1825MHz! Even at such ridiculous overclocks, I have yet to see the GPU core temps rise above 60 degrees Celsius.

Prior to installing the GT1030, I benchhmarked my Dell on userbenchmark and fell in at a rather low 28th percentile. After installing the card, I re-benched in the 40th percentile. Then, following the amazing 50% overclock, My generic little five-year-old Dell landed solidly in the middle of the pack at the 49th percentile.

Pros: Seems to work fine in my husband's computer (we bought 2)

Cons: Just over 60 days after installing this card into my computer, the monitor stopped functioning correctly. It sometimes didn't turn on at all, and sometimes it would show a checkerboard pixelation. Confused, I took it to my computer tech who pulled my brand new card out of the tower and showed me that, on the back, right under the card's fan, the circuits showed massive heat damage. I contacted Gigabyte immediately with pictures, filled out forms, waited for my RMA to be approved, sent it to California (I live in Canada), waited 4 weeks, and then was told they wouldn't honour the warranty because the card was damaged. According to them, this damage voids the warranty. This makes no sense as it was their card's malfunction that caused the damage.

Overall Review: I will never buy another product from this company