AMD Radeon RX 6000 'Big Navi' GPU Lineup - Design & Aesthetics
Just like its RDNA 2 architecture, AMD is also proud to present its latest and greatest reference design for its Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards. AMD has definitely taken design inspiration from NVIDIA who offered a similar look and style on its GeForce RTX 20 series offering but takes it up a notch by offering a mighty triple-fan and full vapor-chamber design.
Talking about the design itself, AMD has gone entirely away from traditional blower-style coolers that we saw on its first-gen RDNA cards and went with an Axial-tech fan design. The Radeon RX 6800 XT comes in a 2.5 slot form factor while the Radeon RX 6800 comes in a standard dual-slot height.
Both cards feature a premium die-cast aluminum shroud with custom-designed axial-fans that feature Zero RPM fan modes. Underneath the shroud is an extended vapor chamber that sits on top of a huge aluminum fin heatsink. The PCB makes is added extra durability with a die-cast aluminum frame. The GPU uses a graphite thermal interface material while the GDDR6 and the MOSFETs feature high-performance and ultra-soft gap pads.
For the PCB itself, both cards feature a 14-layer PCB with 4 layers of 2oz copper, a premium IT-170 material, a 15 phase power design, dual 8-pin connectors located at the standard edge location, unlike the GeForce RTX 30 series which place the proprietary 12-pin connector at the center of the card, USB Type-C port and HDMI 2.1 with FRL. Interestingly, AMD also mentions that it uses only 2 power phases for the memory which include 8 GDDR6 dies compared to 4 and 3 power phases on the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080, respectively, which leads to lower power.
The airflow design is also standard for the graphics card with AMD going for a traditional push-pull configuration while NVIDIA relies on a new flow-through design with fans at the adjacent sides of the shroud. All three Big Navi GPUs are also designed for small form factor cases in mind and allow easy multi-GPU configurations, unlike NVIDIA who has gone up to 3-slots on its RTX 3090 graphics card.
The cards will feature dual 8-pin power and display ports would include a USB Type-C (VirtualLink), 1 HDMI, and 2 DisplayPort connectors. The cards also feature a fancy backplate along with a retention bracket to hold the cooler in place. The Radeon RX "Big Navi" GPU looks like it will come in the standard 2-slot reference design which is the same as NVIDIA's flagship RTX 3080 but not as huge as the triple-slot GeForce RTX 3090.
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About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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