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these one of these things cold again a graphics card we have a graphics card I haven't welcome back to harbor unboxed today we're revisiting the topic of graphics card pricing also looking at a new graphics card something we haven't done in quite some time because of well graphics card prices on hand I have the new asrock rx 580 phantom gaming and we'll put this thing through its paces shortly for now though let's talk a bit about the current market conditions it's fair to say it's been a rough ride over the past 6 to 12 months for those hoping to build a new gaming PC or even a used PC for that matter this time last year though it was happier tires for PC builders I mean sure ddr4 memory prices were still quite high but today they're almost 50% higher the most extreme barrier to entry though for PC gamers has of course been the graphics card and I think 12 months ago you could have quite easily picked up pretty much any model for the MSRP and an rx 588 gigabyte for example while they were selling for 230 dollars u.s. today though cameras can only dream of those kinds of prices don't know why I'm laughing I think it's just so silly now it's just a joke anyway by June prices had already started to rise and before long getting a gaming graphics card and anywhere near the MSRP became a real challenge by April 2017 the average rx 580 costs 260 dollars u.s. then 310 dollars by November and by January 2018 we were seeing pricing exceeds $600 u.s. more recently though is in the last month we have started to see prices fall back down as cryptocurrency mining cools off for a bit and GPU mining for various reasons becomes less appealing the result has been a drop in price to 350 dollars u.s. which is still outrageous but shockingly a big improvement from where we were just a few short months ago pricing for the geforce gtx 1066 gigabyte is similar though we are seeing more models selling for around 320 dollars u.s. even with a drop in demand for graphics cards it's unlikely we're going to see prices hit MSRP s as there's still that whole mess with DRAM supply pushing pricing up and as a result of what's going on there Samsung micron and hynek's are getting sued for alleged DRAM price-fixing kick starting 2018 I created a three part series titled why building a gaming PC right now is a bad idea and part two discussed a graphics card pricing I predicted at the time that this issue wouldn't rectify itself till later in the year and as we approach the midway point of 2018 that ominous prediction is looking at more and more accurate still things are improving and if you've been desperately waiting to get your hands on a graphics card isn't the other time to give in and pull the trigger well honestly I'm not really sure if it is or not personally though I'd probably give it another month and spend that time monitoring which direction the prices are heading there's also the issue of whether or not you should even invest in a current generation GPU at this point we are very deep into the product cycle and are expecting new price from both Nvidia and AMD before years and despite a list though as rocker recently threw their hat into the ring by signing up to become an exclusive AMD Radeon partner their new phantom gaming series includes rx 550 rx 560 RX v 7t + RX 580 graphics cards and they've sent over the flagship model the RX 588 G phantom gaming XOC so more than a year on since the refreshed Radeon rx 580 was first released we have a new her ex 582 review technically this GPU was released in June of 2016 so almost two years ago now and the worst part is back then it could quite easily be picked up for two hundred and forty dollars us which was the MSRP anyway let's not dwell on that any more than we have to and take a quick look at as rocks rx 580 phantom gaming XOC to see if it has anything new to offer and how it stacks up against the premium RX 580 models out of the box as rocks factory overclocked RX 5 ready comes with a mild 3% increase in frequency hitting a boost clock of thirteen hundred and eighty megahertz the gddr5 memory has been left stock at 2000 megahertz effectively allowing for a transfer speed of 8g bits second the real differences though can be seen we're looking at the PCB and cooler all the phantom gaming graphics card to rely on PCBs ankles developed by asrock the higher-end rx 570 and 580 models pack larger coolers featuring two fans as well as an aluminium radiator with a copper base and three heat pipes asrock claims to use premium thermal paste as well and double ball bearing fans to maximize the lifespan and efficiency of the cooler then in an effort to maximize compatibility all graphics cards include a DVI output DisplayPort and HDMI outputs in order to connect all kinds of displays tearing down the cart is extremely quick and easy as just six screws are needed to be removed doing so reveals a fairly compact PCB featuring a six phase vrm which is fed power via an eight pin power connector that's pretty standard stuff really the cooler itself was also quite compact and in total weighs just 384 grams so don't expect the phantom gaming to offer class-leading thermal performance the Auris RX v 8 extr for example packs a 647 gram cooler and you'd better believe that almost 70% more metal to dissipate heat with makes a serious difference I should note that there's also no backplate included and in total the carb measures 280 millimeters long 127 millimetres tall and 42 millimeters wide making this a dual slot card so let's quickly put the Phantom gaming to the test and see what it's got all testing has been conducted our corsair GPU test ring powered by the core i7 87 hero cake locked at 5 gigahertz with 32 gigabytes of ddr4 3,200 memory all results were updated specifically for this video and we have tested with the latest version of Windows game patches installed along with the latest display drivers ok let's get in the results first up we have Assassin's Creed origins and here the asrock rx 580 spat an average of 51 FPS at 1080p using the highest quality in-game preset this made it 1 to 2 FPS slower than premium models from MSI and gigabyte much the same we've seen at 1440p and here the asrock Eric's 580 was a whisker faster than the old msi RX 480 and as you'd expect 15% faster than the RX 570 trying at battlefield 1 at 1080p with the ultra quality settings so smooth eighty-eight FPS on average when using as rocks new rx 580 graphics card again this was a few FPS off the pace of the MSI and gigabyte models which feature much larger coolers still the asrock model remains strong at 1440p and again delivered playable performance which is pretty typical for an rx 580 in this title far cry 5 is a well optimized title it was sponsored by AMD and here we see the azrog rx 5 ad matching gigabytes Oris gtx 1060 with 77 FPS on average which is comparable to the other rx 580 models tested as well although we failed to exceed 60 FPS at 1440p the performance was still very reasonable and again the phantom gaming was on par with the tricked-out GTX 1060 packin dying gigabits per second gddr5 memory unlike Far Cry 5 Fortnight prefers hardware from the green team but having said that the RX 580 graphics cards do well enough pushing over 60 FPS at all times with maxed out settings at 1080p even at 1440p the performance was decent though for this fast-paced action shooter you really notice the difference between rendering over 60 fps and rendering less than 60 FPS using maxed out quality settings these graphics cards breezed through our Rainbow six siege benchmark and the asrock rx5 adding managed to deliver over 100 FPS at all times when playing at 1080p even at 1440p the RX 580 phantom gaming provided well over 60 FPS at all times and was roughly on par with models from MSI and gigabyte finally we have vermintide 2 and here the rx 580 and GTX 1060 GPUs provided very similar performance the asrock phantom gaming did only match the MSI R X 480 but that did put it within 1 to 2 FPS of the other rx 580 models tested moving on to operating temperatures and here we see that the thermal performance wasn't anything overly impressive as we expected given the size and weight of the cooler hitting 74 degrees made the asrock model 2 degrees hotter than the msi model and three degrees hotter than the massive gigabyte card given the size and weight of the cooler those aren't bad results but it did mean that the bigger coolers on the msi and gigabyte cards did ensure slightly higher operating clock speeds here's a quick look at the operating temperatures in this stock out of the box settings as you can see when playing around Wars Battlefront 2 against some BOTS we saw a peak temperature of 74 degrees after 20 minutes of gameplay for headphone users who don't really care about operating volume you can track the fans up to 100% and this reduced load temperatures to just 61 degrees again after 20 minutes of gameplay using the OC mode which we will look at shortly increase the operating temperature by just a degree but it also increased the fan speed by around 400 rpm so the card was noticeably louder again if you don't care about operating volume and then cranking the fan speed up to 100% with the OC mode enabled does drop the temp down to a peak of just 66 degrees and as a side note this configuration did allow us to average over 60 FPS at 1440p with a minimum of 52 fps after a 20 minute test the other issue you faced when using a small heatsink is increased operating volume as you are required to move more air over the smaller surface area we see this with the asrock phantom gaming rx 580 which hit 50 decibels on our meter which was positioned half a meter away from the system in a quiet room the other graphics cards are all tested under the same conditions on the same day and we see that the only model to generate more noise is the super noisy AMD references own vega 56 graphics card anyway as Rox RX 580 isn't ridiculously loud when under load but it could very easily be heard over the rest of the system and was noticeably louder than the MSI and gigabyte models when it comes to power usage the asrock rx 580 is more efficient than the MSI and in particular gigabyte models a drop total system consumption down by 12% that's quite impressive given that it was never more than five percent slower this just goes to show how a graphics card model used for representing the power consumption of a GPU can really impact the results in this case the Auris RX v 8 extr did so quite negatively finally just a quick look at overclocking and included in the bundle is the asrock phantom gaming tweak software which looks and feels very similar to the MSI Afterburner software using this software you can quickly enable the OC mode or silent mode or you can just do some manual overclocking you can also monitor and tune the fan speed increase the thermal and power limits as well as monitor GPU and memory usage it's in the little tool that works very well enabling the OSI mode increased performance by 4% and far cry 5 and this place the asrock Eric's 580 just ahead of the gigabyte and MSI models then manually overclocking the court at 1.5 gigahertz and boosting the memory to 9 gigabits per second increased performance by 10% over the out-of-the-box configuration so solid overclocking performance from our sample but unlike the MSI and gigabyte cards which are extremely quiet when overclocked the asrock rx 580 is a bit of a jet there you have it the new asrock rx 580 phantom gaming a mediocre graphics card that you'd probably expect to sell at the base MSRP if graphics cards sold at the MSRP at all although I compared this model to extreme models such as the gigabyte or a Radeon rx 580 XE r 8g or the MSI Radeon rx 580 gaming x 8g I expect that it will take on the more mundane version such as gigabytes rx 580 gaming or MSI's rx 580 armor for example I'm assuming as much anyway as the phantom gaming graphics cards I get to go on sale in the US or Australia for now as Rob tells me that availability is limited to Japan Korea Thailand and Latin America I haven't said when they expect them to hit our shores so I can't really say when you better get your hands on one if you're a fellow Aussie as I said earlier right now you can expect to pay around three hundred and fifty dollars u.s. or about four hundred and ninety dollars Australian for a base model rx 580 and well I'm hoping this is where as rocks phantom gaming rx 580 will slot in if and when it becomes available of course I guess the big question right now is should you buy a Radeon erics 580 had all right now and today's inflated prices which are at least $100 u.s. over the MSRP I'd say unless you're extremely desperate just hold off for now as I said we will be seeing a new GPUs arrive later in the year and with a new supply of GPUs it is possible prices will come down to the MSRP it's possible not sure it will happen but I remain hopeful anyway as a quick side note the RX 580 and GTX 1060 remain very competitive and modern titles so I would recommend you forget about brand loyalty altogether and the markets just too crazy for that nonsense right now if you need to rearrange GPU just get whichever one is the cheapest and that is going to do it for this one if you did enjoy the video then be sure to the like button subscribe for more content if you appreciate the work we do here at harbor on box then consider supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you next time