PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 Video Card Review

When I think of the Devil cards my memory brings me to the large multi fan coolers and decorative fan shrouds.  Now that backplates have become “standard” on high-end graphics cards that just gives designers another canvas to paint with either elaborate logos to or dress up with patterns and other designs.  The PowerColor RX 580 Red Devil has all of these things including two very large cooling fans sitting inside a metal based fan shroud covered in multi-layer pieces of red and black.

Flipping the card around you will find a very stylish aluminum backplate to help protect and reinforce the PCB.  It will also soak up some excess heat but, cannot dissipate it very well. 

The graphics are a very appropriate pentagram to help reinforce the Devil branding and you will find an array of holes around the pentagram which serve more as decoration than cooling performance.

Video output is comprised of a single DVI-D video output combined with a three Display Port connections and a single standard HDMI.  These connections are pretty standard across most modern graphics cards and allow you flexibility in how you connect multiple displays and/or a VR Headset.

There are two switches on the Red Devil RX 580.  The first is a BIOS select switch allowing you to toggle between a silent BIOS and the factory overclocked one.  If you are into modding your video card BIOS having a selector switch allows you to test out the new firmware without having to worry that your adjustments will brick the card.

Out of the box the OC mode was enabled and is where it stayed throughout this review.

The second button is an on and off switch for the onboard LED light.  It isn’t a RGB light and isn’t controllable by motherboard software but you can turn it off if your build is more dark than flashy.  While on the subject of RGB LEDs and the lack of them on the PowerColor Red Devil RX 580 I have to say

Bravo!

There is no reason why every product has to have RGB LEDs, sure it does help solidify a theme and helps unify products from a single manufacture but, for the Red Devil any color other than Red, White and UV would just be wrong for the branding.