Question Looking to upgrade rx 560

[gamesx3]

Greetings, I've recently been looking into upgrading my computer and thought about upgrading my graphics card for starters, I have a radeon rx 560, my processor is a ryzen 5 1600 six-core and my motherboard is a Gigabyte AB350-Gaming-3-CF. Would it be a good idea to upgrade my graphics card first? If so, what are my best choices?
All the help is appreciated.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What resolution are you gaming at and are there any plans to change that in the near future?

What is the EXACT model of your current power supply AND how long has IT been in service?

How much memory and at what speed do you have it?

What types of games do you primarily play?

 

[gamesx3]

My resolution is 1980x1080, my psu is a seasonic focus + gold 550W, I have 16gb 2400Mhz, I play games ranging from valorant to rust or ark evolved.

 

[pete_101]

The RX 560 was only a mid tier GPU when it came out around 6 years ago, so upgrading it first will give you the greatest boost to performance.

Without knowing how much you want to spend, you might be best getting a used card, or you could go new if you prefer. The real question is, are you going to upgrade the rest of your system too, or stick with your current CPU....you could easily upgrade to a 5000 series CPU and get a large performance upgrade, and for quite cheap too if you stick with Ryzen 5, like the 5600.

If you are going to upgrade the CPU, then this will affect your choice of which graphics card to upgrade to. Even without a CPU upgrade you could run an RTX 3060/3070 or RX 6700/XT, or in the used market a GTX 1080, RTX 2070 or RX 5700/XT.

 

[gamesx3]

The RX 560 was only a mid tier GPU when it came out around 6 years ago, so upgrading it first will give you the greatest boost to performance.

Without knowing how much you want to spend, you might be best getting a used card, or you could go new if you prefer. The real question is, are you going to upgrade the rest of your system too, or stick with your current CPU....you could easily upgrade to a 5000 series CPU and get a large performance upgrade, and for quite cheap too if you stick with Ryzen 5, like the 5600.

If you are going to upgrade the CPU, then this will affect your choice of which graphics card to upgrade to. Even without a CPU upgrade you could run an RTX 3060/3070 or RX 6700/XT, or in the used market a GTX 1080, RTX 2070 or RX 5700/XT.

Let´s say I decide to upgrade both the CPU and GPU to a Ryzen 5 5600 and a RTX 3060 for example, can my motherboard and PSU support those? Or how do I know if they're compatible?

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Really the rx 560 was low end when it was first launched.

As far as the motherboard check the cpu support list. I’ve got an asrock ab350 pro 4 board that I’m using with a 5800x. Check the notes on the later bios versions for your board and see if they added that support. If so, something like a 5600x or 5700x would be a night and day difference from your 1600.

You are almost certainly going to need to upgrade the power supply. Probably a good 650 watt or better unit.

That said I’m of the opinion that the 3060 isn’t a very good value. For about the same money, in the USA at least, you can get the 6700xt which is closer to the 3070 and should blow the doors off a 3060. For less money you can look at the 6600, 6600xt, or 6650xt which are close to the same performance as a 3060 but cost less.

If you are willing to buy used and are a cheapskate, the other option is the 5700xt. I think these first came out in about 2019. Many of them have probably been mined on, but performance wise they are about the same as the rtx 3060/rx 6600xt without ray tracing at least. If you watch you can sometimes pick them up very cheap. Just for example, in the USA on eBay you can find ones like this for about $160 dollars plus shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1659782766...1QoO_yZSxW&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I actually picked up one around a month or so ago from a miner for under $150 shipped, but it works. For the money and getting 3060 performance it’s a good placeholder card and will tide me over until I can afford a better card later. So I may just use this card until other cards come out and see what he card I want. Who knows maybe I’ll keep it and make a little Xbox style pc for my TV and use steam big picture mode and use this in it for 1080p.

 

[pete_101]

Let´s say I decide to upgrade both the CPU and GPU to a Ryzen 5 5600 and a RTX 3060 for example, can my motherboard and PSU support those? Or how do I know if they're compatible?

If you're only going to use an RTX 3060 then your PSU should be ok. However, as you're doing a CPU upgrade too, then you might want a more powerful GPU which would require a better PSU...it all depends on how much of an upgrade you want and can afford.

On motherboard compatibility, AMD has allowed support for 5000 series CPU's on B350 boards through BIOS updates, it comes down to the board manufactures. I looked at the BIOS updates for your board (I think it was your board, but there was no "CF" on the end), you would need to update the BIOS in a few steps, do this on the old CPU before installing the new. It looks like you need to update to F40 then F41 before the newest F51i.

I guess it comes down to how confident you are in doing BIOS updates, but your motherboard is listed as being 5000 series compatible.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, your motherboard and PSU can support both of those. There is an outside chance of encountering issues with transient spikes on the 3060 that might be pushing it just a little bit with a 550w unit, but it is MUCH less likely to happen on that card than on any of the higher tiered cards or from what we've seen so far, basically any of the 4xxx cards. I don't think you'd have any problems at all but then again it also might depend on just how old that PSU is since the Focus plus was released in like 2016 and so COULD potentially be as much as 7 years old by now which might be pushing things a little or at the least put you in position where you shouldn't be too terribly surprised if you start having PSU troubles with new hardware as 7 years on a unit that had a five year warranty, leaves a lot of variables in play.