XFX announces Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition with detachable fans

While all eyes are on AMD to announce its next generation Vega architecture, graphics card makers are still coming out with new options based on Polaris. One of those is XFX. Apparently the company is rolling out a new line of Crimson Edition cards, the first of which is the Radeon RX 480 Crimson Edition.

As noticed by Fudzilla, the new card sports the same printed circuit board (PCB) design as XFX's Radeon RX 480 Double Dissipation graphics card, but with XFX's logo on top and detachable LED "Red Hard Swap" fans.

"Fans are an essential function of a graphics card and directly affect its performance. Even though we use the best fans on the market its performance will decrease over time," XFX says. "In the past it was difficult if not impossible to replace GPU fans on your own but now with XFX's Hard Swap technology, you can upgrade your fan in an instant. We even offer different upgrade options for higher performance or color LED options for customization."

It's a weird marketing position for XFX to take, saying that its fans will deteriorate and eventually need replaced. That hasn't really been a problem in our experience—certainly not the norm, anyway. We're not saying that fans on graphics cards last forever, but for the most part, we upgrade to something newer and faster long before that becomes a concern.

Perhaps more useful is having two BIOSes. XFX's new card allows users to choose between a BIOS configured for high performance and one that is tuned for quieter operation.

The Crimson Edition card's GPU operates at 1,120MHz base and 1,288MHz boost. It also has 8GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 8,000MHz on a 256-bit bus, a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, three DisplayPorts, a DVI port, and HDMI 2.0b output.

XFX did not say how much the card will cost or when it will be available.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).

Latest in Graphics Cards
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Nvidia headquarters
Nvidia CEO sets sights on making 'several hundred billion' dollars worth of electronics in the USA over the next four years, increasing the chance of your next GPU being made in America
The Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition, a gold-plated graphics card on a sand dune background
A Jensen Huang-signed version of this golden Asus RTX 5090 will be auctioned off to support relief efforts for the California wildfires
Latest in News
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened