While AMD is giving all signs of being preparing to release their latest entries into the midrange graphics card market in the form of theRX 5500 and RX 5300 series of graphics cards based on Navi, AMD's AIB partners are giving the slow burn on existing inventories of AMD's Polaris graphics chips. MSI, in this case, seems to have bet on a slight redesign of their previously-released RX 580 Armor and Armor MK2.

Changed is the color scheme - MSI went full black on this one. There's also a redesigned PCB, a redesigned I/O bracket (which keeps four display connectors), and a new cooler shroud. The heatsink's surface area also seems to have been increased, which should provide lower operating temperatures (anything beyond that, such as higher overclockability and longer lifespan, are speculations). The redesigned Armor keeps the single 8-pin PCIe power connector. No other details are available at time of writing.

MSI today introduced its Radeon RX 580 Armor MK2 graphics card series, available in standard and OC variants. Both feature 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. The two cards feature the same Armor MK2 product design that the company debuted with the RX 570 Armor MK2 series, earlier this month. The standard variant offers out of the box clock speeds of 1353 MHz core, which is slightly higher than AMD-reference clocks of 1340 MHz. The OC variant tops that with 1366 MHz out of the box. Both variants leave the memory untouched at 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective).

The Armor MK2 series is positioned a notch above the original Arsenal-series Armor SKU, in featuring a pair of updated TorX 2.0 fans, red-colored accents in place of white on the cooler shroud, and the addition of a metal back-plate with red accents. It hence sits in between the Armor and Gaming series. TorX 2.0 fans feature double ball-bearings, and an improved fan blade design for higher air-flow, allowing MSI to lower the fan speeds, and with it, noise. The fans stay off when the GPU is idling. The PCB design is unchanged between the Armor MK2 and the original RX 580 Armor series. The company didn't reveal pricing.

MSI is apparently working on a revised version of its dual-fan Armor design for AMD's cards, dropping the white and black color scheme and opting for a more AMD-basic black and red one. The new versions, tentatively dubbed the Armor MK2 graphics cards, are expected to trickle through MSI's AMD graphics card lineup slowly, starting with the RX 570 and RX 560 graphics cards in their OC versions. The new color scheme, even if used to exhaustion already, does a little more than the previous Armor iteration in conveying the image of an AMD graphics card (black and red, anyone?), and the Armor MK2 models should feature an additional color and design upgrade to the existing backplate.