Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC – RushKit

Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC – RushKit

 

The Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC is easily one of our most requested reviews of this year, being the first Custom RX 480 to be announced and the first to promise higher clock speeds, cooler thermals as well as quiet operation. 

Sapphire’s RX 480 Nitro+ cooler design is much more neutral than most of Sapphire’s other cooler designs, allowing this GPU to easily blend into most systems as well as  provide great cable management with its rear facing 8-pin power connector. 

  

        

 

The Nitro+ OC will come in with much higher clock speeds than AMD’s reference design and come with the highest clock speeds that Sapphire have in their entire RX 480 lineup. Yes, Sapphire has their Nitro+ 8GB, but with a mere £10 price premium, most users will be best off going for the higher clocked RX 480 Nitro+ OC. 

With an 8-pin PCIe power connection overclockers will be able to happily overclock their GPUs with no fears of running into any power issues. This GPU will also come with a full cover GPU backplate, which comes with a grey and black design that I personally would have preferred to be all black to better match the GPUs cooler shroud.   

One other addition that the Sapphire RX 480 Nitro makes is the addition of a DVI-D display output, which should help a lot of potential users to connect older displays which are not HDMI or DisplayPort compatible. 

 

 

Sapphire’s Nitro+ GPUs will come with a BIOS Switch, allowing this GPU to be switched between what Sapphire call “Quiet Mode”, which locks the GPU to AMD’s reference clock speeds for reduced thermal output and quieter operation, while the GPUs “Performance” mode will allow RX 480 Nitro + users to make full use of Sapphire factory overclock.  

This GPU will also have an RGB illuminated Sapphire logo on the side, which can be set to 6 different modes in Sapphire’s TriXX 3.0 Overclocking Software. First, there is Sapphire’s Corporate blue option, then there are the PCB temperature and fan speed options which changes from Blue-purple and then red as temperatures or fan speeds increase and then there are custom Rainbow, static colour and off options to let this GPU suit pretty much any PC build. 

 

        

 

One of the new features in Sapphire’s RX 480 Nitro+ is the ability to remove and replace the GPUs fans at will, making GPU cleaning much easier and allows users to easily replace faulty or broken fans with ease and without affecting the GPU’s warranty. 

 

 

Conclusion

Aesthetically Sapphire have done well with their Nitro+ cooling design, releasing an effective cooler which not only comes in a neutral colour scheme but also is easy to both clean and repair. 

Design wise the RX 480 Nitro+ OC looks like it will improve on AMD’s reference design in almost every way, from providing beefed up cooling and an 8-pin power connection for overclocking to providing stock clock speeds that should easily outperform AMD’s reference design. 

Display wise AMD’s reference RX 480 supported 3 DisplayPort connections and a Single HDMI 2.0 connection, effectively allowing the GPU to power up to 4 FreeSync displays, though this also prevented the users of older DVI displays from making use of AMD’s reference design without purchasing a whole new display as well. Thankfully Sapphire has addressed this with the addition of a DVI connection, giving their Nitro+ design some much-needed legacy support. 

The Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC has only recently arrived at the OC3D offices, but we will be working hard to make sure that we have a full written review available as soon as we can.  

You can join the discussion on Sapphire’s RX 480 Nitro+ OC on the OC3D Forums.