RX460/560 Compatability

[SAndreev]

Hello everyone,

Can I put a RX460 or RX560 on a H81M-VG4 motherboard?

[19_blackie_73]

Why not? As long as it has any form of pcie x16 slot which i will guess this board has..

[SAndreev]

Yes, it has PCI 2 x16, while the card requires PCI 3 x8. I don’t think I fully understand those slots. Can you give me hint or a resourse I could read?

Thank you for the time!

[mariushm]

You can install any pci-e card into any pci-e slot, as long as the card fits. 

A pci-e x1 / x4 / x8  card can be inserted into a pci-e x16 slot.  PCI-E is designed like that, to be "modular". 

 

RX 460 / RX 560 cards are pci-e x8 cards, meaning the GPU chip on the card only uses 8 pci-e lanes to talk to the processor.  But, most video card manufacturers will design the edge connector in the pci-e x16 size,  so you need a pci-e x16 slot to insert the card into, unless you resort to physically cutting the edge connector down to x8 size.

 

The answer above is correct, but there's also small fineprint.  

 

The BIOS of your computer must also be UEFI compatible / aware. Basically, all motherboards since around 2012 should be like this, with the exception of some computers made by companies like HP and DELL which have customized BIOSES that didn't support UEFI.

 

RX series and newer from AMD and I believe GT 1060 and newer from nVidia require a bios with UEFI support on the motherboard. 

[19_blackie_73]

9 minutes ago, SAndreev said:

Yes, it has PCI 2 x16, while the card requires PCI 3 x8. I don’t think I fully understand those slots. Can you give me hint or a resourse I could read?

Thank you for the time!

2 or 3 are just the generations of the standard pcie. If you want to read more about it, just google pcie standard or something like that. The x16 or x8 gives you a number how many lanes the cpu uses to communicate with the gpu and together with the generation it multiplies to how much bandwidth is available

[mariushm]

PCI-e 2.0  means the maximum speed on each lane is 500 MB/s 

PCI-e 3.0 means the maximum speed on each lane is 970 MB/s 

PCI-e 4.0 means the maximum speed on each lane is 1940 MB/s

 

A pci-e 3.0 video card will be backwards compatible and will run in pci-e 2.0 slots at the lower speed, and a lot of cards (but not all) will run in pci-e 1.0 slots, which are even slower at 250 MB/s on each lane. 

 

In fact, video cards will on purpose switch between "versions", like switching between "pci-e 3.0 mode" and "pci-e 2.0 mode" even when installed in pci-e 3.0 slots, when there's no need for that speed in order to use less power. Think of it like a car coasting on the highway to save fuel.