PowerColor 7900 XTX HellHound Review

Tear Down

Taking the cooler apart is pretty simple, though the screws are on various sides, meaning that some need to be taken off the side, to remove the shroud, while the majority of the other screws are on the backplate, which then allows the removal of the main heatsink. Once removed, with a bit of light pressure, you can remove the backplate with the screws that are now visible.

The PCB is smaller than the cooling solution, which is pretty typical with GPUs as of late, and the general design is pretty clean with a 20-phase design that’s split between 17 for the GPU and 3 for the memory. The GPU phases are managed by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2857 controller, while the memory is controlled by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2856 controller and all 20 of the phases are all Monolithic Power Systems MP87997 components and are rated for 70 amps of current each.

The heatsink is larger than the PCB and is split into three sections where eight nickel-plated copper heatpipes transfer heat away from the core components through the plate which makes direct contact with both the GPU core and the GDDR6 memory for the best cooling performance.

Overall, it’s a pretty standard cooler with nothing out of the ordinary, though with these Navi 31-based GPUs really pretty cool anyway, it’s not like it needs a crazy cooling solution like we’ve seen on other cards recently from the competition.

Now due to the sheer size of the cooler, I am expecting some pretty decent numbers in terms of cooling potential, while also remaining pretty under control in terms of the fan speed, so let’s take a look at the performance, and how it stacks up against other cards.