A lot of Radeon fans hate the fact that the RX 5000-series reference cards utilize a blower design, which is traditionally louder and less effective than open air. That shouldn’t be a concern for AMD’s next lineup of in-house GPUs, however.
Scott Herkelman, Vice President and General Manager of the Radeon graphics unit, has confirmed on reddit that the Radeon team has switched away from blower fans. While there’s nothing stopping AIBs from sticking with those, AMD is going with an open-air design based on community feedback.
The switch to an open-air design with dual/tri-axial fans should make the next round of Radeon cards far more attractive to enthusiasts. They should also have greater overclocking potential due to the increased performance of open-air designs.
During yesterday’s Financial Analyst Day 2020 event, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su shared a slide that teases the shroud and dual-axial fan design of what could presumably be “Big Navi,” AMD’s oft-rumored, high-performance “NVIDIA Killer” graphics card. We can only make out the edge of it, but it looks like it’s shaping up into something beautiful.
