Custom Radeon RX 5700 series cards are starting to arrive on retail sites

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Sapphire is the first out of the gate with a purchasable custom Navi card.

(Image credit: Sapphire)

The wait is nearly over for custom Navi graphics cards. You still can't waltz into a local store like Best Buy or Micro Center and go home with a shiny new custom Radeon RX 5700 XT or 5700 model, but over on Newegg, you can sign up to be notified when Sapphire's Pulse models are in stock.

In the early going, only reference models have been made available. Even the ones released by AMD's hardware partners still stick with reference clocks and a blower-style cooler.

AMD had previously indicated that we could expect custom models to arrive around the middle of August. These will vary my manufacturer and SKU, but the appeal of custom cards is the pairing of axial fan coolers with factory overclocks.

Sapphire's Pulse Radeon RX 5700 XT features two axial fans, along with a 1,670MHz core clock and 1,925MHz base clock, up from 1,605MHz and 1,905MHz, respectively. Those are conservative overclocks, but for a $10 price difference, it's hard to complain.

As for the Pulse 5700, it pairs the same cooler with a 1,540MHz base clock and 1,750MHz boost clock, compared to 1,465MHz and 1,725MHz, respectively, on reference models,

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).