Card Layout and Photos
At first glance, the MERC 310 7900 XT has the same styling as we saw last year on cards like the MERC 310 6800 XT but it is only the front fan shroud design that is the same. XFX did change things up on the top edge and completely changed the backplate. The shroud design on the other hand has a simple flat design which is a nice change from the constant “gamer” focused designs with their angular shapes and random useless accents. The MERC 310 7900 XT is more like a nice black suit, it isn’t for everyone but I bet that for some people the clean look is the only look that they will like.
Where the reference cards from AMD kept things compact, the MERC 310 7900 XT goes hog wild in size just like XFX’s designs last generation and frankly any other aftermarket card design as well. The MERC 310 7900 XT is 344 mm long or 13.5 inches which is longer than what some smaller/mid-sized cases will be able to handle. For thickness it is 55mm thick which puts it as a 2.75 slot card, leaving a little room before the 3rd slot but not much. Then for height, it is 128 mm tall or 5.04 inches tall or as I like to look at it, 24 mm taller than the top of the PCI bracket which is tall but far from the tallest out there. The 4090 Founders Edition for example is 137 mm tall and there are even taller aftermarket cards available.
The fan side of the MERC 310 7900 XT has three matching axial fans that blow down into the heatsink which has a vertical layout that pushes the warmed air up out the top and down out the bottom of the card. All three of the fans have the same orientation and have 13 blades. Unlike most cards, XFX didn’t go with an outer ring on the fans for even more support. Each of the fans has a silver center sticker with a 2/3 pie-shaped black shape in the middle. This goes with the fan shroud design which is black but with silver accents around each fan and at the ends. While I do like the black and silver, I do think this design might look even better if it was all blacked out including the heatsink as AMD did with their reference design. Each of the fans is the same size coming in at 100 mm for the size of the opening.
Looking around at the edges of the MERC 310 7900 XT we can see the vertical heatsink layout and the top and bottom views show that XFX packed the heatsink into any available space. Under that is a copper vapor chamber which you can see looking at the bottom view of the MERC 310 7900 XT. The vapor chamber touches the GPU and all of the memory. The end of the MERC 310 7900 XT has the silver backplate wrapped around but with a gap between it and the front fan shroud. That space has a metal bracket designed to work with the included Z-bar support bracket to help support the length and weight of the card.
While the fan shroud on the MERC 310 7900 XT carried over from the 6000 series XFX did change things up on the top edge of the card. The backlit XFX logo in the shroud is the same but the MERC 310 7900 XT no longer has the backlit Radeon RX and card model that they had last generation. All of that space has been opened up here for airflow across the entire top of the card. The Radeon branding is still there but is now printed on a flap of the backplate that is folded down over the top. In that same area, the MERC 310 7900 XT has a small switch for switching between two different BIOS but with our sample, both are programmed with the same overclocked profile. The top of the card does also have the power connections which like the AMD 7900 XT are two 8-pin PCIe power connections. These aren’t at the end of the card and are about an inch away from the end of the PCB.
The back of the MERC 310 7900 XT shows off its length. It is also another big area where XFX has changed things up. For the 6000 series, while the cooler design does share some similarities, the backplate on the 6000 Series MERC 310 was an aluminum panel with a black finish and a design made of circular holes. The MERC 310 7900 XT changes all of that with a silver finish, slots for ventilation, and groves in the aluminum the length of the backplate. It also has a small sticker with your serial number and model information tucked away down at the bottom. Near the power connections the backplate drops down to stay out of the way and then at the end the backplate has a hole in it for the blow-through design on the last fan.
The PCI bracket for the MERC 310 7900 XT is completely different than the reference card which had a unique setup with no ventilation and replaced one of the DisplayPort connections with a Type-C. XFX has stuck with the standard layout for the display connections. You get one HDMI up at the top and three full-sized DisplayPort plugs. Then above that, the bracket does have some ventilation even though the cooler layout doesn’t need it. They went with slots along with a section with the XFX logo cutout.
The lighting on the MERC 310 7900 XT is simple and to the point. XFX just has their logo on the top edge lit up in white which goes well with the black and silver theme of the cooler design. I’m not the biggest fan of just having backlit logos, it ends up making your PC look like Times Square with ads. But overall this isn’t too bad, I do wish that the card has some other backlit accents to go with it and potentially RGB as an option to match it with your build.
