In a Reddit thread, Mark Regimbal, community manager at XFX, posted several images of XFX’s upcoming Vega graphics card using a custom cooler. We reached out to XFX and confirmed that the images are indeed official.
The wait for custom Vega graphics cards has been a rollercoaster. Upon launch, AMD board partners faced numerous issues in creating custom cards. Due to the wide variance in the quality of the chips, they had difficulties finding a stable overclocked GPU frequency for all their cards. The GPU’s self-reported temperature also differed from what the AIB partners gathered from their own tests. In addition, the GPU package height differed between products, because both molded and unmolded variants were shipped. The different package heights required separate cooler designs to fully cover all the components, which added complexity and cost.
Nevertheless, a handful of custom Vega graphics cards have made their way through. The first one to showcase a complete product was Asus, and now, XFX is joining the fray.
The unnamed card features an eye-catching tapered cooling shroud coated in a matte black, carbon fiber finish. Covering the back side is a hefty-looking backplate. The cooler relies on two fans to dissipate heat and spans across two expansion slots.
Interestingly, the XFX custom Vega card uses a short PCB. This is indicated by the center placement of the 8+6-pin power connectors and the lack of PCB seen through the backplate in the rear image. Trimming the PCB down makes sense, because there really aren’t many components installed in the rear half of the board.
XFX hasn’t confirmed which card was pictured, we suspect that the images show both the Vega 64 and Vega 56; note that one model has black fans, and the other has red.
Neither specs nor pricing were posted along with the images. XFX also commented that the card is still a work in progress, with details subject to change.
