From PC World: AMD engineers are putting in extra hours this holiday weekend after troubling issues arose over the Radeon RX 480’s power draw—issues that could theoretically damage lower-end motherboards in extreme circumstances.
Despite ostensibly being rated as a 150-watt card, Tom’s Hardware found that AMD’s graphics card used an average of 168W under load. Intrigued, the site employed the use of exotic test equipment to determine exactly how much power the RX 480 pulled from both the PCI-E slot in the motherboard as well as card’s six-pin power connector (which hooks directly into the power supply) and found something even more alarming: The card pulled up to a whopping 90W over the motherboard’s PCI-E slot, far exceeding the 75W maximum the slot is rated for.
German site Golem.de observed identical behavior, as did TecLab.
PC Perspective performed even deeper testing shortly afterward. It found similar results to Tom’s at baseline levels and witnessed Witcher 3 consuming over 190W of sustained power draw when the RX 480 is overclocked, with 95W of that coming via the PCI-E slot. Worse, PC Perspective discovered that AMD’s card drew 7 amps over the PCI-E slot’s +12v rail, which is rated for 5.5 amps maximum. The Radeon RX 480 also overdraws the board’s solitary 6-pin power connector, though that’s less worrisome because it’s not passing through your motherboard. (Those are just some high-level findings; it’s worth reading PC Perspective’s comprehensive report.)
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