MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X Trio 16 GB Review – Sanity on silent soles with decent reserves for cocky people

Board layout and components

MSI (like AMD) has almost outdone itself with the PCB. Well equalized hotspots and a very thoughtful design with a very neat input filtering after the two 8-pin connectors, which relies on a proper LC filter (low-pass) and not only on series coils (chokes), should on the one hand mitigate the load peaks on the power supply and on the other hand also increase the stability of the overall system. Nobody really needs annoying HF wave salad.

With an XDPE132G5C from Infineon, one relies, like AMD, on a very high-quality PWM controller, which drives the 12 phases for VDDC_GFX in the MSI RX 6800XT Gaming X Trio 16 GB. For almost all important active components and the coils, MSI also relies on the same component selection as AMD’s reference. A correct decision.

In parallel, an NCP81022 from ON Semi is used to generate other partial voltages for VDDC_SOC and 2 phases for VDDIO_MEM. In addition, we find another phase for VDDCI, so that in total there are 16 phases for the various main voltages, all of which work with one TDA21472 per phase as a Smart Power Stage, which can supply a maximum of 70A. The TDA21472 includes a synchronous buck-gate driver IC in a Schottky diode co-package, as well as the high-side and low-side MOSFETs. The combination of gate driver and MOSFET (DrMOS) enables higher efficiency at the low output voltages for the GPU.

 

The internal MOSFET current sensing algorithm with temperature compensation achieves higher current sensing accuracy compared to the best inductor DCR sensing methods. Protection includes cycle-by-cycle overcurrent protection with programmable threshold, VCC/VDRV UVLO protection, phase fault detection, IC temperature detection, and thermal shutdown. The TDA21472 also features automatic bootstrap capacitor refill to prevent over-discharge.

The TDA21472 also features a deep sleep power saving mode that greatly reduces power consumption when the multiphase system enters PS3/PS4 mode. This certainly explains the very low idle load that both new Radeon cards produce. The 150 mH coils used are quite decent and even buzz less than those on the reference card. MSI installs a total of 8 GDDR6 memory modules from Samsung with 16 Gbps.

 

Once again, we see Samsung’s 2GB modules here, which are 16Gbps GDDR6 memory. To the right the LC filter for input decoupling of the power supply with one 20 Amp fuse per 8-pin input.

 

The back panel is quite tidy and you won’t find any SP or POS caps below the BGA. in general, everything looks very high-quality in large parts and otherwise at least very purposefully equipped. Instead of elaborate design stunts, this one relies on solid home cooking, which can really please. At the top, the aRGB diodes sit on the white printed surface for the optical accent.

Cooler and backplate

MSI relies on three 9.2 cm fans with 10 rotor blades and an interesting rotor geometry for the cooler of the Trio (nomen est omen). The design of the impellers is very reminiscent of special fans for thicker radiators with a very high static pressure. This is not only the intention, but also the need for this high cooler, which significantly minimizes the breakaway noise due to the air refraction at the not too far apart cooling fins. In this way, the same noise emission is achieved despite higher speeds, but the throughput and pressure are significantly increased, which always helps the cooling performance.

The radiator is divided into the rather massive and very long main radiator with six 6mm heatpipes made of nickel-plated copper composite material, which were ground off as a DHT version instead of the heatsink and are flanked by a light metal heatsink for the storage and the mounting of the rear fins. This heatsink then also cools the memory. This design is ok, with two modules resting on the heatpipes via thermal pads, which isn’t really optimal. The voltage converters of the large series are each cooled by a separate heatsink (further down), only the coils are thermally connected to the fins of the cooling block.

Since the cooler turns out to be very heavy, one relies on a stabilizing frame running from the slot bracket to the middle for the PCB on the front, which is screwed to the back of the backplate. In addition, there are two more heatsinks or coolers.

 

On the left side there is the cooler for the smaller voltage transformer block of the 4 phases, whose fins are blown from above, and the large block of the 12 voltage transformer phases, which covers the entire right part of the board. So you have cooling and stabilization in one.

The backplate made of graphene is another part of the stabilization and also an optical eye-catcher with the light bar. The use of thermal pads is almost excessive, but would not have been necessary.