I spent weeks reading manuals because I was scared of frying my motherboard, but I eventually went with the ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 6600 8GB GDDR6. It has been super stable for my CS2 matches and doesnt get loud.

• Make sure your PSU has the right 8-pin connector.
• Check your case dimensions so it fits safely. Its a decent, no-fuss card.

To add to the point above: be careful with pcie bandwidth on budget boards. What CPU are you actually running tho? Valorant and CS2 are super cpu heavy, so that might be the real bottleneck here. I would suggest looking at the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6650 XT 8GB GDDR6 instead. It handles 144Hz better than the 6600 does. Just make sure your power supply is at least 500w, dont wanna risk another blowout.

^ This. Also, unfortunately, the budget market is a mess right now. I tried a cheaper card recently and the 1% lows were so bad I couldnt track targets in CS2. So far weve got the 6600 series suggestions and the CPU bottleneck warning. Just be careful:

• stay away from 64-bit bus widths
• avoid cards with limited PCIe lanes Its easy to get burned by specs that look okay on paper but fail in-game.

> My old 1070 finally died mid-Apex match and I'm scrambling for a replacement. To add to the point above: man, I'm literally in the exact same position right now and it's frustrating as hell. My card started artifacting yesterday and trying to find a solid replacement under 250 bucks that actually has decent VRMs and reliability is basically impossible lately. Honestly, I've been looking at the Intel Arc A750 8GB GDDR6 because the price is right, but the driver stability for competitive stuff still makes me nervous. It's like you're stuck choosing between old tech or new stuff that might be buggy. Even checked out the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 3050 OC Edition 8GB but that 128-bit bus and the x8 PCIe lane limit feel like such a bottleneck for the price. Just want something that wont crash during a rank up game, you know? The budget market is such a mess...