The highest power draw I measured with the RX 480 at stock settings showed 80-85 watts of power draw at over 7A on the +12V line and 4.5-5.0 watts of power draw on the 3.3V line. These were consistent power draw numbers, not intermittent spikes, and users have a right to know how it works. When overclocked, we witnessed motherboard PCIe slot +12V power draw at 95+ watts!
The numbers above represent a bad case scenario but are by no means a worst case scenario for the RX 480.
I asked around our friends in the motherboard business for some feedback on this issue - is it something that users should be concerned about or are modern day motherboards built to handle this type of variance? One vendor told me directly that while spikes as high as 95 watts of power draw through the PCIE connection are tolerated without issue, sustained power draw at that kind of level would likely cause damage. The pins and connectors are the most likely failure points - he didnt seem concerned about the traces on the board as they had enough copper in the power plane to withstand the current.
As we all know with hardware failures in PCs, this is something that could in theory happen during a single gaming session, or it might instead take months and months of gaming to wear down componentry. Or it might never affect your system at all. I tend to lean on the side of worrying less about this power draw concern than many in the community are pushing me to. Following the likes of ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte over the last 5-10 years, I have seen all the major motherboard vendors focus on quality of componentry, and specifically on power delivery, in a wide range of product families. That doesnt mean that any one particular motherboard is not prepared for the overclocked power draw on a Radeon RX 480, or that lower cost or older motherboards that some gamers are still using in their PCs might not be built to withstand it. We just dont know yet; not enough hardware is in enough hands.