PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 Review

CLOSER LOOK

PACKAGING

The packaging style that PowerColor has chosen may be a bit shocking to those not familiar with previous offerings from the company. Right away we are presented with a large “RED DEVIL” nameplate and pentagram background. We realize that this choice is there to grab our attention, but a pentagram and all of the associated prince of darkness flair may cause some potential customers to shy away. Past the devilish design choice, the front of the box indicates the RX 580 inside, along with a few labels indicating support for DirectX 12, Vulkan, AMD Chill, Freesync 2, and Relive Capture. And found on many products, relevant or not, is the inclusion of a “Radeon VR Ready” label. Around back we get a look at a few power and system requirements, and an overview of a few features like Mute Fan, the power delivery system, and an “exploded” view of the card itself.

RED DEVIL RADEON RX 580 8GB GDDR5

Taking the wraps off of the Red Devil gives us a look at the mostly red and black design that PowerColor came up with. The oversized PCB of the videocard allows for the use of a larger heatsink and dual 100mm fans, which extend past the standard width of add-in cards, but this is pretty much the norm now with aftermarket solutions.

Zooming in on the cooling side of things, we are presented with a dual-fan active cooling solution. PowerColor has employed their Mute Fan technology on the Red Devil Radeon RX 580, which disables the fans when the GPU temperature is below 60C, thus reducing noise output and a bit of power consumption when possible. Surrounding the fans is a black and red metal shroud, allowing the air brought in by the fans to be directed to the underlying heatsink fins more effectively.

Flipping the Red Devil over gives us a look at the 1.5mm thick metal backplate, designed to both protect the underside of the card, as well as provide additional rigidity to prevent PCB warping. The black brushed-metal texture is nice, and there is a bit of decorative perforation that surrounds a pentagram-like design.

On its motherboard-facing side, we see that the fan shroud makes a few bends and covers most of the side of the videocard. Peeking out below the shroud are the four heatpipes keeping the GPU cool.

Swinging things around, we see the same shroud design covering the outward facing side of the Red Devil. A bit more detail is present on this side, as we have a “RED DEVIL” nameplate in the center of the shroud that illuminates with a red LED. There is a switch on the PCB that can enable or disable this light depending on user preference. No RGB here, but we aren’t going to complain too much.

A closer look at the illuminated “RED DEVIL” nameplate also gives us a bit of a peek at the four, 8mm nickel-plated heatpipes used to cool the card.

Connectivity options on the PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 8GB are what we would expect from a top-tier videocard. Three Display Port 1.4 ports, a single HDMI port, and a single DVI-D port are available for connecting display devices or VR headsets. Two small sections of the I/O plate are perforated to allow a bit of air to move in or out of a system, depending on the rest of the cooling configuration inside a case.

The back section of the Red Devil is home to a small section of the metal shroud, and gives us a bit of a look at the heatsink fins, and the 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors.

Moving in on the Red Devil we get a look at the 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors used to supply the videocard with ample power. The suggested PSU wattage from PowerColor is 550 watts, which should probably be the minimum a current system with a high-end videocard should expect to get by on.

As mentioned earlier, there are two physical switches on the Red Devil which are used to control the BIOS and LED lighting of the videocard. The “BIOS OC/SILENT” switch toggles between the OC setting that places the GPU at 1380MHz, and a slightly lower GPU clock of 1355MHz when on Silent. The “LED Switch” toggles the red back-lit “RED DEVIL” nameplate lighting on and off.