Custom Radeon Navi RX 5700 series GPUs may not arrive until mid-August

AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT are set to launch on July 7th (7/7) but unfortunately, it looks like team AMD will only be able to sell their reference-style graphics cards on launch day, with custom variants coming much later. 

Fudzilla claims that they have sourced which place the release of custom/partner cards in mid-August, making AMD’s Navi launch reference-only for what’s likely to be over a month, after which custom designs will likely arrive from ASUS, MSI, Sapphire and AMD’s other add-in board (AIB) partners. 

This means that early Navi users will have to stick to AMD’s reference blower cooling solution, which will undoubtedly be seen as a bad thing in the eyes of consumers. At launch, the largest customisations that consumers are likely to see are a change in boxart and the addition of a branded sticker to your graphics card, as is common for launch day products. 

While Navi is touted for being much more efficient than both Polaris and Vega, AMD’s use of a blower-style cooling solution will be seen as a downside for many, but thankfully the cooler seems very similar to what is used with the RX Vega 56/64. Given the increased efficiency of Navi, an RX Vega-like cooling solution will likely require slower fan speeds to keep Navi cool, which is good news for consumers.