Not sure which brand 6700XT I should get

[mikeymikec]

By default, because of the Sapphire R9 380X I have, which I've been happy without any reservations, I'd go for Sapphire again. However, some reviews mention that it chucks out a lot of heat and I think that might be because other 6700XTs typically are nearly 30cm in length rather than the Sapphire 26cm model (there is a larger model but it's availability is pretty poor and it's bigger than my case can handle). Some reviews also mention coil whine which is something I'd very much rather avoid. I guess if I knew for a fact that I could return a card with coil whine without any fuss then I'd feel more comfortable about the situation.

I'd consider Asus as another possibility if it wasn't for them screwing me a few years ago:

Faulty 750Ti (within warranty) vs Asus and Amazon UK

This situation has really annoyed me, and despite me spending a fair bit of time trying to convince both parties to pull their finger out and actually help me get something done about this, I'm torn between binning a faulty card that is still within warranty and sticking to my guns and getting...

forums.anandtech.com

The other brands that seem to be available to me in the UK are PowerColor (whiny fans apparently), Gigabyte (what, the "blame everyone but themselves for their exploding products" brand? maybe not), MSI, ASRock (basically is Asus) and XFX but availability seems to be minimal.

 

[In2Photos]

I've had 2 MSI cards and have been happy with both. My daughter's ASRock card has a little more coil whine than my MSI but it took has been fine otherwise. I think any of the brands you mentioned would be fine but I certainly understand excluding one here and there for the reasons you listed.

 

[Shamrock]

Sapphire is the best AMD card you can get. And no, the Sapphire 6700xt does NOT "chuck out" a lot of heat. I own one.

Also, if you undervolt it, it will only get better.

 

[Shmee]

Powercolor and Sapphire both make good cards.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The other brands that seem to be available to me in the UK are PowerColor (whiny fans apparently), Gigabyte (what, the "blame everyone but themselves for their exploding products" brand? maybe not), MSI, ASRock (basically is Asus) and XFX but availability seems to be minimal.

MSI is a good bet, but their fans are also noisy (maybe all of them are when pushed to the limit).

XFX cards are pretty large. Plus, it was an XFX RX 580 that destroyed my mobo's PCIe lanes so not gonna trust them again though you may have better luck with them since that particular issue doesn't plague the RX 6000 series (pulling too much voltage from the PCIe slot).

Powercolor are the cheapest. No experience with them.

I have the Gigabyte AORUS RX 6800. Build quality seems very nice. It seemed perfectly fine to me in my limited use (the one issue I had was due to my own inability to understand fan headers. I plugged my CPU fan into a case fan header and then let the BIOS monitor the CPU fan that was not plugged into the CPU fan header. I know, Doh!)

I think if you were to go with something like a Gigabyte Eagle model, you would be getting something that gives you good service for a long time. Better not get their cheapest, most generic model. Same goes for MSI. Avoid their cheapest models.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Pretty happy with my PowerColor Red Devil 6700 XT. The card actually draws 15W less than what Techpowerup measured for typical gaming loads on their stock clocked 6700 XT. Tempted to see how far I can take the power consumption down with undervolting.