I'm planning a relatively budget-friendly upgrade to an RTX 5070 and a Ryzen 5 5600. My current motherboard is an MSI B450-A PRO, and I'd prefer not to replace it yet. Will it support both components? Also, should I buy a 750W or 850W power supply? I mainly play at 1440p and may move to DDR5 later, so this is just a temporary AM4 upgrade.
3 Answers
A quality 750W power supply should be plenty for an RTX 5070 and Ryzen 5 5600. An 850W unit is fine if the price difference is small or you want extra headroom for a future upgrade, but it isn’t necessary for this setup. Check your current PSU’s exact model before replacing it; wattage alone doesn’t indicate whether it’s suitable.
The B450-A PRO is an AM4 board, so it can support the Ryzen 5 5600 with the appropriate BIOS version. It can also run essentially any modern graphics card, though the PCIe 3.0 connection means you won’t get PCIe 4.0 bandwidth. For a 1440p build, that’s unlikely to be a meaningful problem.
The motherboard should work fine with the RTX 5070. It will run the graphics card over PCIe 3.0 rather than PCIe 4.0, but that generally shouldn’t be a major limitation for a card with a full x16 interface. You may need a BIOS update before installing the Ryzen 5 5600, so check the board’s CPU support list first.
I’ll be playing at 1440p, and I’m treating this as a temporary upgrade before eventually moving to DDR5.
I think my current unit is either 550W or 650W, though 550W is more likely. I’ll check the model and its connectors before deciding.