Power, Temperature and Noise
We often see AIB partners crank up all the dials to eke out a few extra frames here and there. Sapphire is noticeably more reserved, with the Nitro+ drawing a little less power under full load. A 750W PSU is the official recommendation, yet most configurations ought to be able to get away with 550W quite comfortably.
We weren't kidding when we said the AMD reference and Sapphire Nitro+ boards were closely matched. Idle and in-game temperatures are identical in our test platform, which may come as a surprise given the latter's beefy cooler.
There is an upside to Sapphire's custom build, however, in that noise levels are extremely low. Tested using the default Performance BIOS, the fans are off at idle, spin-up smoothly when temperature rises, and rarely exceed 1,000RPM when gaming. It is barely having to work, resulting in truly excellent acoustics and, on our sample, no off-putting coil whine.