Right after checking out an ASRock made graphics card for the first time, that being the Taichi model based on the RX 5700 XT series, I got a chance to take a closer look at another model, it both being from another ASRock’s sub-brand, the Phantom Gaming one, and carrying RX 5600 XT GPU. So, let’s put that all together – ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming.
Right away this very stubby looking design caught my eye, the card is really low in height when you look at them from the fan side, while being really long, which makes it a bit weird looking, sort of like an over-sized low profile card, although it’s definitely not one, it takes two slots of height, even a bit more than that due to the fact that it has a really thick aluminum heatsink, but more on that later on.
It’s a bit odd that they went for a solution like this because then they had to choose smaller fans, this one is 75 mm. There’s a total of three of them spanning throughout the whole length of the card. They do have 0 RPM 0 dB fan mode when the card is not under load and what I also noticed is that the fans turn on and work separately from each other from time to time when the card does go under load, it could be a feature, I’ve seen in on some other cards, but that could also be due to difference in startup current needed for them to begin spinning. In this case, the temperatures were roaming around 50°C, but this will and can differ depending on your chassis fan setup.
ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming – new attempt, familiar face
Putting its strange proportions on the side, I do like how the card looks, the top shroud has this subtle but still cooling look red and black pattern, it also feels pretty sturdy and well made, while on the opposite of that we have a metal back-plate which has that recognizable Phantom Gaming series color scheme. Here you can also see by how much the aluminum heatsink overlaps the PCB of the card, nearly half of the card, as well as how thick and narrow it actually is. This also reveals how many heat pipes does it carries, a total of three, moving from back to front, where in the first part of the aluminum heatsink we have GPU and video memory contact plate, while in the second part it makes contact with the VRM’s and chokes. The total weight of the card is just a bit above 800 grams and although you would wonder why a mid-range graphics like this one has such a beefy cooler, you have to remember that this RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 model basically carries an RX 5700 series GPU. The only difference is video memory bus width and GPU clocks.
To top everything off, ASRock put a well-lit RGB LED Phantom Gaming sign and logo on the side, although it’s not that big, it still does give you that extra something, and of course, you can control and tweak it using ASRock’s Poly-chrome Sync software utility.
This RX 5600 XT model based on the Phantom Gaming series is not the only one from ASRock as they also offer a two fan version. That one has a D2 in its naming, while the three fan version which I have here had, you guessed it, D3 in its name. It would be interesting to see how this two fan one performs cooling wise, while besides that difference between these two versions, we have another one considering the GPU clocks, where the D3 version has higher Game and Base clock, although they do have same Boost Clock of 1750 MHz, while the other one is that they do differ a bit in the color scheme of the top shroud, where the D2 version has this silver details, and it’s also obviously shorter, by about 50 mm.
Full video memory speed with RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming
Speaking of the clocks, the ASRock RX 5600 RX Phantom Gaming D3 model has its video memory running at full 14 Gbps, despite them still showing it off as 12 Gbps on their product page, but if you go under the support and vBIOS tab, you can see that they do offer an updated L12 BIOS version which bumps that up from 12 to 14 Gbps. Be sure to double-check if your card shipped with it or you need to do a BIOS update, as I said this one had me out of the box, but it’s a review sample, so no wonder. As for the GPU clock frequency in practice, it was mostly running at a bit above 1,7 GHz, around 20-30 MHz off that claimed Boost Clock, but it was holding that down pretty steadily, with any oscillations.
Before I jump over to the figures, let’s first take a look at some of my gameplay footage, you can see the live performance figures in the left top corner of the screen. You can find my setup which I used here to test them in the description box down below, and if you have any questions about them, free feel to leave them in the comment section down below and I will try to help you out!
Taking a look at the benchmarking results, the RX 5600 XT graphics card as a series handles 1440p without any problem, while it’s forte is more 1080p resolution if you’re aiming to game at higher frame-rate on a high-refresh-rate monitor. During my testing, I had to roll back to the 20.2.2 version of the Adrenalin driver, because of the 20.3.1. was giving me headaches, it would constantly crash both the game and the system, and this was actually the first time I had any bad experience with a Navi card ever since people started to report driver issues, but I guess it was bound to happen eventually considering how often I change and test different models for my graphics cards reviews.
The performance can be stretched a bit more with some manual overclocking, but just as with my previous experience when overclocking an RX 5600 XT card, you won’t get too far as the software limitation s just a tad higher than the default clocks, as you can see here the memory was bumped up to 1830 MHz, so an 80 MHz jump, while with these settings shown here I was seeing around 1760 MHz for the GPU clock. With this a got around 2-3% of performance increase, so nothing fascinating, but again expected from what I’ve experienced before with the RX 5600 XT series in general. Since I couldn’t push it any further, I’ve tried my luck with undervolting the GPU and with lowering the core voltage by about 60 mV I managed to get a bit better temperatures and quieter sound profile, but it’s definitely not the quietest one that’s for sure
Not an easy task at hand
Speaking of those two, I was seeing the GPU temperature anywhere from 60 to 65°C, depending on the situation and fan speed, a bit above 70°C for the hot spot and memory. I say depending on the fan speed because it fluctuates quite a bit, remind me sort of how Gigabyte tunes their fan profile, it was going anywhere between 11 to 17-1800 RPM, but mostly around 13 to 1600 RPM during gaming. I really wish they polish that out a bit with a future BIOS update, they can make it run a bit faster, I don’t mind it, just make the curve more stable and let it ease in gradually if it really needs to make a fan speed change. With that said, the noise that the fans make is noticeable on an open testbed, it’s not unbearable, but it’s not the quietest that’s for sure, it was louder than the Gigabyte Gaming and Sapphire Pulse models, feel free to check out my comparison review of them, I will put a link to them in the right top corner of this video. Here’s a short sound clip of the fans with the card being under full load, while also showing the sound meter for measurement comparison.
This model uses one 8-pin PCI-express power connector and according to the GPUz read it pulls around 130-140W, while if I subtract the idle system power consumption with system power consumption during GPU only load using Furmark stress with, I got a figure of around 210W being pulled from the wall. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, that’s not the only connector on the graphics card, we, of course, have an array of video outputs, having one HDMI and three DisplayPorts, so a pretty standard setup.
And that’s pretty much it for this model, it definitely looks a bit quirky and interesting, could be a good choice for those who can’t go for a wider model, and a lot of the higher-end aftermarket Navi cards are like that, and some chassis can’t take them in so your selection is narrowed down, like for example with Fractal’s ITX Era, which I’m actually going to review pretty soon, be sure to subscribe for that one. Anyhow, this model does offer something different, but it also falls behind in other areas compared to its rivals, that being the noise level that it makes, especially comparing to the Pulse model, they’re similarly priced, but in the end, it’s up to you to decide if that’s something that could steer your purchasing decision in other DIRECTION.
That’s it for this time, thanks for checking out my ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming review and if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
