Card Layout and Photos

MSI’s 6650 XT Gaming X hasn’t changed anything up styling-wise for the refresh. So, much like the 6600 XT Gaming X, it has a dual fan configuration and the plastic fan shroud around the fans that is loaded up with angles and shapes. Around each fan rather than a round hole the shroud has an angular shape at least on the side facing out, the hole is round on the sides towards the other fan. Beyond that the same angular design wraps around the fan with another layer, it’s a lot like the roof of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta where it opens up. MSI has a mix of black and silver to give more contrast as well then in the center between the fans, the shapes are stacked on each other with groves cut in at the top and bottom. Some of the higher-end Gaming X cards have those groves backlit, but for the 6650 XT Gaming X, there isn’t any RGB lighting on this side of the card.

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Both fans at 95mm wide and the Torx 4.0 fans have 10 blades with every other blade paired up together at the end. It gives a similar look at performance to a fan design with a full ring on the outside, but with less material used which means less weight. The fans blow down into the heatsink which when we look through the fans we can see that the Twin Frozr 8 design has ripples along the top of each heatsink blade. MSI says that these help unwanted airflow harmonics to cut down noise, they also grab air and pull it down into the heatsink. The heatsink layout is vertical so air blowing down into it will be going out of the top and bottom of the card.

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The 6650 XT Gaming X isn’t a huge card, but it does come in over the “standard” sized PCI card. For slots its PCI bracket is a dual slot bracket but as you can see the cooler itself sticks out past that for a 2.5-3 slot configuration. The height of the card is also past the top of the PCI bracket as well by 24mm when you include the fan shroud that sticks up past the support bracket in the picture below. The overall length of the 6650 XT Gaming X is 277mm as well.

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The top edge of the 6650 XT Gaming X has the power connection which is down at the end of the shorter PCB. The 6650 XT Gaming X has an 8-pin power and the connection is flipped around with the clip on the PCB side with the PCB notched to fit it, this allows the heatsink to sit tighter up against this area without getting in the way of removing or plugging the cable in. Also on the top edge, the plastic fan shroud wraps around in the center area to partially cover up the heatsink and MSI has included a backlit RGB MSI logo. Even with the shroud wrapped around here, you can see that there is still a big gap for airflow to come out as well.

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Looking around at the edges of the 6650 XT Gaming X we can better see how the fan shroud wraps around the top and bottom of the card but still has a large gap to allow the airflow of the vertical heatsink layout to blow air out of the top and bottom. We can also see that the heatsink fits tight up against most of the PCB and down at the end where the PCB ends the heatsink is packed into that area to take advantage of the extra airflow that it provides. The end of the 6650 XT Gaming X gives us a peek at the four heatpipes as does the bottom view which lets us see how MSI has the heatpipes doubled up on the left side of the card. The heatpipes drop down with their core-pipe design that squares the pipes off on the GPU to get the best contact surface. They go to the left and have a 180 to run through that same section again up near the top of the heatsink.

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The 6650 XT Gaming X has a full-length metal back plate to give the card extra strength and prevent sag. It also helps keep the card itself protected when being handled as well. The backplate is black with a textured finish except for the top right corner which has a brushed finish and the black looks even darker. They have the MSI Gaming dragon logo sitting on the back of the GPU in a bright white and upside down so it is visible when installed in a PC and the back of the card is also where you will find your serial number on a sticker along with the model info as well. The backplate is notched down where the power plug is and because the card's PCB ends before the cooler there are angular holes cut in the backplate as well for airflow allowing some of the end fan's airflow to blow through the cooler and right out the back.

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On the PCI bracket end of the 6650 XT Gaming X, the card's PCI bracket has the standard chromed finish. 2/3 of the bracket is filled with small ventilation holes which aren’t too needed with the cooling layout. Then for display connections, the card has the standard three DisplayPort and one HDMI layout with the HDMI sitting in the second position down from the top.

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MSI kept the RGB lighting for the 6650 XT Gaming X extremely simple this time around with just the MSI logo on top being backlit. By default, it rotates through colors but you can control it using MSIs software as well.

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