AMD RX 480 OC Held Back by Stock Cooler?

Later today, AMD will finally launch their much hyped RX 480. Utilising the Polaris 10 GPU clocked at 1266 MHz, the card is AMD’s way to bring VR to the masses. According to the various leaks, overclocking has ranged from the low 1300 Mhz zone all the way up to 1700 Mhz. In what may confirm the overclocking abilities of the RX 480, a credible ‘leak‘ has popped out from a reviewer breaking NDA.

According to Bits and Chips Editor, the RX 480 is quite a good overclocker but limited by its cooler. He had this to share:

“From our OC early tests: the PCB and the new tools are very good, and the Polaris 10 overclocks very well even at stock voltage. The problem is the reference cooler (it’s very good just at stock frequencies or a little bit over). With a 3rd party cooler (Sapphire Nitro?) Polaris 10 will be a best buy, IMHO.”

Honestly, I have felt the stock cooler is a bit wimpy as well from the leaked images. Despite AMD claiming the use of a cooler worthy of a $500 GPU, the heatsink is surprisingly small and underpowered. The only similarities with the Nano and R9 390(X) coolers is aesthetics. Given that cooling is a major factor in overclocking especially with the denser 14nm process, custom AIB models may be the way to go for overclockers as usual. Either way, we won’t have long to wait and find out for ourselves.