AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT Breakdown and $1000 Build

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AMD's brand new Radeon RX 6500 XT is here and ready to be the 1080p graphics card of your dreams, promising over 100 FPS in some of the hottest esports titles, including Fortnite, Valorant, CS:GO, and Apex Legends.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT Breakdown

Radeon RX 6500 XT Specs

• RAM: 4GB GDDR6
• PCIe support: 4.0
• Architecture: AMD RDNA 2
• Max Monitor Support: 2 (1 HDMI 2.1 port, 1 DisplayPort 1.4a)
• Boost clock speed: 2815 MHz
• Fan Count: 1 to 3, depending on model
• Slot size: Dual Slot
• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support: Yes

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT Build

In honor of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, we put together a no-frills, all-business build with the goal of getting as much gaming goodness out of our budget without breaking $1000.

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Vermeer 3.7GHz 6-Core AM4 Boxed Processor - Wraith Stealth Cooler Included

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is no slouch when it comes to power, even at a budget price. Six cores, 12 threads, and a turbo clock speed of 4.6GHz is going to ensure that your build is going to live up to the hype. Plus, the included Wraith Stealth Cooler is a great CPU cooler that'll keep your budget down.

Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH (WiFi) AMD AM4 microATX Motherboard

We're opting for a microATX board for this build for a few reasons. The biggest is the budget - the MSI B550M PRO-VDH is not only a great motherboard, it's a great motherboard that comes WiFi ready, so you won't have to pick up an adaptor if you choose to go the wireless route. The other reason is simple: microATX builds are cool, and the PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is the perfect card to go with a microATX build

Graphics Card: PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT ITX Overclocked Single Fan 4GB GDDR6 PCIe 4.0 Graphics Card

The centerpiece of our whole build, the PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is the single-fan card designed for builds like this. Small but mighty with 4GB of GDDR6 RAM, two output ports, and built on AMD RDNA 2 architecture, the 6500 XT may just be the perfect 1080p gaming card.

RAM: Crucial Ballistix Gaming 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 CL16 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit BL2K8G32C16U4B - Black

If you're gaming, you shouldn't settle for less than 16 gigs of RAM. And if you're gaming on a budget, you can't go wrong with Crucial Ballistix Gaming RAM. Stellar memory for a stellar price, without all the fluff.

Hard Drive: Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD 3-bit MLC V-NAND SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive

There are a ton of options when it comes to your storage, but you shouldn't skip an SSD. Whether you go with a smaller SSD for your OS and an HDD for your games or a big M.2 NVMe SSD, you got to have your OS on something that'll boot quicker than the old PC in your parent's attic. For ours, we opted for a big standard SSD - a solid compromise between speed and space.

Power Supply: G.Skill 650 Watt 80 Plus Bronze ATX Semi-Modular Power Supply

Like a lot of components in a budget build, it's important to find the happy medium in your parts. A semi-modular power supply will give you the freedom to adjust most of your cables, but a few are permanently attached, keeping the cost of your PSU down.

Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 205M Mid-Tower Chassis microATX Computer Case

Just because we're building for function over form doesn't mean we can't have a little bit of style. Lian Li's LANCOOL 205M has style to spare, with a sleek black chassis and tempered glass window so you can still show off your clean new build.

The full parts list can be found on our Custom PC Builder:

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=a2b3eef1-8f62-49fc-80ab-1752bf73dca8

Please see our Limited Availability Product Launch FAQ for more information.

Bodasactra

Why is Micro Center products description specification page for this GPU claiming this is a PCIe X16 interface when it only has PCIe X4 interface? Testing by the most prominent YouTube tech channels have overwhelmingly demonstrated this lack of PCIe bandwidth will severely cripple the GPUs performance on PCIe 3 systems to the point a five year old RX 580 PCIe X16 outperforms it significantly. Clearly, many customers will be mislead due to this improper description.

This incorrect PCIe specification issue has also existed on the RX 6600 and 6600XT product description pages since their release, despite my many attempts to have it corrected. I recently have been in contact with several tech channels on numerous social media platforms requesting reporting on this problem. I hope Micro Center, and any other retailers that misrepresent true product specifications, correct this issue.