MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB Graphics Card Review

A Closer Look

The latest graphics card from MSI may not be their most high-end, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look it. The cooler design is drop-dead gorgeous and looks as good as any card that costs three times as much. The mixture of black, grey and red may have been done to death, but I still think it looks amazing. Plus, it’ll be easy to find other hardware that matches this theme.

The card uses two huge TORX fans, which should drive significantly more airflow than this chipset could possibly need. That should mean fantastic cooling performance though, which will help the card maintain those boost clocks for a heck of a lot longer.

Of course, the card is quite compact but much bigger than we would expect for this chipset. It’s a big heatsink though, and that means it’s able to run in zero RPM fan mode until the card gets too warm. Of course, that’s great, as it means the GPU will be completely silent a lot of the time.

Down the side of the card, you’ll find a bit of the heatsink exposed, where you can see some of those massive heatpipes. There’s also a little bit of extension to the card beyond the PCB, which tells you just how big that heatsink must be.

Despite looking like a monster GPU, remember, it’s actually quite modest. For that reason, you’ll only find a single 8-pin PSU connector.

Moving around to the back of the card, you’ll find one of the best looking backplates on any GPU. Not only will that provide cooling to the PCB, but it also adds to the durability of the card. However, all this extra bling doesn’t come for free, and it’s easy to see why this card is quite expensive for a budget card.

Finally, around the back, you’ll find three DisplayPorts and a single HDMI port.