A Sapphire branded AMD reference design Radeon RX 480 graphics card was taken apart, giving us an early close look at the card and its key components. The pictures reveal pretty much the same details as the first close-up shot of the reference RX 480 / RX 470 common PCB, and the cooling solution was taken apart further, revealing more details than the first time we saw what's underneath.

To begin with, the reference RX 480 PCB features a 6-phase VRM that draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include one HDMI 2.0 and three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors. One of the pictures features a close-up of the 14 nm "Ellesmere" silicon. The cooling solution is confirmed to feature a chunky monolithic aluminium heatsink with a copper core, cooling the GPU, with a metal base-plate conveying heat from the VRM and memory to it; ventilated by a lateral blower. The Radeon RX 480 is expected to launch on the 29th of June, 2016, priced at $199 for the 4 GB variant, and $229 for the 8 GB variant.More pictures follow.

Here you see the PCB up close, beginning with the 14 nm "Ellesmere" silicon. This chip appears to have a smaller die than, say, "Tonga," a similar package size, yet a higher transistor count owing to its smaller fab process. Next up is the 6-phase VRM with LFPAK MOSFETs. Lastly, it's revealed that the 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory chips on the card are supplied by Samsung.Lastly, taking the cooling solution apart reveals a very simplistic design. AMD is taking advantage of the 150W TDP of the "Ellesmere" silicon, and employing a simple monolithic aluminium heatsink, with a copper core. There's no complex fin-stack, no heat-pipes. The metal base-plate transports heat from the VRM and memory chips onto the main heatsink, while itself dissipating some of the heat under the lateral-blower's airflow.