Err, is XFX engaged on swappable GPU followers?

How do you enhance upon an current design? Stand out from the pack, even? In terms of GPU cooling variations, all of it comes all the way down to principally the identical outdated factor: your alternative of 1, two, or three followers and a few fancy shroud graphics and greebles, or maybe, hardly any in any respect.

XFX, however, could have totally different concepts. Whereas I can not be precisely sure of what we’re taking a look at right here, it is tweeted an image of what seems suspiciously like a detachable fan in a GPU cooler:

Alright, let’s get into this then. Polling the huge expertise of the PC Gamer {hardware} staff, none of us can keep in mind a time a GPU fan has died and wanted changing, though we’ve come throughout the odd squeaker. That is hardly an enormous pattern dimension, granted, however you will discover few individuals who have used extra GPUs of their lifetimes than us.

Within the case of squeaky followers, properly, because the outdated adage goes, there’s at all times lube. I am positive there are a few of you on the market who’ve skilled a lifeless GPU fan, although. Through which case, rejoice?

In all seriousness, nonetheless, whereas it is tempting to knock XFX for teasing a function that in the first place look seems principally pointless, what it would present is a deepening dedication to repairability.

And that, I can very a lot stand behind. Far an excessive amount of tech nowadays is tough and even unattainable to restore ought to an element fail, and whereas GPU followers aren’t recognized for giving up the ghost too typically, making them simple to take away does look like a concession in direction of consumer restore. And if that is the case, I applaud it.

Alternatively, perhaps I am studying this picture all fallacious. Maybe the followers are spring-loaded for, err, vibration-dampening functions, and what’s being demonstrated right here is the strain of the spring. 

Or maybe the fan models themselves come in several, swappable flavours, some with larger airflow, some tuned for decrease noise. The probabilities are…properly, there are some potentialities, it appears.

I actually do not know. One thing odd seems to be cooking within the cooling division at XFX although, and on the very least, I am intrigued.