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AMD no longer to use blower style fans, switching to AXIAL style fans for next gen graphics cards

https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-is-changing-the-type-of-cooler-it-uses-on-next-gen-graphics-cards/

If you're not a fan of blower-style GPU coolers, AMD has good news—it's getting rid of them for its next-generation Radeon graphics cards based on its RDNA 2 architecture. In its place, AMD will switch to an axial-fan cooling solution, just as Nvidia did when it launched its GeForce RTX series, and later its GeForce GTX cards based on Turing.
When it comes to GPU coolers, blowers have the advantage of expelling hot air directly outside the case, since the exhaust vent is positioned in the expansion slot. Generally speaking, however, they do not cool as well as axial-fan solutions, and are often louder—sometimes a lot louder.
Up to this point, AMD has mostly resisted making the switch to the same style of cooler that its hardware partners use on their own custom designs (though there have been exceptions). That's going to change.
AMD teased a photo of updated cooler design in one of the slides it showed at its Financial Analyst Day presentation on Wednesday.
There were a lot of slides during the 3.5-hour presentation, and it would have been easy to miss the thumbnail shot of the GPU cooler, especially since AMD didn't say anything about it. However, the image was posted to Reddit, where AMD's vice president and general manager of the Radeon Business Unit, Scott Herkelman, confirmed the change.
"There will be no blower reference fans for gamers on next-gen. So you are correct," Herkelman wrote, with a winky-face for good measure.

This isn't entirely new territory for AMD. The Radeon VII (Vega) is outfitted with a triple axial fan cooler, though other than that, you would have to go back several generations to find another one. The Radeon RX 5000 series (Navi) and 500/400 series (Polaris) exclusively used blower-style coolers for reference models.

If the teaser image in the presentation slide is accurate, next-gen Radeon cards will go with a two-fan cooling solution. The overall style looks similar to Nvidia's modern GeForce line, though I suppose there's only so many tweaks you can make before going with something completely different in the vein of, say, Gigabyte's Windforce designs.
wmd4xyGX3J6VKcJU4ZmUxe-1024-80.jpg


And thank the lord Jesus for that. So for you lazy bums out there, this basically means that their stock cards, or reference cards, will no longer use the single fan - blower style cooler.
 
AMD is yet again 2 years late in matching Nvidia.
Well, AMD is not just a graphics company, they manage a cpu business, as well as other things.
It's easier for a company like Nvidia to have better designs because their main focus is gpu's.
But I'm very happy to see this, blower cards really suck.

Buddy, I think you should stop smoking marijuana. It's clearly not good for you.
 
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GHG

Member
Blowers are stupid, I can't believe some people prefer it over the AIB fans.

They are not stupid.

It's people's lack of understanding of their use cases that is the problem. They are absolutely ideal for SFF builds that lack airflow.

What people need to understand is that blower coolers suck air in from your case and then exhaust the air out of the case through the card out of the vents.

BLOWER-TYPE2.png


As long as you have the ambient air temps under control in your case then these coolers can work very well.

All other GPU coolers work in a slightly different way by sucking air in from inside your case and then exhausting that air out of the vents as well as back inside your case:

open-air.png


This is bad in SFF case that lacks airflow for obvious reasons as you end up with a scenario where the card is recycling its own hot air which leads to ever rising temperatures. However if you have a nice roomy case with good airflow via case fans that are set up in the correct push-pull configuration then in these coolers will perform better in that scenario.

It is important that both options continue to be available on the market.
 
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TacosNSalsa

Member
I have a blower fan and I am not a fan of it I am the pun master BBB****TTCCHHHEEESSS! . When I first got it man was it annoying when I had the tower near to me but after moving it away I can run an aggressive fan curve and not hear anything .. Still would prefer an open fan cooler though..my case has like 4 fans and a vent on top so that should be more and addiquite to cool it . Next one will be for sure
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
why would they remove that ?
WHY
Both designs have their uses and advantages in some cases but not in others. I guess AMD's market research found that most of their customers would benefit from the new design. Or, perhaps it might be more cost effective in this case.
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Pc fan issue was one of the main reasons why I got out of PC gaming, as petty as it sounds. It wasn't just the volume, it was the frustration over heat issues causing performance loss or even a crash, so I gravitated more to console gaming.

Joke was on me because my first PS4 eventually got the jet-engine syndrome. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

10000

Banned
great move,

while blower style cards looked more elegant, it only has few optimal specific uses such as AIO and multi-GPU users.

for mainstream users these axial two fan cards are more appealing because they have more cooling capability out of the box

I hope their reference model doesn't cheap out on vrm and heatsink so I don't have to buy the overpriced aftermarket sapphire or power color
 

GHG

Member
Both designs have their uses and advantages in some cases but not in others. I guess AMD's market research found that most of their customers would benefit from the new design. Or, perhaps it might be more cost effective in this case.

The reality is that most people's case airflow is inadequate. Mid-thigh end cases don't sell as well as low end cases and most people do not invest in case fans nor do they know how to set them up correctly dependant on their components.

The reason they are changing it is because the vast majority of reviewers only test these cards in a single example - on a test-bench or a fancy high air flow case where the open air cooler will perform better.

I accidentally bought a blower 2070. What a noise disaster. I had to return it for an open air card. And I have an ITX build, even though it's roomier than some.

Yeh in fairness noise is absolutely a factor. If you want a quieter system the open air cards are the way to go.
 
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Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
The reason they are changing it is because the vast majority of reviewers only test these cards in a single example - on a test-bench or a fancy high air flow case where the open air cooler will perform better.
That's a good point too. That's probably the main reason.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The reality is that most people's case airflow is inadequate. Mid-thigh end cases don't sell as well as low end cases and most people do not invest in case fans nor do they know how to set them up correctly dependant on their components.

The reason they are changing it is because the vast majority of reviewers only test these cards in a single example - on a test-bench or a fancy high air flow case where the open air cooler will perform better.
220px-Sigmund_Freud%2C_by_Max_Halberstadt_%28cropped%29.jpg
 

demigod

Member
I agree. I think most people bought cards with blower style coolers because they were cheaper then partner custom cards.

I've heard the excuses of below many times.

They are not stupid.

It's people's lack of understanding of their use cases that is the problem. They are absolutely ideal for SFF builds that lack airflow.

What people need to understand is that blower coolers suck air in from your case and then exhaust the air out of the case through the card out of the vents.

BLOWER-TYPE2.png


As long as you have the ambient air temps under control in your case then these coolers can work very well.

All other GPU coolers work in a slightly different way by sucking air in from inside your case and then exhausting that air out of the vents as well as back inside your case:

open-air.png


This is bad in SFF case that lacks airflow for obvious reasons as you end up with a scenario where the card is recycling its own hot air which leads to ever rising temperatures. However if you have a nice roomy case with good airflow via case fans that are set up in the correct push-pull configuration then in these coolers will perform better in that scenario.

It is important that both options continue to be available on the market.

I've been building my own PCs since around 1998, I have never bought an SFF case. Blowers are not good for your GPU temps(unless its SFF or pre-built).
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
I hope they team up with Noctua to bundle their hish static pressure fans, so you can blow the heat aout of the case. Common at least the redux version of GOAT fans would be nice...
 

Verchod

Member
The idea behind them is good but they always get poor reviews. They seem either inefficient or very noisy. I have an ITX case but it's quite big really so I don't use one, though I like the idea.

Is it not that no one really tries to make a good version?
 

GHG

Member
I've heard the excuses of below many times.



I've been building my own PCs since around 1998, I have never bought an SFF case. Blowers are not good for your GPU temps(unless its SFF or pre-built).

They are not excuses, they are facts. If open air coolers have worked better for the builds that you've done then great but there are plenty of times a blow cooler has it's place.





I previously did an SLI build in a m-atx case (yeh, I'm a lunatic, I know) and the blower coolers performed far better than 2 open air coolers or even a hybrid config of 1 open air and one blower.
 
The idea behind them is good but they always get poor reviews. They seem either inefficient or very noisy. I have an ITX case but it's quite big really so I don't use one, though I like the idea.

Is it not that no one really tries to make a good version?
They always run hot, that's the main problem with blower cards.
And these people talking how blower cards work better in a cramped space, yeah, they don't know what they're talking about.
I've build many systems, and the blower cards always, well, blowed in comparison to open air design cards.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
The reason people went for blower cards was because of 3/4 way sli or crossfire. If you didn't go blower style u had to go water cooling which was a massive hassle and money burner or simple underclock your gpu's and cpu as result. blower cards where the solution for this. As heat went straight out instead of sticking and getting slammed in those cards again and against the CPU as the top GPU was practically 1mm off the CPU cooler in most cases. It was all very small and tight together and everything was hot.

I builded a mod with mine 3x580's on the side a extra cooler to just push heat between the cpu and gpu away as example.

If you didn't. u would heat up your system and cards far more which resulted in throttling hard or simple crashes. It wasn't uncommon people actually had to downclock there gpu's to get it stable as cards wouldn't just scale the clocks towards the heat output u had to all do that shit manually. now gpu's will just throttle.

Here's a picture of it but now imagine that top card sitting 1mm away from the cpu heatsink cramped in a cabled small case, yea it was heater heaven.

IMG_3044-750.jpg


However those days with 3/4 way sli/crossfire not existing anymore and sli / crossfire being on its way out in general. Makes blower cards completely useless and terrible. Even if you do get 2 way sli at this point it will look like something like this.


m9o1zbyzdy021.jpg


Lots of space, lots of cooling to get heat out and everything being far more workable with temps then back in the day. My case has loads of room to deal with sli and even a massive cpu cooler if i needed to ( this is not my case tho ) mine is a lot bigger.

So heat from videocards aren't much of a issue anymore specially with only 2 and they honestly don't tend to burn the huge amount of watts that the older cards did.
Like 2x 480's would already consume something like 850 watt under load. Yea imagine 4 of those. Good luck toastering your PC without blower cards.
 
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The reason people went for blower cards was because of 3/4 way sli or crossfire. If you didn't go blower style u had to go water cooling which was a massive hassle and money burner or simple underclock your gpu's and cpu as result. blower cards where the solution for this. As heat went straight out instead of sticking and getting slammed in those cards again and against the CPU as the top GPU was practically 1mm off the CPU cooler in most cases. It was all very small and tight together and everything was hot.

I builded a mod with mine 3x580's on the side a extra cooler to just push heat between the cpu and gpu away as example.

If you didn't. u would heat up your system and cards far more which resulted in throttling hard or simple crashes. It wasn't uncommon people actually had to downclock there gpu's to get it stable as cards wouldn't just scale the clocks towards the heat output u had to all do that shit manually. now gpu's will just throttle.

Here's a picture of it but now imagine that top card sitting 1mm away from the cpu heatsink cramped in a cabled small case, yea it was heater heaven.

IMG_3044-750.jpg


However those days with 3/4 way sli/crossfire not existing anymore and sli / crossfire being on its way out in general. Makes blower cards completely useless and terrible. Even if you do get 2 way sli at this point it will look like something like this.


m9o1zbyzdy021.jpg


Lots of space, lots of cooling to get heat out and everything being far more workable with temps then back in the day. My case has loads of room to deal with sli and even a massive cpu cooler if i needed to ( this is not my case tho ) mine is a lot bigger.

So heat from videocards aren't much of a issue anymore specially with only 2 and they honestly don't tend to burn the huge amount of watts that the older cards did.
Like 2x 480's would already consume something like 850 watt under load. Yea imagine 4 of those. Good luck toastering your PC without blower cards.
I agree, but crosfire and sli aren't really used anymore. They were all the rage back in the day, but no one uses it anymore, not even the enthusiasts.
 
Thank fucking God. That shit was garbage. Their AIB partners made that shit look even worse. Yes, even their AIB partners will still have blower fans(just better). It's just nice to have it not forced upon us.

Edit: forgot the word "not".
 
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