Friday, March 6th 2020
Did AMD Tease its Upcoming Reference Board Design Ditching the Lateral Blower?
At AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su's keynote address at the company's 2020 Financial Analyst Day, a curious slide element caught our eye - a never before seen graphics card design that bears AMD insignia. This is quite possibly AMD's upcoming reference design. The design fits into the language of sharp dark ridges and red accents the company adopted first with its Radeon RX 5700 XT MBA (made by AMD) graphics card, and the hypothetical RX 5600 XT reference design that never made it to the market as the SKU was a partner-exclusive.
In Reddit AMAs following the RX 5700 series launch, corporate vice-president and manager for Radeon, Scott Herkelman, mentioned that all subsequent Radeon RX products by the company would ditch the lateral-blower design in favor of an axial multi-fan design that's characteristic of most partner-designed cards. NVIDIA made that switch with its RTX 20-series Founders Edition cards, and AMD too implemented a triple axial fan design for its Radeon VII card, before switching back to a conventional lateral-blower design for its RX 5700 series. AMD would go on to give the reference design RX 5600 XT an axial dual-fan cooler.
The card in AMD's presentation, however, is unlike anything we've seen so far. From the top three-quarters angle it's been taken, we can confirm two axial fans, a large vent along the entire top of the board that serves as a vent for the heatsink, and an aluminium fin stack that's arranged perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard, rather than parallel to it (i.e., hot air is guided out from the top of the card). Such a fin arrangement has more surface area than fin-stacks in which the fins are arranged along the plane of the motherboard (i.e. hot air is guided from the rear and front ends of the card), for the simple reason that you would end up with more fin-density, if the card is sufficiently long. A hexagonal insert along the top edge has the AMD logo embellishment, while another cutout is where the card's power connectors are located. This "picture" could very well be just a render for now, still on the drawing board, and only an upcoming product months away from launch could be using this design.
In Reddit AMAs following the RX 5700 series launch, corporate vice-president and manager for Radeon, Scott Herkelman, mentioned that all subsequent Radeon RX products by the company would ditch the lateral-blower design in favor of an axial multi-fan design that's characteristic of most partner-designed cards. NVIDIA made that switch with its RTX 20-series Founders Edition cards, and AMD too implemented a triple axial fan design for its Radeon VII card, before switching back to a conventional lateral-blower design for its RX 5700 series. AMD would go on to give the reference design RX 5600 XT an axial dual-fan cooler.
35 Comments on Did AMD Tease its Upcoming Reference Board Design Ditching the Lateral Blower?
Here you go confirmation & while your there fire some questions at Scott Herkelman
Amd/comments/fe2jfu
Now if they can just get the mfgr's to stick with the same or a very similiar design, me may be whippin out da plastik' when these cards are released....hehehe
Maybe it actually does, on the other hand.
Because of that, there’s reference cards with shit coolers at mstp at launch while decent/better cooler-equipped cards are $10-20 over msrp coming at 3-4 weeks later.
I just want a good aftermarket dual fan cooler AT msrp AT launch. Is it too much to ask?
I can't believe I'm saying this but follow Nvidia's example. Launch has reference cooler card and aftermarket cooler cards AT launch. But aftermarket is msrp while reference cards are over msrp for nincompoops who prefer reference shit (and not mess with AIB sales as well).
Maybe add some carbon fibre weave or some shit cause even the new cooler looks like cheap toyota lease car interior. Nvidia RTX also uses cheap chrome and silver plastic but makes itself look premium.
Now that crossfire / SLI are gone, is finally time to introduce cards with standard thickness fans: fans that are NOT brand specific and can be swapped if need be by "insert preferred brand" fans. Be them 92mm or 120mm.
EDIT
It's 92mm: not 90mm.
It's time for board makers to space the slots further from each other. It doesn't have to be by much: 1/4 to 1/3 of a slot should be enough. This would mean 2 slots equal current 2.5 slots to 2.67 slots which is more than enough to enhance GPU cooling capabilities by both fans' and cooler's thickness.
However, if they increase the slot spacing, the blower's cooler can also get thicker thus it SHOULD cool better @ the same fan speed or the same @ lower fan speed. Personally speaking, it'd prefer the same cooler thickness but with standard fans, which you could replace if need be with standard 92mm or 120mm fans, depending on which size of fan the cooler came with.
EDIT
By using standard fans, which are much THICKER than the fans that usually come with the GPUs, the temps should drop quite significantly, i think.
ok i am a little bit drunk so take as ya like