Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card Review

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming Overview
Taking a first look at the card it is characterized by the design on Gigabyte’s WindForce 2X cooler, which makes use of a black shroud, black fans, and orange accents. The card is not all that long with a maximum length of 232 mm.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

Taking a closer look at the cooler itself it is made up of two 90 mm fans with a unique fan design. The airflow of the fans is spilt by the triangle fan edge, and guided smoothly through the 3D stripe curve on the fan surface, effectively enhancing the air flow by 23% over traditional fans. The fans are semi-passive fans which will only turn on when the GPU reaches a certain temperature.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

If we remove the cooler from the card we can get a closer look at what makes us the heatsink and cooling components of the WindForce 2X cooler. There is a large heatsink stack that features three copper heatpipes. These heatpipes come into the base of the heatsink and will make direct contact with your GPU.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

If we look at the card from the side we can see that it is a dual-slot card as most are these days. On the side of the card that will face out you have a Gigabyte logo and a fan stop indicator. Both logos have RGB backlighting which is controllable via Gigabyte’s software. The fan stop indicator will turn on when the fans on the card are in passive mode. The card draws power from an 8-pin PCI-Express power connector.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

As far as display outputs go you have three DisplayPort, one HDMI, and one dual-link DVI. There is a little bit of ventilation on the slot cover as well.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

The back of the card does have a full-cover metal backplate with the Gigabyte logo in the center. The blackplate is pretty boring in my opinion compared to others we’ve seen.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 Gaming 8GB Graphics Card

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