In this study, the authors introduce an adaptive bit loading scheme for an amplify-and-forward orthogonal frequency division multiple cooperative system with relay selection. The proposed bit loading scheme maximises the throughput for a target error rate taking into account the quality of imperfect channel estimation. It relies on estimated channel state information (CSI) at the destination node and partial CSI (which involves the number of loaded bits) at the source node. The authors provide extensive Monte Carlo simulation results to demonstrate the throughput and the no-transmission probability performance of the proposed scheme and discuss the effect of various system and channel parameters on the performance.