PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX Review

Name: PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX
Brand: PowerColor
Price: 300 USD

W1zzard

on May 29th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: PowerColor

(32 Comments) »

Introduction

In this review, we will cover the new PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX graphics card, which is targeted at those putting together some really compact Mini-ITX or SFF gaming PC builds. At first look you could confuse the PowerColor RX 5600 XT ITX with a OEM-reference design RX 5500. However, the RX 5600 XT does pack a much stronger punch that lets it see eye-to-eye with even the GeForce RTX 2060. The card is only slightly longer than the PCI-Express x16 slot, measuring 18 cm in length, and no taller than what constitutes "full height." It also only needs one power connector, so the cable clutter in your build is kept to a minimum.

AMD originally came up with the Radeon RX 5600 XT to dominate the 1080p space at its $279 price-point, beating NVIDIA's entire GeForce GTX 16-series, but a price cut of the RTX 2060 baseline price down to $299 forced AMD to revise its specs with higher clock speeds, which means it matches it. The consumer naturally benefits from this move as the RX 5600 XT is now 1440p-capable, while gaming at 1080p with frame-rates in excess of 90 FPS. The PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX comes with the performance-enhancing BIOS update out of the box, so no manual action is necessary.

AMD carved the Radeon RX 5600 XT out of the same 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon that goes into making its flagship RX 5700 XT, by giving it the same 2,304 stream processors as the RX 5700, but narrowing the memory bus to 192-bit from 256-bit, and memory amount proportionately down to 6 GB. It also features 144 TMUs and 64 ROPs.

The PowerColor RX 5600 XT ITX in this review runs at the maximum spec AMD allows for the RX 5600 XT: 1560 MHz game clock, 1620 MHz maximum boost clock, and 14 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory, compared to the 1375/1560 MHz original reference clocks with 12 Gbps memory. The card uses a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a single fan, and still goes on to offer idle fan stop. PowerColor is asking $299 for this card, which is a $20 premium over the MSRP and a price that matches the RTX 2060 KO from EVGA. The premium appears to be dictated largely by the card's main USP—its compact size.

Radeon RX 5600 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 590	$200	2304	32	1469 MHz	1545 MHz	2000 MHz	Polaris 30	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1660	$200	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	2000 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1070	$300	1920	64	1506 MHz	1683 MHz	2002 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56	$260	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$230	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$270	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$450	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 5600 XT	$280	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
PowerColor RX 5600 XT ITX	$300	2304	64	1560 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060	$300	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$500	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$375	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$700	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$380	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit

Packaging

The Card

Visually, the PowerColor RX 5600 XT ITX looks completely different to the company's other Navi-generation cards. Rather, the board reminds a bit of a typical AMD reference design. A backplate is not included.

Dimensions of the card are 17.5 x 11.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two standard DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.0b port.

The board uses one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.

AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but implementation requires game developers to put serious development time into a feature only a tiny fraction of their customers might ever use.

Disassembly

PowerColor is using four heatpipes and a copper base on their cooler. This piece of the cooler also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry. This is the exact same cooler as on the RX 5700 ITX—even including all eight thermal pads for memory.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.