Anticipate New Era of Customizable GPU Thermal Solutions

One of the top reasons why GPUs usually die is because of heat management. Your GPU might get, literally, smoked to death because of failing fans or improper cleaning. It’s not the easiest task to keep them clean, either, as it can get tricky to clean those fans. If one gets damaged, it’s an even harder story. XFX just had a cool idea about something that could fix this once and for all, and if it works, I really hope we can get to see it everywhere.

XFX is teasing the launch of new graphics cards that have a mechanism for swapping out fans when needed. We don’t know the exact details of how this might work, other than the fact that this will allow you to quickly remove fans when they’re off and insert them, all without having to actually disassemble the card. It could have a magnetic snapping system, something like a release switch, or something else. But there’s no denying that this is exciting for extending the lifespan of standalone graphics cards..

We also don’t know what model graphics cards would take advantage of this fan design. AMD is apparently close to announcing its RDNA 4 GPUs, so the first batch of cards with these hot-swappable fans might be RX 8000-series cards. XFX doesn’t make Nvidia cards, either, so there’s probably no chance of seeing these in a team green version, at least not from this particular OEM.

There are several reasons why this could be extremely useful. If a fan ever fails on you , you have the option to just swap it out for a good fan—that would be dependent, of course, on XFX selling fan replacements for the cards. It also makes cleaning the GPU several times easier. You can just remove the fan and either clean it by hand or with a blower, but it’s way easier than trying to get into a fan from the outside or having to disassemble it for a deeper cleaning. With how big graphics cards are, they suck in a lot of air, so they can get dirty very quickly.

Source: XFX via ExtremeTech

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