This move follows Nvidia’s unveiling of the GeForce RTX 5050 for laptops and desktops. While the desktop version won’t hit the shops until late July, the board partners are already showing off their tinsel. Thanks to the RTX 5050’s decent efficiency, the door was wide open for smaller cooling contraptions, and Gigabyte clearly took the hint.

Dubbed the GeForce RTX 5050 OC Low Profile 8G, the card comes with 8GB of GDDR6 memory spinning at 20Gbps and fits into a dual-slot frame measuring 182mm by 69mm by 36mm. It still uses a PCIe 5.0 interface, making it ready for those with modern motherboards and little room.

Compared to the earlier RTX 3050 Low Profile card, this newer one slaps on an extra fan without bulking up the size much. Gigabyte didn’t say what clocks the GPU is running at, but given it’s an OC variant, expect a smidge more than the reference boost of 2.57GHz.

Power consumption remains at 130W, in line with the standard version, and both Nvidia and Gigabyte recommend a 550W power supply, just in case.

Gigabyte’s cooler is no throwaway either. The GPU is married to a copper plate via some server-grade thermal goop, with aluminium fins and copper heat pipes doing the heavy lifting. For a card that doesn’t guzzle watts, this should be more than enough to keep things chilly.

There’s a pair of HDMI 2.1b ports and two DisplayPorts, one being 1.4a and the other the more modern 2.1b.

Expect the card to carry the same $249 (about €232) price tag as Nvidia’s suggested retail and land on shelves in late July. The biggest issue with cards at the moment is availability rather than sellablity.