MSI RX 5700 XT Evoke Review

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The packaging of the MSI RX 5700 XT Evoke is certainly attention grabbing with the black background and bold red boxes matched with the champagne coloured card and gold Evoke logo. The back of the box dedicates the majority of its real estate to the cooler design, which given the quality of the Twin Frozr throughout its history regardless of iteration makes perfect sense to us.

  
  

The card itself dispenses with the broad slashes, gaps and creases that are commonplace on GPU cooler shrouds these days and instead goes for a smooth finish. The colour choice reminds us of 1970s bathroom suites, but fortunately it’s just on the silver side of champagne and so it will be okay once installed in your system and lit up with RGB.

  

The backplate continues the smooth theme with a design free from accoutrements apart from a screen printed MSI logo. It’s ripe for dismantling and respraying in your own colour or just decorating with stickers if you fancy going for a JDM stickerbomb look to your system.

  

The heatsink is in keeping with the designs we’ve got used to from MSI, combining a quality base with plenty of fins and heat pipes to spread the heat and dissipate it as efficiently as possible. The spider web design on the end is certainly a unique touch and about the only element of design flair on the Evoke.

  

This view gives you a clearer indication of the slight champagne hue to the finish. It’s a bold choice.

  

Equally in the right light it can look silver, as we’ve mentioned, so the colour choice is by no means a deal breaker if you abhor the thought of something other than a monochrome look in your system. The 8+6 pin PCIe power inputs are recessed somewhat. Careful with your fingertips. Lastly the display outputs follow established AMD Radeon protocol with the DisplayPort and HDMI combination.