Introduction
XFX is launching a new AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX video card in 2024 that does a little trick. With the new XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air Gaming Graphics Card (MERC class), it’s all in the name. The key point is the “Magnetic Air” which cleverly indicates that the three fans on board are easily detachable with magnetics. It’s also more than this, as this is in XFX’s MERC series class, and thus is built very robustly for extreme cooling performance and also a very high factory overclock with overclocking potential, and 3x 8-pin PCIe power connectors with increased base power headroom.
You may have recently seen in the news that this video card was marketed as the “Phoenix Nirvana” in other markets, but here in the US you’ll find it under XFX’s “MERC” branding and denoted as the “Magnetic Air” graphics cards in North America. The specific one we have for review is the Model No. RX-79XMAI (RX-79XMAIRB9) but it’s all about the XFX Magnetic Air technology. XFX will be retailing the new XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air Gaming Graphics Card with 24GB GDDR6, RDNA3 for $949.99 in the US, which is an exciting price point for what this video card delivers.
As a reminder, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX launched at $999 MSRP in December of 2022 and is still currently AMD’s flagship video card in 2024. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is based on the RDNA 3 architecture with 96 CUs, 6,144 Stream Processors, 96 Ray Accelerators, 192 AI Accelerators, 192 ROPs, 96MB of Infinity Cache with a Game Clock of 2300MHz and a Boost Clock of 2500MHz with 24GB of GDDR6 at 20Gbps on a 384-bit memory bus with 960GB/s of bandwidth and a Board Power of 355W.
XFX Magnetic Air
XFX is actually not just launching this video card, but a whole line of “Magnetic Air” video cards that use this technology, down the product stack. You’ll find the XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air video card we are reviewing today, and you will also find an XFX Qicksilver AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE Magnetic Air and an XFX Qicksilver AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Magnetic Air in both black and white versions. So that is a 7900 XTX, 7900 GRE, and 7800 XTX in two different color schemes all with Magnetic Air technology from XFX.
XFX Magnetic Air allows for toolless fan replacement, no tools, no screws, and no fuss, as XFX puts it. This inherently allows for easy swapping of fans in a graphics card, making the servicing and replacement of fans easy. Right now, this means if you have a fan failure, instead of having to RMA the entire video card, for North America and Europe XFX will be able to send out fans instead. XFX states quote: “While the fans are rated for a long time, things do happen. In the event of a failed fan, we will send out a replacement fan free of charge, no RMA required.
There is no word, at the moment, if fans will be purchasable, but they will certainly be covered under warranty situations if they need to be replaced. Magnetic Air fans can of course make cleaning your fans and keeping your video cards heatsink clean, much easier since no tools are required to remove them.
The Magnetic Air fans have an 11-blade design 100mm fans (7900 XTX) and 2x 100mm and 1x 90mm fan (7900 GRE and 7800 XT) and can run up to 3200RPM and have a max airflow of 70.08 CFM and max air pressure of 4.88 mmAq. The fans are a double ball bearing design and rated for about 70,000 hours.
The magnets used are N52 Rare Earth Magnets comprised of Neodymium Iron Boron. They have a magnetic strength of 4000GS and are capable of holding up to 1kg of weight and they will not lose their magnetism over time. XFX’s Magnetic Air fans is a patented design and XFX says it is the first time magnetic fans have been used on a graphics card.
XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air (RX-79XMAIRB9) is a factory overclocked video card. It comes shipped with a Game Clock of 2455MHz and a Boost Clock of 2615MHz. As a reminder, the default reference RX 7900 XTX spec is a Game Clock of 2300MHz and a Boost Clock of 2500MHz. Therefore, the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air has a 7% higher Game Clock and a 5% higher Boost Clock. However, thanks to the higher allowable TDP, the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air should allow a higher sustainable clock speed out-of-the-box.
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air comes in a unique box, with a great graphic of the video card on the front and back, with a schematic-like look detailing its features, it’s very industrial. The video card is also uniquely packaged, with the fans detached in shipping and thus the first requirement is for you to attach the fans, which is as easy as dropping them in. There is also a clear plastic letting you know to install the fans first, before operation, and links to view installation guides as well as a quick booklet. There is also a GPU card holder inside, to prevent video card sag in your case.
You can see the magnetic center, and power interface that the three dots make contact with to power the fans themselves. Installation is as easy as using your hand to place the fan in the hole, and it just plops down as the magnet pulls it toward it, and it lines up with no fuss, you don’t have to worry about orientation. When you want to remove the fans, just pull up on them, and it pops off, easy peasy. It literally takes 2 seconds to install, or detach. We noticed no vibration, or noise with this configuration, they worked perfectly, it’s almost magic.
Here is a great exploded view above of the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air from XFX that shows the layers of components that build out this video card.
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is not a small graphics card, it measures 13.6″ inches in length, 5.2″ inches in width, and 2.68″ inches in height. By comparison, the reference made-by-AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX measures 11.3″ inches in length, 5.3″ inches in width, and 2″ inches in height. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is a 3.5-slot video card.
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air video card uses a 2-phase vacuumed heat transfer vapor chamber made of nickel-plated copper and the 3x Magnetic Air fans. XFX is now using Honeywell PTM7950 for the TIM as this has proven to be efficient and long-lasting. You will also notice an air pass-through design in the rear of the video card to allow air to pass through the heatsink completely. It also has a full metal backplate.
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air utilizes 3x 8-pin PCIe power connectors. If you add up all the available power, that equates to 450W across the PCIe power connectors and 75W across the PCIe bus for a total of 525W available power. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. This video card also has a dual-BIOS and there is a BIOS switch on the video card, if you switch it to the right it will operate at 327W, though the default operation is the higher power allowance and that position is to the left, or closest to the I/O ports.
The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air has a subtle LED XFX logo that lights up during operation, and that is the only lighting on this video card.
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