If all else fails yea I will swap the cards and see.  I did use MSI afterburner to exactly match specifications, but left to its own the Zotac was almost identical in temp/clock/load already according to gpu-z and afterburner. (zotac was 1 degree cooler BUT only 67% TDP vs 92% for Asus)

I also swapped risers just in case.  No luck there either.  I have just enough room to actually install the zotac on the board, I might try that also.

But even if Zotac is a lesser brand (which honestly it feels really well made), all things being equal it should not be such a dog.  BTW I am using the same miner mining the same pool on both systems BTW, and the 1060s are running at the same speed on both.

I feel like I am missing something somehow, but... I dunno.