powercolor Should PowerColor be hated by me so much?

[Guest]

History: if you have been following me for a while then you should have seen me posting numerous time on topics and threads mentioning PowerColor that it is a bad card and one should not buy it.

 

Company: PowerColor is a brand creared by TUL corporation and is based in Taiwan (same as MSI, Asus, Acer, ADATA, BenQ, Clevo, G.Skill, Gigabyte, Clevo, Realtek and the list goes on). 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Taiwan

They are known for manufacturing AMD's Graphics Card and only that. (Their name has the word 'power' in it. It is not true to say GPU is their only department as they also produce Power Supply Unit but it doesn't come in wide selection, only 2 or 3 models and they are all pretty low-end http://powercolor.com/us/products_power_layer_2.asp?SeriesID=67&subSeriesID=69 and some other accessories like case, cables which are all unheard of) 

 

The experience: Now here goes the interesting part of this thread. I have in possession of a PowerColor graphics card right now. It is currently my daily card to game on it. (http://powercolor.com/us/products_features.asp?id=622). Check my profile for exact name if link doesn't work. 

I bought it from Newegg Canada. It was at that moment significantly cheaper than other RX 480 4GB hence why I have it, next cheapest cost around 20-30 $CAD more and it was an MSI Armor card. 

Receipt (in spoiler):

Spoiler

I was torn between a GTX 1060 3GB and an RX 480 4GB at that time because ReLive driver was very new and there wasn't much of benchmark done then (order placed on December 23 2016). I also had an opportunity to get a Zotac Mini GTX 1060 6GB but there was a problem with PayPal that can not resolve immediately and the deal lasted only a day. RX 480 8GB costs significantly more so that's out of question. 

 

Approximately a month later after I got the card, MSI Armor got a discount to the same amount that I paid for PowerColor and the PowerColor card itself got even cheaper. 

 

I placed the order 2 days before Christmas so it was to expect the card would arrive late, way late until one week after New Year. And that is when problem one came. 

 

I know I had a rebate for this product but for some reason (mainly not knowing really how rebate works) I decided to wait until the card arrives and then fill out rebaye for $20. Well Newegg wasn't helpful for some reason so I turned to PowerColor for rebate. Found my product nicely, saw that there is a 30 day limit (or 15 days don't remember) for you to enter rebate since you order it, I was sure within that time period and all you need to do is find the card, not a big deal, and enter the date. Well, PowerColor starts their calendar from 2017 so even though my order was made just one week before 2016 ends and still within the time frame to claim MIR I couldn't get it. So what do you do in that case? I will save that for later. 

 

Onto the card. I should leave a you guys a post with 200+ replies on that. Full review. 

At the end of it there are few complaints from me about the heat issue that I could not figure out. At this state I blame myself for disassembling the card and leaving the thermal paste out in the open for few minutes then reassemble it again without reapplying thermal paste. But I can't be sure. 

 

If heat isn't number 1 priority then crashes shouls be. I even bought a brand new Corsair CX500 (green) tonreplace thinking my PSU is dying. But turns out I had to refund the PSU and blame it on the GPU. 

(shitposter for a reason, here look at problems I had in spoiler):

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Now the best part. With all the shit I have to deal with the obvious choice wouls be to RMA it right? Well I for stupid reason think the world is perfrct, so shortly after running the GPU for some time without issue I threw away the box and everything inside. So Newegg will not issue an RMA for me. However they did link me to PowerColor site and ask for warranty there. Offers 2 years of warranty in US and Canada (http://www.powercolor.com/us/support_warranty.asp). 

 

also, a moment of silence for 2/3 canadians who use english as their primary language http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo11a-eng.htm

picture taken from PowerColor country selection page (basically the whole page is french) 

Spoiler

Back to warranty, I sent them 2 seperate emails at 2 different time (not an email but more like filling out the form and pray). No response, not even an automated reply. Then I desperately tried calling ti the US number as they say: "Our customers are very important to us! Sometimes due to technical difficulties we may not get your e-mail inquiry in a timely fashion. If you don't hear back from us within 24 hours (48hours for weekend days) then please give us a call during normal business hours!"

Could not reach them either. So Intl no is my last hope. I gavr up when realizing my phone can not call internationally or hasn't been setup yet. 

 

The professionals:

"The obvious trade-offs here are higher power-consumption, temperatures, and noise. In fact, PowerColor strongly recommends against using the modded card with FurMark as the company found that it will damage even non-overclocked cards with the new BIOS." https://www.google.com.vn/amp/s/www.techpowerup.com/225214/powercolor-outs-unlocked-bios-for-rx-480-red-devil%3Famp

That is to be expected when you run a stress test right? Well not quite, this dude breaks down what's inside the Red Devil and why Furmark is dangerous in this video (TL;DW PCB is bad) 

However, the card itself isn't the worst in temperature, got a very good result with its 3 fan design http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_red_devil_rx_480/9.htm 

 

or is it? 76 degree at load with 3 fans? you can see it is on par with some ref and GTX FE cards http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/powercolor_radeon_rx_480_red_devil_review,6.html

 

Took me quite a while to write on mobile but to summarize:

• Customer Service isn't bad because I did not experience it at all. 
• The card has issues, it has been reported at least one and brought up attention 
• PowerColor isn't cheap unfortunately, if I were to recommend a card I would get a reference design any day even if it is more expensive since I know they are made by good companies that despite having bad reputation in Customer Service (Asus for example) still at least HAVE a Customer Service. 

[themctipers]

i was actually going to buy that GPU, but then I realized after that that would lead into GTX 1070 territory and I could afford a 1070, so ..

[Guest]

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

i was actually going to buy that GPU, but then I realized after that that would lead into GTX 1070 territory and I could afford a 1070, so ..

red dragon or devil? 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

HA

[themctipers]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

red dragon or devil? 

the one you posted about on ltt ..

 

[Guest]

Just now, themctipers said:

the one you posted about on ltt ..

 

That's a Red Dragon. 

[themctipers]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

That's a Red Dragon. 

then i was looking at the red dragon