PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 580 Video Card Review

There are six spring screws holding the Red Devil cooler in place and removing them will release the cooler from the card while leaving the backplate attached.  Additional screws are used to secure the backplate to the PCB and are accessible once the cooler has been removed.

The cooler on the PowerColor Red Devil is comprised of four large diameter heatpipes that all radiate from a cold plate connected to the GPU.  Unlike on some other coolers the cold plate is not a core contact design but rather a solid base that the heatpipes connect to with the major difference being heat capacity.  With a core contact design heat is taken away rather quickly but suffers from heat soak if you put in more heat than the system can handle.  Adding a cold plate will slow down the heat transfer but allows the system to run hotter while still allowing heat to dissipate.

While it may not appear as such this cooler is divided up into three parts.  The GPU has direct contact with the heatpipes while the memory cold plate is connected to the radiator.  A VRM cooler is attached and also connected to one of the primary heatpipes to ensure that the VRM doesn’t get any hotter than the GPU.

One of the limiting factors that determine how much a video card can be overclocked has always been the size of the VRM.  On the Red Devil RX 580 you will find a total of 6 power phases which have been spread apart to fit better on the enlarged PCB.  Overall the design is very simple and in all honestly I expected more.