XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air Review

Several graphics card manufacturers are beginning to see the value in making the fans of their cooling solutions easily replaceable by end-users, with minimal need for disassembly.

This is (at least) the second round already, and it likely failed once because replacement fans weren't easy/economical enough to get.

Twist is that this time at least the high end cards are so large, it would make more sense to just have fan mount points accepting standard 12cm fans, and even the smaller ones could use 8cm fans. This way the manufacturers could also ship the usual thin and flimsy fans, and enthusiasts could easily swap them for thicker ones given enough space.

I reviewed XFX's predecessor—the Merc 310—during my launch-day coverage of the RX 7900 XTX. Compared to that, the "Magnetic Air" model comes with magnetic fans and an improved cooling solution, but uses the same PCB design and VRM.

Our apples-to-apples heatsink comparison test confirms that at the same heat output and fan noise level, the Magnetic Air cooler runs 2°C cooler than the Merc 310. Other cards like the ASUS TUF, Sapphire Nitro and ASRock Taichi do still offer more powerful cooling solutions that are up to 8°C cooler in this test. Noise levels of the Magnetic Air are definitely improved over the Merc 310, but still louder than some competing models that run almost whisper-quiet.

According to XFX, the Magnetic Air model will sell for around $980, which is pretty close to the $1000 MSRP of the RX 7900 XTX. The most affordable RX 7900 XTX model on the market sells for just $910, which is almost 10% lower.