Most high-end GPUs feature three fans or an AIO to cool down the extreme heat they deliver. But ASRock found a way to do this without fans or liquid cooling with its just-announced Passive Series graphics cards, featuring the RX 7900 XTX Passive 24GB and RX 7900 XT Passive 20GB GPUs.
The 7900 XTX and 7900 XT feature a vapor chamber heatsink to efficiently move heat from the GPU to the aluminum cooling fins. The cards also use an aluminum back plate to provide more structural strength and possibly reduce sagging caused by the heatsink’s weight.
However, the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT Passive have slightly lower clock speeds compared to actively cooled versions from ASRock.
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| Header Cell – Column 0 | Cooling | Boost Clock (MHz) | Game Clock (MHz) | Dimensions (mm) | Weight (grams) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Passive 24GB | Passive | 2500 | 2270 | 261 x 111 x 40 | 863 |
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB | Three Fans | 2500 | 2300 | 287 (length) / 2.5 slot | Row 1 – Cell 5 |
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Taichi 24GB OC | Three Fans | 2680 | 2510 | 345 x 140 x 61 | 1900 |
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT Passive 20GB | Passive | 2395 | 2025 | 261 x 111 x 40 | 863 |
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB | Three Fans | 2400 | 2000 | 276 (length) / 2.5 slot | Row 4 – Cell 5 |
| ASRock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT Taichi 20GB OC | Three Fans | 2560 | 2220 | 345 x 140 x 61 | 1835 |
Interestingly, the passive versions are smaller and lighter than ASRock’s overclocked triple-fan Taichi models. While it makes sense for the overclocked cards to be bigger and heavier because they’re being pushed to their limits, you’d expect the passive GPUs to have much larger heatsinks than the non-overclocked GPUs with triple fans. But, according to ASRock’s data, the passive GPUs have a slightly shorter length.
Unfortunately, we don’t have pricing data yet for the 7900-series Passive GPUs. ASRock is one of the few suppliers of high-end passively cooled graphics cards, so let’s hope pricing isn’t too far removed from the air-cooled variants.
We’re looking forward to getting our hands on these passive cards, as we want to see how they compare against their active brethren. Although it’s a shame we didn’t get these cooling options at the launch of the 7000-series AMD GPUs or even the 4000-series Nvidia cards, one can always say, “Better late than never.”