Packaging

The Card

Intel's new reference design, they call it "Limited Edition," looks great and comes with an extremely clean design language. The dominant color is black, the surface of the cooler is slightly rubberized, to feel a bit soft to the touch. The card uses a short PCB, which allows some airflow through the card for better cooling performance. On the back you get a plastic backplate, which integrates nicely with the rest of the design.


Dimensions of the card are 28.0 x 11.5 cm, and it weighs 786 g.


Compared to last generation's flagship, the Arc A770, the new B580 looks very similar, both in size and design. We can see some improvements near the fan blades, and there's a small design change around the fans.


Installation requires two slots in your system. We measured the card's width to be 45 mm.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 2.1 and one HDMI 2.1a. See how the middle DisplayPort is marked with a black outline? That port supports higher bitrates (UHBR13.5), i.e. 4K up to 360 Hz, while the other two ports support up to 240 Hz.

In terms of codecs, you get full support for H.264, H.265, VP9 and AV1, both encode and decode. Worth highlighting is HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit encoding and decoding, which is a unique capability, and AV1 Screen Content encoding, which improves the quality of text in movies—fantastic for screen recordings or screen sharing.


The card uses a single 8-pin connector, plus PCIe slot power, allowing a maximum power draw of 225 W. Intel has configured it with a default power limit of 190 W, which can be raised by 20% in their control panel.


The card comes with an illuminated Intel ARC logo.

Teardown

The main cooler uses four heatpipes and provides cooling for the GPU, memory and VRM circuitry.


On the back, you'll find a plastic backplate with a big cutout to improve airflow.