I am writing this review as a long time owner of NVIDIA cards, and a temporal owner of a Radeon VII.The review is spread as follows:1. Impressions about the 5700 XT (in general, as a graphics card).2. Impressions about this model, the Kurouto Shikou 5700 XT.3. Impressions about this card vs a reference Radeon VII.4. Impressions about Radeon cards, from an owner going from NVIDIA to AMD.You can read the sections you want by following the order above.1. Impressions about the 5700 XT.The RX 5700 XT is the flagship graphics card from AMD using the brand new RDNA architecture. It is equipped with 8 GB of video ram memory, it has 40 compute units and it has a rated TDP of 225 watts.GAMING Benchmarks (such as the ones by Hardware Unboxed or Gamers Nexus) place it around 7% to 9% (including DLSS titles) slower than the RTX 2070 SUPER at 1440p. At the time of this writing, the cheapest RTX 2070 Super costs 58000 yen while usual models cost over 60000. This is a 25% price increase for less than 10% more performance. Here, I want to make it clear: this is assuming you own at least an Intel 8700k system or above, and that it is overclocked at the ridiculous 5 ghz. If you don't own a processor running this fast, then you will 100% see no performance difference between these two GPUs. They're the same for the vast majority of people.In PROFESSIONAL applications, the base 5700 NON-XT model matches performance by the RTX 2080 and falls a few percentage points behind the 2080 Ti in DaVinci Resolve and in video encoding tasks. This card is extremely serious value for people looking to do content creation at a professional level.Lastly, this card will work with ANY Freesync monitor, even HDMI ones. NVIDIA graphics cards _cannot_ use any form of Adaptive Sync over HDMI. Here, in Japan, there exists a huge diversity of excellent HDMI panels (even 4K ones) with Freesync over HDMI for an affordable price. You don't need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for good monitors with adaptive sync. These monitors have been out, for good prices, for many many years now.2. Impressions about the Kurouto Shikou 5700 XT.This card comes in an extremely small box, and it weighs very little. The cooler has a very elegant simple design which is not attempting to win any beauty contests: there is no RGB, there is no flagrant colors, this cooler is all about performance first and I absolutely love that. Let me put it like this: this card is like the very quiet, very humble kid in your class that happens to be absolutely god-like in Basketball, having no problems fighting with the best in the school team. It's a weird analogy, but I am trying to explain how it feels to hold this card in your hand and compare it with a monster like the Radeon VII (more on this comparison in Section 4).The cooler of the card has copper heatpipes has very nice-looking copper heat pipes for transmitting the heat, and it features a dual-fan setup blowing into the cooler to dissipate the heat of the GPU chip and the VRMs. The cooler features a very proud (and well-deserved) "PowerColor" logo on the side. Indicating that this model is designed by PowerColor for Kurouto Shikou.I want to clarify a couple of this at this point:- This card is not a 1:1 match for the PowerColor Red Dragon 5700 XT. The Red Dragon features a dual-bios switch (missing from this model), a thicker cooler and one additional heat pipe for better cooling.- This card seems to be modeled after the PowerColor Dual Fan 5700 XT model AXRX 5700 XT 8GBD6-3DH. You can find reviews for this model on YouTube by Nicolas 11x12. More on this in a moment.It seems then this card is a variant of the Dual Fan 5700 XT designed for Kurouto Shikou.Now I want to mention my impressions of this card:At stock this card had ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS hitting a 2 ghz boost clock during normal gaming. This was tested in a closed case, with everything at default. Fans never span over 2200 RPM and it stayed absolutely quiet during all of my testing, hitting that 2 ghz boost clock without any issues or tweaking.I searched the internet for reviews of the Dual Fan 5700 XT, and most people came to the conclusion that the cooling performance was slightly worse compared to the Red Dragon, thus causing some noise from the cooler. Here, I had no such problem and I was hitting a pretty hefty boost clock without any overclocking required on my part. My suspicions is as follows:=== The Kurouto Shikou version of the Power Color Dual Fan 5700 XT either has a better cooler, or the chip binning is MUCH better than the model offered by Power Color directly ===The card is silent, it performs INCREDIBLY WELL and it requires no further input from the user at this absurdly small size. IF you're looking to buy a GREAT graphics card, this is not only an amazing choice, you also get the INCREDIBLY SMALL SIZE and SILENCE to go along with it. Yes, you get the cake and the chance to eat it too!3. Impressions vs the Radeon VII.I bought a Radeon VII around May of last year. I loved this card, it has 16 GB of blazing fast HBM2 video memory and the performance (at the time) was only a few percentage points behind the RTX 2080 (basically, the performance of the RTX 2070 super). But this month I decided to change it for this card because it has one big flaw: the chip is too damn hot for gaming.There is a popular saying which says that there doesn't exist a thing such as a bad graphics card, only bad prices, and I believe this statement is true.The Radeon VII is a card for professionals: if you need to use an OpenCL application, do video editing or really serious color grading or compute, then this is the BEST card for these tasks. It is insanely fast, it's basically a threadripper, in GPU form! In professional applications I never had a heat problem with the Radeon VII, it behaves and it is very efficient at getting the job done, the problem is the gaming performance.While gaming at 4K or 1080p, the Radeon VII would draw around 230 watts and get insanely hot very quickly, hitting over 100 degrees in junction temperature easily. At this point many people will begin to question if I tried to fix this problem, and I am happy to tell you that I did and will outline my attempts below:- I undervolted the card by 80 mv, which helped to reduce the noise of the triple fans, and it was stable for the most part. But this undervolt only helped me during Winter, in Japan.- I undervolted AND underclocked the card to 1750 mhz, which made the card SILENT during Winter and Autumn. I lost performance but I was desperate to have the card not heat up my room and stop making a racket.My undervolt and underclock on air was NOT EFFECTIVE in summer, still reaching over 100 degrees junction under 4K gaming. Even at 960 mv, this card was getting hot, heating up my room and being loud. So I decided to take it one step further...- I LIQUID COOLED the Radeon VII by modifying a Kraken G12 and using a Kraken X52 liquid cooler. This was an investment. I heared the card performed great with liquid cooling from many sources, so I decided to try it just for the hell of it. And flying it went, I could overclock it to 1900 mhz in Winter (alas, drawing 280 watts) and keep the GPU TEMPERATURES in check. Here is the problem: liquid coolers have these things called radiators that basically dissipate all that heat into the room and the case. And then came summer. I would try to play a game and that radiator turned my PC into a burning furnace straight from the depths of hell. As that poor liquid cooler sat at 42 degree liquid temperature, I felt my skin getting a sauna treatment from the damn Radeon VII delivering heat like it was in an uncontrollable fit of rage. It didn't matter if I underclocked it, or if I reduced the power limit, the heat never went away. It was unplayable, unacceptable. It didn't matter how silent the computer was, or how good the GPU temperatures were. I didn't want to be in my computer room while the GPU was doing any work, it was TERRIBLE. I could not take it anymore, I took it out and got this card instead.The Kurouto Shikou 5700 XT (as I have mentioned, many times) appears to be a very well binned. This card OUTPERFORMS my Radeon VII in gaming as I had it set for 24/7 operation. I was already using an underclocked Radeon VII for gaming to keep the temperatures in check, this card matches a STOCK Radeon VII in 1080p and 1440p games WITHOUT A SWEAT (MY SWEAT, mind you). In 4K gaming, the Radeon VII pulls ahead by about 10%, but you can make up for it by using the amazing combination of Radeon Image Sharpening and upscaling. You can absolutely play games at 4K 60 FPS with this card, do not be fooled.The main difference is that this card does not heat up my room, it doesn't make any noise, and even better: it uses less power. Look at that picture above, it is drawing 180 watts of power and delivering the same performance as a Radeon VII. The difference? My Radeon VII was drawing 240 watts. Can I repeat that? It uses less power, it is smaller, it is silent AND it doesn't heat up your environment. It's a game changer.Moral of the story: cards with smaller thermal envelopes and chips (like this one) are better in the long run if you wish to have a silent and cool system. Japan is a very hot and HUMID country, it makes no sense for me to keep a card like the Radeon VII which brings normal AC units to their knees. This makes me waste more money on power (to keep the damn room cool) and to just hate the experience. This card has none of these problems, literally.4. For the longest time I kept using an NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti (SuperClocked, from EVGA). When I purchased the Radeon VII, the only cards delivering an actual good performance jump to me were the RTX 2080 and the Radeon VII. I selected the Radeon VII because it was cheaper than the RTX 2080 and it had better features that were important to me (vram, HDMI freesync, professional apps).My experience with AMD cards has been overwhelmingly positive, and there are many differences I noticed. First of all, the color quality, it is far and beyond much better on AMD cards.I tested the 980 Ti and the Radeon VII on the same LG ultrawide IPS panel, with the same cables (certified HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort). It didn't matter if I the NVIDIA card was set to Full RGB and the color profile was changed, it could NEVER match the color quality of the Radeon VII. The colors were much crisper, more vibrant and with much better contrast. I began to understand why Radeon cards tend to be selected for Apple computers, which are regularly used for professional color grading and video editing.Freesync over HDMI, my ultrawide panel had freesync built-in (I didn't even know). The feature didn't cost any premium, and I happened to have it in that panel. When I switched to the Radeon VII and began to use it, the experience of playing games was completely renewed for me. Everything became otherwordly smooth, like if stutter and screen tearing completely ceased to exist. It delivered an experience I had only felt with old-school CRTs in the past with console games: PERFECT screen scrolling with zero stutters. It is unreal to me, even now, and the fact that you can buy cheap monitors with freesync is a feature that is heavily understated.The Radeon software is modern, it is easy to use and it is insanely easy to turn features on and off. Nvidia settings never worked right for me, if I needed to add more monitors and change the settings it would force me to close applications or services (some of which cannot be closed), which was extremely frustrating. The Nvidia control panel crashes every so often and gaming profiles are basically riddled inside menus that are not clear and that require you to find the .exe for whatever you want to make a profile for. AMD software? The opposite. Gaming profiles are automatically created for you (using your default settings, of course) and they can be modified easily by just clicking on the name of the application, which appears in your home screen. Every single possibly option you can modify in the profile is right there, labeled and easy to change, with no lists and no .exes needed to be found. It is simple, easy, and it just works.I also dual-boot linux for professional applications from time to time, and Radeon cards? They work PERFECTLY with Linux right out of the box with amazing drivers. I am not going to talk about the Linux experience because this review is already too long.5. Conclusion.The Kurouto Shikou 5700 XT is the best video card I have ever owned.- It is small.- It is quiet.- It uses very little power. You can even auto undervolt it to save more power.- It is very powerful (matching a 1080 Ti while staying silent and being cheap? Yes, please!).- It has amazing picture quality, even offering Freesync HDR with no performance loss and no further losses for your pocket.- It doesn't heat up your room.What are you waiting for? If you're reading this review, I am telling you from the bottom of my heart, do yourself a favor and just buy this card. It is worth every single cent.Thank you.