I'm planning to upgrade from a GTX 1660 8GB to either an RX 9060 or RTX 5060, depending on pricing and performance. My current system has an Intel i5-10400F, 16GB of DDR4-2666 memory, a 500GB M.2 SSD, a 250GB SATA SSD, and an H410M H motherboard. Would replacing the motherboard improve compatibility, efficiency, or GPU utilization enough to justify the cost, or would I be better off putting the budget toward the graphics card?
3 Answers
Unless you’re planning a larger system rebuild soon, keep the motherboard. The performance gains from replacing it would be marginal, while selling the current PC and building a newer platform later may make more financial sense.
I wouldn’t replace the motherboard just for this upgrade. Your H410 board should run a newer graphics card, and moving to a different board while keeping the i5-10400F would provide little to no noticeable performance improvement. Put the money toward the GPU, and check that your power supply has the required wattage and connectors.
You might see a small limitation from the i5-10400F in some CPU-heavy games, especially at high frame rates, but changing only the motherboard won’t fix that. The H410 platform and DDR4-2666 memory are still usable; a full CPU, motherboard, and memory upgrade would be needed for a major platform improvement. Also, make sure the card actually fits your case and that your power supply is suitable.
The cards I’m considering have 16GB of VRAM. Do you think the i5-10400F would bottleneck them?