Card Layout and Photos
If you have seen one of Sapphire's Pulse cards in the past the Sapphire RX 9070 XT Pulse isn’t going to be too much of a surprise visually but that isn’t to say that the design isn’t different. Sapphire has taken the simple black with a touch of red styling of past Pulse cards have they have spiced things up slightly with a step-down section on the fan shroud in the center at the top and bottom. It has the same black plastic shroud with red accent lines but the step-down section they have molded in groves to give it a little more styling. I have always been a fan of how simple the Pulse designs have been and this is a departure from that slightly but it isn’t so over the top that I don’t like it. But for the people who maybe thought the old Pulse designs were boring this is for you. As usual though, beyond that change the Pulse still has a focus on keeping things simple with no RGB lighting or anything that would add to the costs without sacrificing performance. In fact, this is the largest Pulse I’ve ever seen. It comes in at 320 mm in length, 120.25 mm in height, and 61.6 mm in thickness. That thickness puts it at just over a 3-slot card but they do list it as a 3-slot (normally we see 10 mm per slot). That size is all focused on cooling with the three fan design including a blow-through section taking up almost half of the card.
The triple fan cooler has two matching 100 mm fans on both ends and a smaller 94 mm fan in the center which is closer to 89 edge to edge on the fan blade itself. All three fans are black to match the shroud and have an axial fan design that blows down into the heatsink. They have 7 blades and all of the blades have a heavy twist to their design which they call the AeroCurve design. On the outside, there is an outer ring that gives the fan more strength and helps focus the airflow down into the cooler. They all have a machined aluminum sticker on the center with a red ring and the Pulse branding on it. The center fan, in addition to being smaller, is also spinning in the opposite direction to help cut down on turbulence near where the fans are next to each other. Looking through the fans we can see the cooler is an aluminum finned heatsink oriented vertically to push the air up and to give the shortest path away.
Up on the top edge of the RX 9070 XT Pulse, there is both Sapphire and Radeon branding. The Sapphire logo is on a raised grey section in the middle of the card and the Radeon logo is down at the end of the card. Both are printed in red and don’t have any backlighting, keeping with Pulse’s simple design that keeps costs down without taking away from features that affect performance. Also up on the top edge, the RX 9070 XT Pulse has its power connections. Like with the other 9070 XT’s it runs two 8-pin PCIe power connections. They have both connections flipped around with the clip side on the PCB side with the PCB notched to fit them. This means the heatsink can be tight up against the power connections. While the RX 9070 XT Pulse is a large card, you will notice that the power connections are dropped down into the card which means all of the space that the power plugs use is also utilized by the heatsink.
Looking around the top and bottom edges as well as the end of the RX 9070 XT Pulse we can get a much better look at Sapphire's cooling design. The top edge of the card does have the front fan shroud wrapped around and the backplate wraps around slightly mostly to give it even more strength. Even with those cutting into the space, there is a large opening across the top for the air to be pushed out. The same goes for the bottom, though I would prefer more air push out of the top than the bottom down against your motherboard where M.2 drives are installed. At the bottom edge, we can see the heatplate that sits on top of the GPU and memory and the heatpipes sitting right on top of that. Sapphire does note that they are using Honeywell PTM7950 for the TIM. The heatpipes drop down over the GPU and rise back up slightly on the PCI bracket end of the card and they loop back around on that end closer to the top. Just past the GPU, those heatpipes jump way up to run through the middle of the right heatsink. There are five heatpipes in total. That is the larger of the two heatsinks and runs to the end of the card, well past the PCB with the blow-through design. I was surprised that the heatsink on that end doesn’t fill the full thickness of the card. The end of the RX 9070 XT Pulse doesn’t have an opening at all. Here both the fan shroud and the backplate both wrap around and with the metal backplate section they have also included three screw holes for use with some support brackets.
For display connections, the RX 9070 XT Pulse has four connections, but like with past Sapphire cards, they don’t go with the traditional layout of 3 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI. They have two DisplayPort and two HDMI, giving more HDMI connectivity for users who have older displays or are using TVs. The rest of the triple slot bracket is filled with ventilation slots cut at 45-degree angles for a simple design. The Sapphire branding is stamped into the bracket at the base and each of the display connections has a label stamped as well.
The back of the RX 9070 XT Pulse has a full-length metal backplate with a black finish with a slight texture to it. They have the Sapphire Pulse branding in white and red along with the AMD Radeon logo in white as well with both being printed upside down to be readable when installed in traditional cases. In addition to that, there is the Pulse EKG-like line in red and if you look closely there are a few black accents printed as well. The backplate is cut out around the back of the GPU bracket and up at the power plugs as well. That large cutout for the power cables shows how deep Sapphire has those connections. There is a vent up at the top and then a large vent for the blow-through design that goes from the end of the PCB almost to the end of the card.
If you were curious how the RX 9070 XT Pulse compares with the Steel Legend that I previously took a look at I do have a few pictures of them next to each other. We can see the Pulse’s extra length sticking out at the end. The extra thickness is noticeable as well, but that is more exaggerated because Sapphire is using a proper larger PCI bracket for its 3-slot size.
