PowerColor Red Devil RX 470 4GB Review

A Closer Look

Sporting a black cowling with red and Red Devil accents the PowerColor Red Devil RX 470 4GB uses a dual fan Double Blade III cooling solution that is quite unique. The Double Blade III fans have an open middle section that increases airflow and reduces dust.

Peeking out from under the cowling is a black PCB with custom board layout using 6 + 1 phase power and each phase providing 25W as opposed to many other boards providing 22.5W per phase. With the additional 15W the increased power the phases provide you will have more power available for overclocking and each phase should run cooler. Reference designs have a 4 + 1 phase design so PowerColor is spreading the heat load across 2 more phases which should give OCing headroom and a longer life to the video card.

It’s a bit hard to see from a distance but here’s a good look at the Double Blade III design which for all the world the cutout center looks to us to be almost “Devils Horn” shaped. The Double Blade III design allows for more air flow and helps keep dust off the blades. Internally there are two sleeve bearings which, according to Power Color, should extend the life to 400% of single bearing fans.

PowerColor went all out on the Red Devil theme and put a black back plate on the video card complete with it’s own Pentagram. The back plate will help protect delicate components and adds a sense of style other companies overlooked.

Putting the view perspective up and looking down at the side of the PowerColor Red Devil RX 470 4GB you get a good look at the red accents and the Red Devil name on top. The split blade fans really show off their stuff and from here they almost look like horns.

Glancing t the bottom of the video card you see that PowerColor cut vent holes out on the cowling to add extra space for hot air to be pushed out of the cowling and made it look good instead of just an open patch on the cowling.

Going top down on the Red Devil you get a good look at the Red Devil logo and how the back plate is spaced away from the PCB. One small note, on the Asus Maximus VIII Z170 motherboard the Back Plate actually touched the Ram bank Clips but once seated it didn’t cause a problem.

Here’s a better look at the stylish bottom cutout and PowerColor over looked no detail to ensure their offering would stand out in a crowd. Once we got below the card we saw the additional standoff shown bottom left here. The silver strut will help take the weight load of the card and prevent sag, it[‘s a bit overkill with the back plate but over kill is under appreciated.

For connectors we have a DVI-D, an HDMI and 3 DisplayPorts so you shouldn’t run into connectivity problems unless you have an old 15 Pin DSUB VGA connector in which case you will need an adapter.

Stock RX470’s need a 6 pin PCI-e connector but with 6 power phases running at 25W per PowerColor went with an 8 pin PCI-e to provide adequate power ensuring smooth power deliver to the Polaris core.