If you're really concerned you can always choose to lower the PowerTune setting:

As you can see setting it to -20% will cut power consumption by 30W(20%) while only lowering performance by about 5%.

There's a weird rumor/info regarding the 4GB variants of the RX 480

AMD RX 480 4GB Retail Cards Have 8GB Of Memory, Unlockable Via BIOS Update

http://wccftech.com/amd-rx-480-4gb-cards-8gb-unlockable-bios-update/#ixzz4DXjHtJBD

Soon after the RX 480 was released some rumors began to surface suggesting that early retails units of the 4GB RX 480 are actually 8GB versions flashed with the 4GB BIOS. We thought that this was quite bizarre as the whole idea behind offering the 4GB configuration of the RX 480 was to cut costs and deliver the RX 480 at the more affordable price point of $199, vs the $229 MSRP for the 8GB configuration.

Naturally we were very much intrigued by the rumors and wanted to see for ourselves. So we took apart our own RX 480 sample to look at the memory chips. Lo & behold, they’re the exact same one gigabyte 8Ghz chips from Samsung found in the 8GB RX 480 and GTX 1070.

The reference RX 480, which is what our sample is, does not come with a BIOS switch. So there’s a serious risk of rendering the card a paperweight if things go horribly wrong and flashing fails. So naturally we wouldn’t recommend that you try this on your 4GB RX 480. At least not yet.

Until a working 8GB BIOS leaks out and its success is replicated on multiple retail 4GB RX 480 cards this will stay as a “do it at your own risk” sort of thing.

Maybe, besides sending 8GB review samples that can be switched to use just 4GB, to save AMD money and reviewers time, AMD also recycled as 4GB cards 8GB ones with partially faulty memory, it wouldn't be the first time HW producers use similar tricks to suffer as little as possible from the higher failure rate of early production. Intel recycled 486DX with faulty FPUs as 486SX, for example.

^But that's how usually GPU chips are done (not good enough to be a 480? Let's make it a 470 instead). It's unusual to do it with a whole graphics card.

And Tom's Hardware has made a follow up article to their RX 480 review where the power consumption problems where revealed:

AMD Radeon RX 480 Power Measurements Repeated And Clarified

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-power-measurements,4622.html

Here are the conclusions:

"The AMD Radeon RX 480’s power supply configuration exceeds the limit defined by the PCI-SIG’s specifications. It doesn’t exceed them by a massive amount, but it does do so reliably. Norms should be respected, especially if they already have a very generous built-in tolerance range. We never implied in our launch article that a system made up of solid components might be directly damaged by an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card running at stock clock frequencies.

There shouldn’t be any problems unless cheap, dirty or outdated components are used, the card isn’t installed correctly, or the amount of power drawn is increased by overclocking the card."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10469/amds-tuesday-radeon-rx-480-update-new-driver-by-late-thursday

Driver to fix the 480's power issues should drop soon.

They are going to take some of the power load off the PCI-E slot and put more on the 6-Pin PCI-E connector, which means the 6-pin PCI-E connector will be farther out of spec. (Not a real big drama IMHO, low quality PSU's with poor wiring though...)

And then you have the option to just bluntly reduce power consumption overall, which also means a decrease in the cards performance.

Last thing AMD needed was this bad Radeon RX 480 launch. Hopefully Vega, Polaris 11 can change AMD's current perception around... A competitive AMD is a good AMD.
In Aus, inventory levels of the RX 480 are tending low at many retailers, so that is a good sign, but we had a relative small amount of cards for the launch anyway.

AMD will likely counter with an RX "485" probably, which takes a 480 with higher clocks. That would give it the performance edge over the 1060.

Let's not be so dramatic.

The GTX 1060, using only the firestrike benches, is between 8-10% faster than the GTX 480, making it also slower than the GTX 980. And besides the driver to fix the power consumption problem, rumors also talk about AMD working on a driver that would improve the 480 performance by up to 3%.

And then there's the unknown of the GTX 1060 price, that it will have a bit less memory, etc.

There will be competition, which will be good for all of us.

At the end of May, Inno3D teased with the existance of the 1060 and where it would land:

http://videocardz.com/60666/inno3d-teases-geforce-gtx-1060

Now, I have no doubts that Nvidia wouldn't mind tweaking the GTX 1060 and make it a tiny bit faster in order to make it look even better than the RX 480, but we'll have until we get proper reviews to know where the 1060 actually lands.

And we won't have to wait for long, right? After all, it's supposed to launch tomorrow.

We still don't know the factory card performance and you're already thinking about the performance of the custom, overclocked, cards? You think too much (and that comes from a guy that started looking for a card replacement 3 years ago...).

Also, the 480 will also get custom overclocked cards. And there's the chance of custom 480 cards costing the same as a reference 1060. And an overclocked 480 could end up being close to 980 performance, specially if they overclock the memory too as I saw one review where it was clear that the 480 was memory bandwidth limited (although I doubt they'll do it, they never overclock the memory).

Finally, I've also heard the same, but we got reviews of the 1080/1070 before launch. It wouldn't be that surprising to see the same with the 1060.

I also have a "quiet" PC (P183 case and Noctua CPU cooler) and care about noise.

Luckily for us, most AIB partners made silent cards during the last gen, and I see no reason why they wouldn't make it again. As for noise while gaming, that's a different story, but without water there will always be noise.

And TDP is an unknown factor as we don't really know how much power will custom 480/1060 use.