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Current specs are in my signature. My R9 270 randomly died today in the middle of an Overwatch match. Sucks, but it was about due for an upgrade anyway. I also need a new monitor, as the 26" Vizio TV I have is on its last leg.

My top prospect is this:
MSI Radeon RX 480 ARMOR 4G OC 4GB for $189.98 shipped, $179.98 after $10 MIR
Dell SE2717Hx 27" IPS LED 1080p monitor with Freesync for $139.99 shipped, $129.99 after $10 MIR

My main question is will that card be sufficiently powered by my 450W PSU? I know the RX 480 doesn't exactly sip power for its class, but considering the rest of my system it should be fine right? Should I be worried about temperatures in my tiny little RVZ01 case? It was never really an issue with my R9 270, but I don't know how the RX 480 compares with temps.

Also, I don't play anything too terribly demanding. My main game is Overwatch with the occasional foray into No Man's Sky, and I do hop into Star Citizen whenever they release an update but by the time they release the actual game I'll probably be looking at another upgrade anyway so I'm not too concerned about that. I can't imagine I would have performance issues at 1080, especially with Freesync. I do plan on playing Mass Effect: Andromeda when it comes out, should I be worried about that?

Thanks for any help.

According to Anand, an entire RX480-based system experienced an average of 300 watts in-game, using an Ivy Bridge-E testbench. You should be fine, in other words.

See here for details.

That said, if power and/or cost are a consideration, you might be better off looking at a (possibly a factory OC) RX 470. Yikes, nevermind! A decent 470 costs the same as a 480.

Do you really want 1920x1080 rather than 2560x1440 or even 2560x1080?

I'm a poor college student. No way I can swing the premium for a 2K monitor and sufficiently capable graphics card, and I don't have the desk space for an ultrawide.

ALiLPinkMonster wrote:

I'm a poor college student. No way I can swing the premium for a 2K monitor.

Fair enough.  Going to 2560x1080 would set you back another $110.  A 29" diagonal 21:9 monitor is 27.7" wide (3¼" wider than the 27" 16:9 monitor).
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6824025112

Yeah, would be nice but my desk is so small and needs to fit certain things on it I really do not have three inches to spare :/

I can always use AMD's fancy VSR tech if I really want to.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Do you really want 1920x1080 rather than 2560x1440 or even 2560x1080?

Don't be hatin!

Jet.com MSI RX480 4G Gaming X = $194.82 - $30 with code TRIPLE15 = $165 - $10 MIR via MSI-17304 = $155
MSI's Gaming X cooler is arguably one of the best this generation.

My undervolted, reference RX480 is running at under 100W now, whilst being technically overclocked to 1275MHz.

I'm pushing 2560x1440@60Hz, no problems. Sometimes Ultra needs dialling back to High on a few key settings but it's pretty reasonable. I was torn between a GTX1060 6GB and the RX480 when they both launched, but with Nvidia's driver issues and significant performance improvements to the crimson drivers (around 5-15% depending on the game), there's no contest anymore. I'd only buy a GTX1060 if I was after something specific to Nvidia like PhysX (LOL, no) or CUDA (for work stuff).

I would definitely look for a reference blower in your RVZ01, having built into a couple of those myself. Not dumping hot air into the case is a huge bonus for those cases. They're practically tailored to work with reference-style blowers. The RX480 fits the resolution you want and the thermal envelope that will be happy in the RVZ01. There are no GTX1060 cards that come with decent blowers, and the GTX1070 founders edition is terrible value (but a good choice for the RVZ01). On the AMD side, the Sapphire RX470 "reference card" looks like the same cooler as the reference RX480 cards but it's not - it's an alu baseplate instead of a copper one! This makes the original RX480 reference card my recommendation unless you can afford a GTX1070 founders edition.

If performance/$ isn't your #1 priority, I would go with an RX480 and run it at 0.975V. I can't tell you what clockspeed it will reach at that voltage but I'd be very surprised if it was less than 1200MHz, and at that point you're going to be running very cool and quiet.

I'd also tentatively recommend a GTX980 with the reference nvidia cooler if you can find one as old stock or used in good condition for cheap. It's faster than an RX480 and although it uses about 175W it's a damn good cooler. It's not worth spending more than $200 on an older Maxwell GPU though, especially not one without a warranty.

Chrispy_ wrote:

My undervolted, reference RX480 is running at under 100W now, whilst being technically overclocked to 1275MHz.

I'm pushing 2560x1440@60Hz, no problems. Sometimes Ultra needs dialling back to High on a few key settings but it's pretty reasonable. I was torn between a GTX1060 6GB and the RX480 when they both launched, but with Nvidia's driver issues and significant performance improvements to the crimson drivers (around 5-15% depending on the game), there's no contest anymore. I'd only buy a GTX1060 if I was after something specific to Nvidia like PhysX (LOL, no) or CUDA (for work stuff).

I would definitely look for a reference blower in your RVZ01, having built into a couple of those myself. Not dumping hot air into the case is a huge bonus for those cases. They're practically tailored to work with reference-style blowers. The RX480 fits the resolution you want and the thermal envelope that will be happy in the RVZ01. There are no GTX1060 cards that come with decent blowers, and the GTX1070 founders edition is terrible value (but a good choice for the RVZ01). On the AMD side, the Sapphire RX470 "reference card" looks like the same cooler as the reference RX480 cards but it's not - it's an alu baseplate instead of a copper one! This makes the original RX480 reference card my recommendation unless you can afford a GTX1070 founders edition.

If performance/$ isn't your #1 priority, I would go with an RX480 and run it at 0.975V. I can't tell you what clockspeed it will reach at that voltage but I'd be very surprised if it was less than 1200MHz, and at that point you're going to be running very cool and quiet.

I'd also tentatively recommend a GTX980 with the reference nvidia cooler if you can find one as old stock or used in good condition for cheap. It's faster than an RX480 and although it uses about 175W it's a damn good cooler. It's not worth spending more than $200 on an older Maxwell GPU though, especially not one without a warranty.

Do you have a 4GB or 8GB card?
The thing about blowers is the noise. My PC sits next to my monitor and I cannot deal with the whine of a blower that close to my face, especially when I'm trying to do my audio production work. My R9 270 had a dual-fan cooler that worked pretty well, and the way the RVZ01 is set up, the graphics card is compartmentalized away from the rest of the system so I don't really see heat dumping being a big issue. My system temps always stayed below 70 C, even with the stock Intel cooler so I'd rather have the lower noise levels of a couple decent sized fans.
Anyway, I was looking on Amazon and went ahead and ordered my stuff. I am EXTREMELY impatient and I was able to get 6 months special financing through my Amazon card so I paid a premium to have it delivered today (oh, the joys of Prime). I got basically the same two items I originally posted, just a different brand monitor and the graphics card isn't the OC version but I can always do that part myself. I ended up paying about $50 more total than I would have at Newegg but to have it today as opposed to at the very least a week from now, I'd say that evens it out. Going a whole week with no Overwatch during the Year of the Rooster event was NOT an option for me. Plus, six months no interest.

8GB.

The RX480's reference model fan has an inoffensive character. It's not as buttery smooth as the very expensive reference GTX980 blower, but it's much better than the cheaper brethren like the blowers on the GTX 760 and many of the 960 and 970 blower models.

It's very quiet below about 1800rpm and I find that with a fresh-air intake, undervolted GPU and lowered thermal target of 75C, the blower runs at about 1500RPM most of the time. I've used the FTZ01 rather than the RVZ01 but I believe they're the same case with different fascias. With the most recent FTZ01 build I had a fairly quiet Powercolor R9 285 to go in there. It wasn't too noisy but it was definitely making more noise in the FTZ01 than it had in larger cases; Although the intake air is good on the FTZ01, there's not the same exhaust capability as in other cases. This is why blowers do better - fresh air in, hot air exhuasted instantly by the graphics card itself. I ended up putting a GTX970 in there (one of those rare 970's with a fancy 980 reference blower on it) and it was practically inaudible for the same TDP as the 285 it replaced.

Noise level perceptions vary from person to person, but blowers with quiet motors will definitely make less noise for the same TDP as an open cooler that is recycling it's own exhaust air in the RVZ01 and FTZ01. You can still make a quiet RVZ01 with an open cooler GPU but you'll need to keep it to a modest GPU with no more than 150W dissipation at the absolute maximum.

Given that you've already ordered the RX480, I would start by seeing how far you can undervolt the memory before it locks up and crashes. You might have more luck with the 7GHz DDR5 than I had with the 8GHz DDR5 on the 8GB model. Whatever the crash point of your GDDR5 is under load (Furmark, Heaven or Valley will be fine), add 50mv to it and that should be plenty stable for a daily driver. Let's say it crashes at 900mv but works at 925, run your GDDR5 at 950mv.

Then use the Wattman utility to set state 7 to 1GHz at whatever voltage your RAM was stable at, e.g. 950mv and check it's stable at 1GHz/950mv. Keep overclocking state 7 25MHz at a time and you'll probably find it'll reach 1150-1250MHz before it crashes. Drop it back 50MHz from the crash point for a stable daily driver.

Essentially, you're likely to end up losing 0-10% of your performance depending on the silicon lottery, but at 950mv instead of 1160mv you are reducing the power consumption by around 50W. That's 50W less heat to cool, and so much slower fan speeds needed, and obviously a much quieter machine. I got lucky after buying four cards and picking the best one, but none of the four cards failed to run 1200MHz at 1000mv.

Here's the power consumption math compared to a 1160mv stock voltage:
Tested TDP of an RX480 = 165W, 1160mv, 1266MHz.
Freq * V² ∝ P
so
1266MHz * 1.16V² ∝ 165W
165 * ((1200 * 1.00²) / (1266 * 1.16²)) = 123W.
Worst case scenario with a poor example is that you'll be able to save 42W for a 5% underclock. More likely you'll be able to undervolt it more than that though.

Sucks when a critical component just up and dies and you need an immediate replacement.  Would've been nice to get that MSI RX480 GamingX 4G card I linked for $155.  FYI, I'm pretty sure that same $10 MIR applies to the MSI Armor card, and the MIR is for all retailers.

To add to Chrispy's advice (I'm pretty positive I have my MSI RX480 Gaming X 8G running at 1306MHz/1.075V, I could post the rest of my curve, but it's basically linear) the Dell monitor you linked has a 48-75Hz FreeSync range.  Since you're playing less demanding games, consider turning on Framerate Target Control and set the max to 75fps (since that's the fastest your monitor can display anyway).  The GPU will then downclock itself accordingly to only pump out 75fps max saving you more power.  I've also found FTC handy for avoiding having to use VSync!

I've also played with the "Power Efficiency" switch and found it reduces power draw (I've gotten 15W savings just from this in ROTR) without affecting smoothness much/at all.  If you're reading that thread, I gave up on getting FTC to work in ROTR (mostly because at max settings it was barely cranking out 75fps during actual gameplay anyway), but it's been working fine for me in other games (Doom, Warframe, LoL, Torchlight2 to name a few).

Got my stuff. Very happy with the card and monitor so far, although I'm a little annoyed that the monitor didn't come with a displayport cable so that I can use freesync but whatever. I played a few games of OW and I can suddenly hit shots like nobody's business with Widowmaker. I was never good with her, it's a godsend. I like that the monitor has an "ultra-fast response time" setting. Not sure how much of that is gimmick but it seems to help, and combined with the lack of a need for v-sync (I just set the framerate limit to 60 and adjust settings so that it never goes below that) this is easily the least amount of input lag I've ever experienced. Can't wait to get a DP cable and try out freesync.

Noise levels and temps are well within my tolerance. I haven't messed around with voltages or clocks yet, and so far I honestly don't think I need to. We'll see. Thanks for the input guys, I know I kinda pulled the trigger pretty quick and could have done a little better for the money but it was an emergency situation.