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@MAXiT Straight up avoid Gigabyte-- check GN's testing reviews as to why.. just don't use headphones while you do it. Not sure about the others as I go with either EVGA or Seasonic exclusively (and PC Power&Cooling before them).
Hi, could you please help me which psu should I get for my system? (5900X with an 240AIO + 3070Ti) 1. Thermaltake irgb plus 1000w gold: $100 2. Gigabyte P850GM gold (v2): $85 3. CoolerMaster MWE 850 gold v2: $95
Thanks to the current gen (nevermind next gen) of video cards this video has aged like the finest of... cottage cheese in a space heater. Thanks Nvidia and AMD, ya douchebags! clip-share.net/video/wnRyyCsuHFQ/video.html
Would be nice to see what happen if you ACTUALLY use a good PSU under high load, let's say use a 600W with in a real scenario for a high end system... will it shutdown? be ineficient or simply good enough? Asking because I got a 850W which may never be used unless I got a top high end CPU and GPU, which may not happen but I gave this extra headroom for future use as some of those have 10 years warranty so why not?
I was planning on buying a 750W Seasonic PSU for my build - the cost difference for the 850W model was only $1, so I went with the bigger PSU which will allow for more running fanless due to the lower power draw
@Dr Ubabque bruh u have the power of the internet, youtube comments is not the place to search for this answer. Use your brain please, you have google.
Your detailed comparisons like this are exactly what I need! This one especially because I was beating myself up about needing more than 650 watts or not for a 5700xt build, and now I know I dont
You don't but it´s useful. Considering the fact that PSUs last for years it's always a smart choice to buy a sightly oversized one as you will be still able to use it with your next build. In many cases the jump from 650w to 750w may cost you $20. And in the long run this will save you a bit of money, too. So, unless you are really on a tight budget, go for the next larger one.
Steve, would be nice for this topic to be "revisited" especially after the fairly recent video about transient spikes on the latest GPUs (CPUs?) When I saw that some system shut down after an even brief 10ms spike, I'm concerned if the 1000W PSU for a 12700k and 12 GB 3080 will suffice. Thanks from this old man, long time viewer.
@Renus pcpartpicker will normally do a 1/2 decent calc just pop in the components. You can double check the accuracy by adding the draw of all the separate components they are all published. +50% is overkill but +25-33% is sensible.
@T B not being sarcastic but how do do calculate that? I've seen some videos saying I need to multiply my tdp by 1.5, which seems to be a lot. Just purchased an 850w Xpg PSU. Which I thought to be enough, According to PCPartPicker my build is around 778watts But with that weird 1.5 rule everything is out of wack going as far as to need a 100pw if I were to follow the guide line. My Build is I'm 13900k Rtx 3080 ti 64gb Ram DDR4 3600mhz (16x4) Xpg ssd 2tb HDD 2tb Do you think is enough? I'm kind of having second thoughts about the 850w but there is no returns
Even the 4090 and 13900k beast with a ROG Maximus board a couple of HDD, 128GB DDR5 7200 RAM and a 380mm AIO and the requisite case fans combined draw 890w with both the CPU and GPU running 100% (stock Clocks) concurrently. 1000w for a 12700k and 3080 is plenty unless there is overclocking / custom loops and / or some other high draw components
I love how every time Steve and GN team test something, they more or less do a verbal research paper that you'd expect to find in a University Research lab
@FrayedSadly the term "tech nerd" is not without reason accompanied by things like "boring" "Stale" and "Creepy physics teacher". Its a pretty damn interesting topic, but not everyone is funny. And for these vids, nobody expects to be really hearing any jokes. They want data. xD
and in a world that lacks substance and talk is cheap, it is the verbal research papers which define Gamers Nexus and keep me selecting their videos before anything else.
Having a PSU exceeding your real requirements may be a good idea if you're aiming to have a quiet system. There are good PSUs which don't run their fan until a certain threshold is reached, and, clearly, the higher the PSU's wattage (other things such as efficiency notwithstanding), the longer it works quietly.
@oppa oppai you're exaggerating. i have gotten accustomed to completely quiet usage with my phone and my old macbook being fanless. using my pc with the stock amd cooler and stock case fans is barely audible even when my room is completely quiet
Yeah, PSU fan isn't really something people need to worry about much, their CPU, case and dGPU fans will be making way more noise. Of course, if you're doing an iGPU passive cooling build, then PSU fan noise is something you should think about.
@Dr. Cryptox for people who use something like an m1 macbook for portable use then return home to do heavier tasks on a desktop will find the latter to be really barbaric and ancient in terms of power consumption and noise, so it kinda does matter lol. Like we're not in 06 anymore
"Most people are criminally, over buying on their power supplies..." ~Slow camera pan over Corsair 1600w titanium, with Steve's name stenciled on the side...~
Steve did very thorough analysis about usual PC power consumption here. And yes, round PCs in vacuum with CPU, GPU, 2 RAM modules, 1-2 SSD drives, CPU cooler and 2-3 case coolers will consume less than 600W. However with RGB and overclocking consumption will rise. Add next 2 RAM modules and external hard drive and system will suddenly begin to reboot due to PSU overload caused brownouts. There is a reason why 850W and more powerful PSU-s exist. Indeed do not overspend for power you will not use. However do a little research how much exactly your PC will need and add 10-15% reserve above that exactly for those special cases.
Great video. I think you could or maybe have, make a video on Watts, Volts, Amps, and basically Ω law. With poor inconsistent power supply, like in the USA, one's wattage can vary considerably. This being the case components can heat-up and performances diminishes quickly or fire occur. Here comes the PSU unit requirement... power stability before anything,
The mayor problem with PSU is that they often don't have all the required cables/pins on the desirable wattage. Like, for my Ryzen 2700 and RX590 on a X570, ideally I wold want 3 x 4pin and 2 x 6+2pin but *my 750W PSU has only 2 x 4pin* (and 4 x 6+2pin)
I typically stick around the 650W range, just because I like to have a decent coverage no matter what hardware I install (since I never run a multi-GPU setup). My only qualifier is that I always buy the best quality I can get - which for my last one was a Seasonic Prime Titanium - because I like to keep my PSU for as long as possible. My last PC Power & Cooling PSU ran for over 7 years flawlessly, and I only replaced it because I upgraded to Ryzen and decided to go all new.
@Abe Walker LOL I have run an overclocked R9 5900x and RX 6600 (admittedly low power draw) with multiple case / CPU cooler fans, RGB lighting, 2 SDD, a NAS HDD no problem on a 550w power supply for about a year. The stock config (factory clocks) draws a max 340w with GPU and CPU 100% concurrent load
Fan power consumption is actually low (unless you have 30 fans or something 😱). And for lighting, as long as it's low power LEDs it shouldn't use up too much power.
One other thing, a higher rated power supply can ride out a power line glitch for longer. The Front End capacitors are larger. We have to put in at 1200W Supply for a 400W system to get 30mS , typical spec is 15mS , but some UPS and power transfer switches are slower than that.
@Luke People upgrade their rigs, and PSUs degrade - faster when they are closer to their limits. My fans alone are more than 100w(if all were full load). After 5 years someone could experience instability and not realize that is the issue. Especially with some of those spikey GPUs. My 4090 absolutely would not open a game with my Seasonic PX750. I've almost doubled up to 1300w. I can over clock, I can add peripherals, drives, fans, watercooling- even 10 years down the road, with peace of mind.
Most are under 450w and even lower with no performance drop with undervolting. So people are still buying 1000w PSUs they do not need. Nothing has changed.
Nearly every time I have built a system I find a good quality 650 to 750 watt PSU costs within 10-20 bucks of a similar quality 450-550 PSU. To ensure an upgrade path I would never drop below a 550 watt PSU anyway, so usually I bought something 100 to 200 watts higher for close to the same price. There was almost always a great deals on a 650- 750 watt on Amazon, Newegg, etc so overkill city in all my builds. I know I don't need that much power, but its one less thing I usually have to worry about when troubleshooting my system.
Great informative video. We see the power draw certain device draw, however, as you mentioned those voltage spikes with the 3080's and up. Not that we would be over clocking, but if the suggested power watts was 850, would it be benefical to go with 1000 watts?
I’m running a evga 3090 and a 10900k undervolted on a 850w supply. I haven’t had any issues, even playing vr racing games on my sim rig I haven’t seen anywhere near that amount of power usage but I know it may be on the low end of what people are comfortable with. But I do plan on changing it for something higher when the time comes I upgrade my board and cpu to something newer.
So I was recently looking at some Super Flower PSU’s and I had seen a 750w 80+ bronze for $100, meanwhile, I also found a 750w 80+ gold for $145, and was wondering if there really is THAT big of a difference between as bronze and gold PSU because I heard that the savings in between the two are minimal and in order to even save money on your electrical bill (because of a PSU) you would need to hit a certain and consistent wattage which most people don’t even hit. (If it’s any help I’m not an overclocker nor do I run any sort of rendering programs etc if that affects PSU choice).
There are calculators for this... Generally the repayment period for the upgrade is about 3 years. A good psu will last 10-20 years. Buy a quality one once, and you'll kinda never need another one!
you guys should do a video covering power spikes on some of these newer video cards (3080, 6900xt) and some old cards (vega 64). it seems there are some cards spiking high enough to trigger overcurrent protection on power supplies that should be more than capable. Seems you guys tested with one massive PSU (1600w) which i'd expect would handle these spikes just fine. would have been good to see how lower capacity/quality PSUs did on these benchmarks. Power Spikes/overcurrent protection is important and ruins builds that, on paper, should be 100% fine.
Your state of technology in 2020 series is super helpful for my plan for a new build, I'm ordering next week. Thanks so much! Your case overview specifically, and this. Exactly what i was looking for at those moment [now I only need to be pointed into the direction of a 27" non-curved 1440p 144hz IPS or VA hdr400+ Gsync monitor with below 10ms response time, 10 bit colors and vesa mount for 300 Quid. Any help? ^^]
These numbers are all fine and good, but what happens when you add in multiple hdds, extra fans, AIO coolers, etc etc? It would be nice if you touched base on these...
So glad I went for 650W, I read some comments that suggested for OC it is needed, but in the end I went for 650 not the 550 I had originally. Considering these numbers, still too high but at least not complete overkill.
Back in the day, before 80 Plus was standard , i would recommend people to match the psu wattage to the max expected power consumption of the rig they were building. This usually amounted to 350 but not more than 450 watts for a typical gaming rig of the time. Reason was the sub par efficiency of the PSUs back then where it was not uncommon even for quality models to hover around 75% under load. Considering that even gaming rigs are idling most of the time at 50 watts you could find yourself wasting the same amount of power in heat if you opted for a 600w+ PSU as efficiency is worst at low load conditions. Nowadays i just recommend buying 550w 80 Plus Gold. It is the market's quality/price/availabilty sweetspot and is powerful enough if the manufacturers decide to push out chips with excessive power needs without wasting too much while idling.
Could you do a video about the most reliable/stable memory brands? Especially when under heavy loads (near max usage/load, 64 gigs, heat, etc). For computers that are typically used for work, art, 3D, music production, video editing, etc. I don't know if there's a way to benchmark these things? Thanks for your consideration. New viewer btw, love your videos!
Thank you! I was wondering if the 600 watt PSU, I bought twelve years ago, because it has blue LEDs, should be replaced when I finally get into my next build. Both it, and my acrylic case, will be reused for about another year before moving all the components into something else. I may even get an AIO at that point.
When I built my latest system (32GB DDR4, GEN4 NVME drive, Radeon VII, 3800X), I bought a 750W PSU. I expected I wouldn't need that many watts and it would give me the freedom to upgrade components without worrying about hitting the ceiling down the road. 750W seems to be way overkill based on Steve's data. I can't imagine getting anything smaller, even if I don't need it, though.
@Toasted Box Technically you shouldn't need to, but if you have the cash, I would go ahead and drop a 1000watt PSU in there to future proof yourself (The Seasonic FOCUS line of PSUs are fantastic for the money, I've owned a 750w and 1000w and they're amazing) I went ahead and put a 1000watt PSU in my system because the 750w unit I had only had 2 8pin pci-e pwr connectors and my 3080 requires 3 of them (which blew my boomer mind. I remember when having to provide aux pwr via molex was crazy shit lol). It doesn't hurt to have that extra wattage either. You could run a 3080 in a current system with 16gb of RAM and 8\16 CPU, BUT, it'd probably be more efficient with a 1000w unit. TL;DR You'll be fine, but upgrade if you have the cash to save a headache in the future.
@Elgan I am getting a 3060 TI with a Ryzen 9 5900 X and I’m planning to overclock the CPU, I already have a 600 watt psu. Should I upgrade my psu or no ?
750w is a really good sweet spot if you're regularly building with flagship parts. The Ampere PSU requirements are WAY inflated. I think they're more of a CYA situation, opposed to a 'here's what you'll need' situation. I just ordered a EVGA RTX 3080 ftw3 to run alongside my 3700x and I would bet you my rig that... my rig.. xD Will never draw more than ~500watts, with a stock CPU and OCd 3080 in a worst case scenario. I think most of the overdoing it on the PSU wattage is because most people don't understand how power works, nor do they realize that your whole system isn't maxed out ALL THE TIME.
I'm a fan of the 750-850 watt PSU's the beautiful things about having a high efficiency and not drawing more then 500 watts is the life span of the PSU keeps it through many builds. Long gone are the days of the quad GPUs that were drawing 250+ watts a card. The way they calculate wattage over each rail is probably more important then the actual max output of the PSU
I'm a fan of "overspending" on PSUs. Bought a HX1000i like five years ago, it's survived two total rebuilds(save for the PSU, obviously) and still powers my 3900x/6900xt Liquid Devil flawlessly.
And now what's happening with the newly release GPU's from AMD & Nvidia. You will need at least a 850W PSU's attached to these new octa-dongle cable connecters. I've always informed people to buy at least a 850W PSU so that they don't have to worry about that particular component during future upgrades.
Finding a good PSU at over 600 watts isn't hard, but finding one for someone who wants to build a custom system that's usually inexpensive is going to have a hard time finding a good PSU in the 400 watt range, and that's frustrating. I feel like I should try to have a separate channel where I can test these things out and then review those.
I bought a platinum Fractal ion power supply for the 10 year warranty at 760w. I knew it was overkill. Not only was it cheaper than many gold psu options at the 600w mark (And importantly in stock where i found it) but they accidentally sent me the 860w version and didnt recall it. I think i did quite well.
@K1W1 Pyro Thanks for the info and yes, I was aware of these issues. Johnnyguru also did a review on the gold toughpower, which is what I have, and it does, indeed have all Japanese caps and they gave it a 9.2 overall score. Several other sites also confirmed these results. Also, my own voltage monitoring shows solid results, as well.
@mfrey0118 be *very* wary of thermaltake power supplies, they have a reputation for being dodgy and misleading marketing. They've marketed units as having "Japanese capacitors" simply because they had a couple of Japanese caps mixed in with the Chinese ones. The main issue with Thermaltake is they use multiple different OEMs, so their Quality is extremely variable depending on which OEM actually made the unit before TT slaps their label on them. Heres an example where they may have a couple of Japanese Rubicon capacitors, they also have a pile of Taiwanese "Teapo" brand caps. www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2017/05/08/thermaltake-smart-pro-rgb-850w-bronze-power-supply/ But here is another which actually has all Japanese caps because it was made by a different OEM www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2017/03/13/thermaltake-toughpower-dps-g-rgb-1000w-titanium-power-supply/5/ My first "motherboard killer" PSU was made by Thermaltake, we killed 2 boards with it before realising it was the PSU going *way* out of spec (It would eventually put 30 volts on the 12v rail after a few minutes, and not trip OCP).. Basically their units are a crapshoot because they have had a tendency to use different OEMs even for models in the same line. Techpowerup reviews and Jonnyguru both do good *in depth* teardowns of these units... so its a good starting point to get a unit thats had a teardown review with *over wattage* testing up to failure/shutdown point.. Gotta appreciate sites that literally test a unit till it either catches fire, or the OCP circuit shuts it off... It makes buying a unit they reccomend easy:)
@K1W1 Pyro Agreed, I am running a Thermaltake ToughPower 750W gold rated modular PSU on my 3700X/5700XT combo and it works great. Japanese capacitors and long warranty told me this PSU is well built and should offer enough headroom for future upgrades.
@mfrey0118 Headroom also = Cool & Quiet running PSU.... that lasts a long time... my original Corsair HX850 has lasted 12 years and is still going strong ;) Its 1st system was a Core2 Quad 9650 and Radeon 3850.. now its happily powering a Ryzen 3700x/5700xt .. Good quality PSUs are a sound investment.. Divide the $200ish price tag by 5-6 upgrade cycles and its great value. My Corsair TX 650 lasted 7 years in a gaming rig but died ince i used it for 14 months 24/7 ethereum mining with continuous ~500 watt draw running 6 graphics cards (Rx560s w/mining bios) Still bloody good value... and a lesson for anyone who thinks 450w is enough for a contiuous 450w loading... you want HEADROOM because HEAT KILLS (eventually). The PSU is not the place to save money... its one component that can survive several upgrade cycles *if* you buy wisely.
Would have been nice to see more realistic combinations eg typical budget 70 watt Nvidia graphics cards. That's where the massive overkill is happening.
@gamers nexus, probably a long shot, but i was wondering if you could do a test on OC stability with a low end PSU, mid range and high end? I want to see some data and whether a cpu with cheaper PSU would requite more voltage than one with a better PSU regardless of wattage.
When I was doing analysis for which Power Supply I needed to get for my (amazingly still) upcoming eMachines ET1331G-07w Sleeper PC project that'll have a Ryzen 3950X or 5950X and Radeon VII, I ultimately had to go with EVGA's 850BQ, an 0850 Watt unit with 080 Plus: Bronze certification that was literally the only one that would fit in the case; the ET1331G is a very strict Micro ATX case and thus I was put in a situation where I had very a slim amount of options for which PSU I had to go for due to dimensional limitations, but given that the 850BQ is easily enough to handle a Sixteen Core Ryzen chip at Stock and a Radeon VII running on an Undervolt, I will very likely be okay knowing I chose a part that not only fits, but was the cheapest option that I could get at the time (January 07 of 2020) and was the most effective due to its capacity. Most Ryzen 3950X/Radeon VII builds without any tuning will ultimately hit the 0550 to 0600 Watt region under a full load, 0400 Watts coming from the card alone in peak spikes, which is why AMD recommended that users of the Vega 020 part must get no lower than a 0750 Watt Power Supply to run the system effectively; in my situation, having an extra hundred for allotted capacity is a proper Safety Net, I don't expect that I will ever have a system down the road that will ever go this high in power draw again but considering that the eMachines Sleeper will have up to six or eight Hard Drives and SSDs combined and no less than four fans (this includes the two on the NH-D15: Chromax Black), it's better to play it safe and have more wattage allowance than you need just in case those brief power spikes really demand a lot from the unit, nobody truly needs above 0850 Watts unless they enter Multi~GPU or HEDT territory that I can very easily say that number is the sweet spot for a Handicap Free experience for those who are trying to prolong their system to its optimal limits and have some major headroom if an Overclock is in their future.
I honestly don't think I've ever bought anything higher than a 750w PSU and I consider that overkill, but just want to leave myself comfortable room to upgrade since I'll likely be using it for 5+ years.
@I3v1ckUK's-comment/post "At least this isn't the 1990's where cheap PSU's meant your system blowibg up at some point. Yes it happened to me once when I was a student.": To quote Marvin The Martian (slightly-modified, of course): Was there a kaboom? Was there a Earth-shattering kaboom? clip-share.net/video/3fcaXmpZydI/video.html
This is mainly why I started searching today while thinking on adding some port adapters to my computer. I had some of those power issues in the past adding too many USBs and using the computer in the summer during late nineties and early 2000s.
even expensive ones done it. Enermax killed two of my mainboards. And all I got from them was a replacement - just the psu. Not the cables, not even a box. Just the naked power block. Enermax is on my black list ever since.
Would love to see a repeat of this video for the 3080, especially with the 5900x and 5600x which are likely to be common combinations. This video makes the 750W recommendation for the 3080 seem suspect...
750? I’ve read I need at least a 850 what with this type of graphics card, ryzen 9 5900x and rub fans and m.2 ssd but I’m honestly thinking I probably only need a 650 watt now just to be on the safe side but probably good get away with 500w
@zakura ayame I don’t know. But I can tell you that the 3080 can have spikes of 500w on the founder’s edition. The rog strix even higher. That’s not to mention the 3090. The new world bug is something else entirely. It’s blowing capacitors related to power spikes and also has other bugs related to huge fps spikes that were in the initial menu. All cards have momentary spikes above TGP
@Jason Handley ty for the info ... so you are telling me a wombo combo today can spike up to 900w if both hit max load? That isn't the New World bug thing? Not that most people will have the most power hungry combo out there. Are we stepping back in time with the power and heat? :p
@zakura ayame You are looking at AVG power usage. The transient power spikes On the 3080 FE model can hit 500w. That doesn’t mean it’s going to draw 500w all the time, that means it’s going to have power spikes of up to 500w. Those spikes combined with a 12900k can cause an 850w psu to trip OCP and shutdown. Do a quick google search you will see this is a little more common than you think
I think a lot of the reason why Wattage of PSU's increased so much over the years was because of the SLI craze of the early 2000s. Before that, you could quite literally throw any PSU onto your computer and it would work perfectly fine. When people and Nvida / AMD started pushing this narrative about how having two video cards was the next greatest technology in computers people started running into power consumption issues. Manufacturers started making "SLI Ready PSUs" , which had 500+ watts of power and "Special SLI Amp cables" that were touted as designed specifically for when you need to plug in 2! cards or connectors into your GPU(s). 12v rail! was such a buzzword those days. Then we had these magical dual GPU cards as flagship designs at the end of each series lifeline, that just made you even more crazy about PSU requirements. Put dual cards with dual gpus with your dual PSU setups! Make those Frames in games melt! It was madness, and manufacturers were all too happy to create even more elaborate boxes of metal wroth hundreds more than they ever were before to supply the crazy. But when all that ended as fast as it started ...they still needed a reason to sell these big bulky monstrosities to consumers. So for the while it's been "add more storage space, put it in a raid config, look at all these colored lights and bubbles!" etc., etc.. As CPUs, GPUs, and all other computer components have become insanely efficient with power usage and space .. the only thing that hasn't changed is the power supplies. They're even less needed these days, but they'll never tell you that.
Well unfortunately, GPUs tend to consume more power nowadays, with the 3070 for example consuming around 250W rather than 150W or so from the GTX 1070 days, and compared to 250W for the flagship GTX 1080Ti. Although for equivalent performance, of course CPUs and GPUs have gotten far more efficient. A Ryzen 9 7950x is as if not more powerful than a Threadripper 3970X from just 3 years ago, and while less significant in their magnitude of improvement, GPUs such as the RX 6600 XT can compete with the GTX 1080 Ti at about 60% of the power consumption, at least going by TDP.
An internet friend of mine laughed in my face (over disc) when I told him my build and mentioned I had a 750W PSU. He told me I probably couldn't even use half my PC because it was "starved". I tried to explain to him that I test these things myself with a Kill-A-Watt outlet monitor and under load my PC barely hits 500W.
@StandingDonkey only just read this, but you are using the wrong rating for 2400W, 16A breaker is sufficient for this. My 10Kw shower uses a 45A breaker. Hell my kettle is 3000w and plugs into a 16A ring main.
@phantom His build is able to hit 500w because in Steve's video he only showed the collective wattage of cpu & gpu. There are other things in a pc that can contribute minor wattages into the whole consumption. i.e. HDD, SSD, RGB, FANS etc. But the CPU & GPU are responsible for the major & vast amount of power consumption.
@Aereto bigger ups so you can run more stuff through it like your monitors tv and modem. Bigger tends to get you more battery backup plugs. Gotta finish that round of pvp or save that job.
Great video, thanks! I have 2 systems with the same hardware but different case/PSU, 9900k and 2080ti on both and on power meters they read idle at 82w and 480w on load, One has a EVGA 550w PSU and the other a Thermaltake 850w. On 24/7. More than a year after built and still no issues... no OC of course ;)
The problem with PSU's which are at or near operating wattage is that noise is introduced which will affect downstream Audio and Video components. I had a flashing pixel problem in my VR HMD which went away when I supplied my GPU with two independent 8 pin Power looms. 10070k oc'd ; 1080Ti oc'd ; 700W PSU.
I have two 1000W PSUs. One is an OCZ Z-Series Modular and the other is an EVGA 1000 G2 Supernova, both are 80+Gold . I have them because I used to run twin R9 Furies on a 990FX motherboard with an FX-8350. I am one of the few that actually used the PSU as intended.
Got myself a 750w corsair rmx because the 850w variant was unreasonably more expensive. Felt a bit anxious that I had shot myself in the foot and not bought a big enough psu until I watched this. Thank you!
Something to note is that according to the official Cybernetics tests of the Seasonic PRIME Ultra 650 Titanium PSU 100% load is considered to be 650W at the output of the PSU, not at the wall, while Steve measured power consumption at the wall. The report considers 100% load to be 649.638W DC and 709.002W AC (dividing the two gives you the PSU efficiency rating of 91.627%).
@Gamers Nexus Decent PSUs will specify how much power they can deliver on a per-rail basis, not just in total, and most good PSUs (at least that I've seen) usually describe their rating specifically in terms of the 12V rail, not just in total (e.g. my EVGA 650 G2 is rated for 649.2 watts on the 12V rail IIRC).
I bought my RM1000 for a dual system in one case (gaming PC as well as a recording / encoding / media PC). Ended up pulling out the second PC and replaced it with full custom water-cooling and SLI when that used to be a thing. Was it overkill? Maybe but I bought it in 2014 and have a 3080 on the way as well as a waterblock so I'm really happy with it so far and will give me the power to keep going.
A 2022/2023 update would be nice. But tbh things haven't changed THAT much. Long story short for most people; just go for a solid 750w/850w PSU (preferably 850). Enough for most setups.
@[;' I mean what’s the problem with people buying higher watt gpus. I don’t think they affect u in any way It’s just a psu and higher watts are out there Obviously right now power consumption is increasing no point in getting a 750 if u plan to upgrade
@Fuetre dont believe that. I also supposedly had that with 5700xt and 750w, however that was just the graphics card and nothing to do with not enough power. even for a 4090 and 3090ti a 750w is generally enough if you only have/use 1 gpu and not like 100 drives and other things, or overclock, and use a 13900k on full power at same time. but even then 1000w is easily overkill and more than you need.
I have a 9900 K, 3090 Ti and a Corsair 850w Titanium PSU. Everything was fine for ~3 months, but now I'm getting restarts when loading some games, or going into graphically intense scenes, even though they were fine before.
@Fuetre I had a 7900 XTX and my Seasonic PX-750 black screened as soon as I launched a game - on default settings. Mind you, this was before the first driver update. I have a 4090 now and it will absolutely not run on the 750. I upgraded to a 1300w so I have headroom for future additions like watercooling and plugging in peripherals.
I'd say all you did in this video is proved a point, but the CPU and GPU are only two parts of a multi part equation. I think it would be worth doing a video to help people determine how to calculate the PSU wattage they need for a standard computer, a beefy comp with and without overclocking, and an all out PC with water cooling, fancy light, and RGB everything.
AMD and NV recommend power supply wattage for a reason. More power supply wattage you have less stressful it feels under load and longer life will have in general. Also there could be some current spikes at start and when it is working, they could be fine for hardware but too high for power supply so it can shut down coz of overload. As an additional bonus you will have less noise and more power efficiency and also no need to replace it when upgrade to more powerful hardware. So in general you dont need over 1kW power supply, but 650W more sounds reasonable especially if you are planning to upgrade. PSU is a last part of your pc you want to save money on, coz when it fails consequences can be way more expensive than 50$ you can save on it.
I've been using several different 750 Watt Antec power supplies for a very long time now. The AMD processors have all been rated at 125 Watt nominal. Add to that a mid-level graphics card with two power plugs and you have about 250 - 300 Watts nominal. With the rest of the motherboard, a hard drive and an optical drive plus a handful of USB ports, and 750 Watts is more than comfortable. I've never had PSU shutdown. Adequate cooling is imperative, especially if reusing legacy ATX computer cases made in the late 1990's - early 2000's. Systems then simply didn't draw as much power and therefore didn't generate as much heat. I've been told I could get away with 500 Watt supplies, but even with a couple very old high quality ones in my boneyard, I wouldn't use them. Some headroom with demand vs capacity helps them run cooler. OTOH, a 1000 Watt supply would be complete overkill for my current systems. I don't plan on considering more than 750 Watts for a personal desktop build in the foreseeable future. The Antec have proven to be highly reliable, durable and quiet.
I ran an AX1200 on a moderate to semi-enthusiast level and it lasted for 12 years. Just replaced it with an HX1200(Platinum). Well worth the money considering all the power outages due to storms and whatever else over the years. Powered on/off usually multiple times daily over that time. The built-in protections and quality components are well worth it.
I was searching around the internet for hours about Power supplies and this is the most helpful one because you actually showed real usage scenarios and numbers! I'll be getting a 600 watt power supply for my build which will peak at around 200 to 300+watts
Thanks for the video. It's very helpful! I bought Red Dead Redemtion 2 this week and it really works good between high and ultra. The only problem is that my PC completely shuts down randomly from time to time. I guess the problem is my 8 year old PSU...
A lot of PSUs are most efficient around 50-70% load so oversizing them can actually save you money over time. Also, getting a good deal on a Platinum 80+ PSU is a good idea.
yeah but as the chart for the 1600i shows the difference in efficiency between 200 watts and 7-800 watts is like 2 percent. As long as its a good power supply with decent components the price savings is going to be so small it won't matter.
Real question for a semi savvy diy personal pc builder, Does it plausibly extend the life of your product to buy a power supply that is more capable than what you need? I know that is what the bronze, silver, gold etc ratings are for, but is running them decently below their max capacity extend the life of product?
I've seen people report their 3080's shut down their PC with a 750W PSU. Although, this issue may be limited to certain 3080's or PSU's. So, it could be just fine for everyone else. Although, I wish I had gotten a 850W PSU just to feel more "safe" about it, especially if I ever upgrade to a future GPU. I guess by then, I might have to end up buying a higher wattage PSU.
That's because of huge transient loads (eg.: peaks), which basically trip the OCP (because the voltage falls too low => current increases). This can be both a PSU and GPU issue => They both should have more/bigger capacitors to accommodate the big transient.
Interesting video. I'm using a 500W power supply and I already knew it was overkill, but I wanted a fully modular one and the 500W gold was cheaper than the 450W gold for some weird reason when I bought it.
Thanks for the video, I got a 1660 super a few weeks ago for my very casual gaming rig and was using an 800 watt el cheapo power supply from 2011 that wouldn't run the graphics card. I got a 550 watt Corsair RM 550x. I actually did the power supply calculator thing on some website and my total load came in at about 400 watts. I was surprised it was so little. Anyway saved $50 Australian by not getting a 650 or 750 watt power supply
huh i bought a cheap power supply 750W from MATRIX (i have seen this brand here a lot and i assumed it wouldn't be extra crappy than the non branded ones) and have been using it mabe 3 years now, it has been into 2 systems so far, an old ddr2 2gig + e8400 intel cpu, to now currently serving a ddr4 8gig + ryzen3 2400G apu + 1650 (non ti or super also no additional power required) and i have not had any problems with it, everything as i expect it does. I can't find reviews online, maybe im not looking enough, but the usual ones i see are questions to which people say its probably best avoided... Maybe i was lucky, or the psu is not as bad as i have 'heard', besides i don't overclock and if a 10900K intel with a 2080 ti draw up to 500W then no way my build would get that far up.
@Safetytrousers no. The stage at the socket is 242v, the standard and other labelling are just that. A label. The 'harmonisation' was a pretty pointless exercise and hasn't altered the grid in any way in the UK or Europe. The source of this is my fluke testing equipment and the thousands of homes I test every year all over the country. I remember learning about this new label in 2003 when it was done and it effected nothing whatsoever in the UK or Europe, they just shifted the tolerances in either country to envelope the existing voltages, the idea was to make the consumer items capable of running either voltage by spreading the tolerance of item. The national grid is pretty good in the UK and I've never seen a household supply below 238v and that was in a rural area.
@Christian Fahey I reiterate, find me anywhere (that is not an individual person in a chat or forum) that says the average voltage in the UK is 240v. I have found you four that say otherwise.
@Christian Fahey Easy. ''The mains supply in the UK is an alternating current (ac) voltage at a frequency of 50 hertz (Hz) and a voltage of 230 volts (V)'' - BBC. ''Just like the rest of Europe, the voltage in the UK is 230 volts and the frequency is 50 Hz.'' - WorldStandards ''Although the normal voltage in the UK is 230 volts'' - SP Energy ''In the UK, mains electricity is currently required by law to be delivered at 230 Volts, within a tolerance of +10% / -6%, that is, within the range 253 Volts to 216.2 Volts. The value of 230 Volts is said to be the ‘nominal voltage'' ''Mains electricity is delivered at 230 volts to our homes'' - twothirtyvolts
@Safetytrousers Find any entity that says the average voltage in the UK is 230. Because it is not. Even the company you chose to use as reference admits that.
Once we get our new hardware releases end of year/next year, will you do a revisit on this? very interested in seeing bar charts with all new power hungry hardware
I never thought about this, my pre built pc only had a 350w power supply and it came with a RTX 2060. Might explain why I had games crash my entire pc so often, I had to completely restart my pc to fix it.
Steve should have a video about how a lack of inventory of PSU's at retailers leads DIY'ers to get overkill units rather than wait 5 months to finish their builds and not a misunderstanding of the wattage needed to power their rigs.
For sure, I would rather be safe than sorry and get a 850 watt power supply with a 10 year warranty than save 50 bucks and get one that I *think* might work and won't have that warranty.
You know it's going to be a good day when they use the exact CPU/GPU combo in their testing that you've been considering buying. Not only that, they're using the same CPU/GPU combo I plan to upgrade to sometimes in the future. Feeling a lot better about the 600W PSU now.
Good to know that the Corsair AX650 I bought in 2012 is still good to go. Coming up to 9 years of every day use. I upgraded to a 3900X last year and have been looking at getting a new GPU too. I had my eye on a 6800XT, but I guess that's not going to happen any time soon. So when I get the 7800XT ;p , my PSU will be going on 10 years and will still be good for a few more. So I guess if you're planning on hanging on to a PSU it is worth it to get one with a bit more power capacity and good efficiency. To allow your setup to grow and evolve over the years. The price was somewhere around €140 ~ €145 in 2102. If I keep it for 3 more years, that's < €1 per month, and that's not bad at all.
I apologize if this is a dumb question. I am soon to build a desktop and was wondering a question about the power supply and fan direction. All my previous cases/power supply setups blew air horizontally at the top rear of the case. Would directing the airflow from the power supply vertically upward be beneficial? Are any cases/power supplies setup this way? Thank you.
So thinking back on this one GN I just think you mostly turned out wrong here at least in a number of ways from my perspective. I bought a 1050Watt Seasonic silent snow for less than I could now if I could find as nice a PSU without going into an entirely other class like the ASUS THOR. Now it will be fine for my foolish 5950x 6900xt 570s build too. Everything went up by so much that buying big was wise. For my sons twin rig I went with the similar 700watt model thinking I was being reasonable here as he doesn't quite demand as much from his gear. I actually had to send in the 700 just after store coverage expired he's looking at upgrading his GPU after my venerable 290 died in his care short few years after his twin card died... and paying more than I had for for an upgrade almost side grade PSU. To be sensible now I'd be buying again (that sucks) choosing in many cases between either as nice looking or as power efficient a power supply and not both certainly not also as potent else I'd be looking at paying double what I had. Considering the boy is getting a foundational upgrade one way or another, either continuing borrowing my b550 Asrock and 5700g and adding the GPU to that or upgrading to the 5900/Asus B550 F system I'm building and he just doesn't have the tech lust I do... though he plays far more games... the 850 might just need replacing again for another graphics update alone even in the future. Had I just got two of the 1050watt I would surely have had more capacity than needed for a time but would have spent less and in the long run made less waste and generally might have event saved more power. I feel it's worth saying old as the video is but you guys generally get so much right though.
I realize that this comment is a little late but here goes. PC Power & Cooling PSUs have set up (at least the last time I bought a PSU) their PSU with a single 12 V rail, not multiple 12 V rails where each one is limited in amperage. To me this makes a lot more sense than limited rails. What is your take on this? I am a retired electrical engineer.
Have you done any testing on state-of-the-art power supplies? (Brigeless PFC, integrated magnetics, synchronous rectification, 0 EMI, 0 ripple, 98% efficiency, .999 PF).
The lack of low wattage PSUs is crazy when you do a non-gaming build. I recorded my dad's PC as maxing out under 30W from the wall. It has a 400W Bronze PSU because it was the cheapest quality ATX PSU I could find. I would have loved a power brick or otherwise small/non-ATX mount but it would have added at least 50% the price onto the build for something that was ok to be ugly & bulky.
check out HDPLEX.com They have tiny PSUs, but probably not what you're looking for. I found them when I was looking into ways to DIY a gaming laptop with RC car lipos and desktop parts when I noticed an ITX motherboard and two-slot GPU are almost exactly the same size as my old Thinkpad T500 with the lid closed, with enough extra space for a 68Wh lipo.
@Derek Moore You need a device in between your PC's power cord and the wall outlet with power monitoring functionality. They make single plug devices for this exact purpose(Kill-a-Watt is a brand that makes these) but I use a UPS(Think a power strip with a battery to keep you running a bit longer when a power outage hits.) Both of these display information on a small screen. JayzTwoCents did a video on extension cords where he used one of these throughout the video, I'd recommend searching that up to see how it works in video format.
@Derek Moore On my UPS battery backup, you could just use a Kill-a-Watt if you just wanted to measure the power consumption. Worth noting you're also measuring efficiency losses of your PSU this way not just component usage.
Huh, looking at this, it seems I could've saved myself some cash if I went with a lower power supply, as I'm on a R5 3600 paired with a GTX 1650 Super(only card left in stock that wasn't a GT 710 back when I bought this in late November) on a 450 watt power supply. Better safe than sorry, I guess, plus it gives me expansion headroom.
interesting. My system is supposedly pulling at the max 530W according to several PSU calculators. Running with a Corsair RM650X 80gold. It works very well and i doubt i will actually draw 530 watts at all
Those calculators are designed just to give you an idea, in the real world your system will pull much less. I'm running my r5 2600x and rx580 on 450 from Corsair with no problems.
I have the EVGA 650 GQ 80+ gold semi-modular PS. Spent months researching power requirements, 80+ ratings, modular vs semi vs non, what PSUs came with black cables, then saw this on sale $30 off. Black Friday and Boxing day FTW.
I love how anything to do with Pc part testing or building they have to put out a disclosure statement longer then a pharmaceutical add in fear of all the backlash. Some guy finds some hypothetical situation that proves the content creator in the wrong then everyone jumps on the bandwagon and shames them. I find today the content creators putting out reviews of products as well as the guys doing new builds to be just awesome unfortunately I find the community watching sucks.
@Triliner The problem is the power spikes can spike to pull over that number depending on what else you're powering. Might be fine year 1 as well but PSUs usually lose 5 to 10% of their max output over 4 to 8 years of constant usage a year.
@Mirage 50-100W is enough, future proofing is other thing. Mid tier hardware isn't really that power hungry, from one calculator for 5600x and 3060Ti iirc was 400 or 450W recommended, get 700W and be set for [however long psu will last].
@Mirage Right on, I agree with you 100%. The funny thing is I have spent a ton more time on this single thread defending my PSU usage than I have spent troubleshooting my PSU problems since I bought that 750 watt EVGA gold, which are zero. lol Thanks for the message Bluemishka.
@mintcat exactly. I get what he's saying when you see people who need a 750w power supply buy some $400 1600 watt PSU, but if you're looking at the 750 watt I would just spend the extra $10 for the 850 watt version instead. Nothing wrong with overhead as UNDER powering a board is way worse than having excess
@Mike Edwards I agree. I rather have to much then barely enough. I've seen weird PC issues come up because the PSU was within range but still not enough.
there's nothing wrong with overkill. I like having 30-40% overhead over what I need as the money difference is barely noticeable. better to have it and never need it, and need it and don't have it. Especially if you some day add a next gen GPU in later on down the road or a next gen CPU (cough, Rocketlake, cough) that can use HUNDREDS of watts more than the previous gen). I mean, he's right that you don't need insane 1600 watt PSUs, but nothing wrong with having a a few hundred watts overkill
Steve is a good power supply. I got a Steve too, very handy and fix itself. My Steve sleeps under my desk and only wakes up to drink mountain dew and eat Doritos when he isn't fixing my PC. 10/10 recommends
10 years ago, I bought chieftec CFT 14 750W fully modular and at that time, one of the better units, and more expensive units for....~$90 US. Today, similar 750W PSU is ~140 US. and a 500W one, as we could see on your video, are ~90 $US. They are fighting, not. They can charge whatever they want now because they are without any challenge, they all made a deal so consumer almost has no choice. How silly is it that you can get used 1200W CM top line PSU (used but properly working) for 150$ US ? You don't have much savings on a $90...that class of PSU was ~$60 some years ago (while trashy PSU were ~25
Get the latest in PC hardware news here: clip-share.net/video/gghsGetRV5E/video.html
GN Wireframe Mouse Mat in stock & shipping now: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat
@MAXiT Straight up avoid Gigabyte-- check GN's testing reviews as to why.. just don't use headphones while you do it. Not sure about the others as I go with either EVGA or Seasonic exclusively (and PC Power&Cooling before them).
Hi, could you please help me which psu should I get for my system?
(5900X with an 240AIO + 3070Ti)
1. Thermaltake irgb plus 1000w gold: $100
2. Gigabyte P850GM gold (v2):
$85
3. CoolerMaster MWE 850 gold v2:
$95
Over 9000
Thanks to the current gen (nevermind next gen) of video cards this video has aged like the finest of... cottage cheese in a space heater. Thanks Nvidia and AMD, ya douchebags! clip-share.net/video/wnRyyCsuHFQ/video.html
i will be nice to have an update with the 12gen and new GPUs in 2022
Would be interesting to see an updated version of this next year (2023), once all/most of the new cpus and gpus have been released.
Would be nice to see what happen if you ACTUALLY use a good PSU under high load, let's say use a 600W with in a real scenario for a high end system... will it shutdown? be ineficient or simply good enough? Asking because I got a 850W which may never be used unless I got a top high end CPU and GPU, which may not happen but I gave this extra headroom for future use as some of those have 10 years warranty so why not?
@AlexanderMichelson Thanks! Good to know :)
@Leonardo DDR5 consumes less power than DDR4 actually, but the amount is very small to begin with.
Yes, absolutely. New Components like DDR5 - albeit not very power intensive - have been added as well. So a newly painted picture would be great!
I was planning on buying a 750W Seasonic PSU for my build - the cost difference for the 850W model was only $1, so I went with the bigger PSU which will allow for more running fanless due to the lower power draw
2025: "I think 2x 1600W seems like the sweet spot." RTX 5095Ti owner.
@Geltab B thanks but i already got my answer its been 2 weeks
@Dr Ubabque bruh u have the power of the internet, youtube comments is not the place to search for this answer. Use your brain please, you have google.
Hi will 600w evga psu be enough for rtx 3060 and i5 12400f please help i am new
this dude is from the future lmao
2022 here, 4090 just dropped. I just bought the 1600w p+ platinum EVGA. Laugh it up funny man hahaha
This has saved me like $70
Amount of watts doesn't matter, what really matters is if it has RGB
Hi will 600w evga psu be enough for rtx 3060 and i5 12400f please help i am new
LMAO I'm thinking just that while scrolling the comments and here it is.
Someone with priorities i respect that.
HAHAHAHA
everyone knows that red goes FASTA; so clearly your computers performance is based on how much *R*gb you have.
Your detailed comparisons like this are exactly what I need! This one especially because I was beating myself up about needing more than 650 watts or not for a 5700xt build, and now I know I dont
As long as you're not thinking about a 4090 with the 600 watt wire. 😆
@Shane Farmer me too, everything is good
I have been running a 5700XT on 500w since it came out. People always think they need more for some reason.
You don't but it´s useful. Considering the fact that PSUs last for years it's always a smart choice to buy a sightly oversized one as you will be still able to use it with your next build. In many cases the jump from 650w to 750w may cost you $20. And in the long run this will save you a bit of money, too. So, unless you are really on a tight budget, go for the next larger one.
Steve, would be nice for this topic to be "revisited" especially after the fairly recent video about transient spikes on the latest GPUs (CPUs?)
When I saw that some system shut down after an even brief 10ms spike, I'm concerned if the 1000W PSU for a 12700k and 12 GB 3080 will suffice.
Thanks from this old man, long time viewer.
@T B also why do we add an extra percentage to our tdp?
If I'm not oberclocking is it even necessary?
@T B so do you think 850w would be enough for my build?
@Renus pcpartpicker will normally do a 1/2 decent calc just pop in the components. You can double check the accuracy by adding the draw of all the separate components they are all published. +50% is overkill but +25-33% is sensible.
@T B not being sarcastic but how do do calculate that?
I've seen some videos saying I need to multiply my tdp by 1.5, which seems to be a lot.
Just purchased an 850w Xpg PSU.
Which I thought to be enough,
According to PCPartPicker my build is around 778watts
But with that weird 1.5 rule everything is out of wack going as far as to need a 100pw if I were to follow the guide line.
My Build is
I'm 13900k
Rtx 3080 ti
64gb Ram DDR4 3600mhz (16x4)
Xpg ssd 2tb
HDD 2tb
Do you think is enough?
I'm kind of having second thoughts about the 850w but there is no returns
Even the 4090 and 13900k beast with a ROG Maximus board a couple of HDD, 128GB DDR5 7200 RAM and a 380mm AIO and the requisite case fans combined draw 890w with both the CPU and GPU running 100% (stock Clocks) concurrently. 1000w for a 12700k and 3080 is plenty unless there is overclocking / custom loops and / or some other high draw components
I love how every time Steve and GN team test something, they more or less do a verbal research paper that you'd expect to find in a University Research lab
@FrayedSadly the term "tech nerd" is not without reason accompanied by things like "boring" "Stale" and "Creepy physics teacher". Its a pretty damn interesting topic, but not everyone is funny. And for these vids, nobody expects to be really hearing any jokes. They want data. xD
That's what we want from tech Jesus!
Yeah but the delivery is boring.
and in a world that lacks substance and talk is cheap, it is the verbal research papers which define Gamers Nexus and keep me selecting their videos before anything else.
Having a PSU exceeding your real requirements may be a good idea if you're aiming to have a quiet system. There are good PSUs which don't run their fan until a certain threshold is reached, and, clearly, the higher the PSU's wattage (other things such as efficiency notwithstanding), the longer it works quietly.
Always go with Seasonic, their 10 year warranty says enough.
@oppa oppai you're exaggerating. i have gotten accustomed to completely quiet usage with my phone and my old macbook being fanless. using my pc with the stock amd cooler and stock case fans is barely audible even when my room is completely quiet
Yeah, PSU fan isn't really something people need to worry about much, their CPU, case and dGPU fans will be making way more noise.
Of course, if you're doing an iGPU passive cooling build, then PSU fan noise is something you should think about.
@Dr. Cryptox for people who use something like an m1 macbook for portable use then return home to do heavier tasks on a desktop will find the latter to be really barbaric and ancient in terms of power consumption and noise, so it kinda does matter lol. Like we're not in 06 anymore
@Dr. Cryptox yes
the human eye can only see 450 watts in bronze colors so anything more than that is overkill.
@qwato Theres an mysterious rtx 4090 lurking in the corner.
Hi will 600w evga psu be enough for rtx 3060 and i5 12400f please help i am new
Mantis shrimp needs 1600 watt platinum 🥲
:o
"Most people are criminally, over buying on their power supplies..." ~Slow camera pan over Corsair 1600w titanium, with Steve's name stenciled on the side...~
Steve did very thorough analysis about usual PC power consumption here. And yes, round PCs in vacuum with CPU, GPU, 2 RAM modules, 1-2 SSD drives, CPU cooler and 2-3 case coolers will consume less than 600W. However with RGB and overclocking consumption will rise. Add next 2 RAM modules and external hard drive and system will suddenly begin to reboot due to PSU overload caused brownouts. There is a reason why 850W and more powerful PSU-s exist. Indeed do not overspend for power you will not use. However do a little research how much exactly your PC will need and add 10-15% reserve above that exactly for those special cases.
Great video. I think you could or maybe have, make a video on Watts, Volts, Amps, and basically Ω law. With poor inconsistent power supply, like in the USA, one's wattage can vary considerably. This being the case components can heat-up and performances diminishes quickly or fire occur. Here comes the PSU unit requirement...
power stability before anything,
The mayor problem with PSU is that they often don't have all the required cables/pins on the desirable wattage. Like, for my Ryzen 2700 and RX590 on a X570, ideally I wold want 3 x 4pin and 2 x 6+2pin but *my 750W PSU has only 2 x 4pin* (and 4 x 6+2pin)
I typically stick around the 650W range, just because I like to have a decent coverage no matter what hardware I install (since I never run a multi-GPU setup). My only qualifier is that I always buy the best quality I can get - which for my last one was a Seasonic Prime Titanium - because I like to keep my PSU for as long as possible. My last PC Power & Cooling PSU ran for over 7 years flawlessly, and I only replaced it because I upgraded to Ryzen and decided to go all new.
This is easy, you need 500W for the actual computer and addition 1300W for fans and RGB lighting. 2000W is overkill.
@Abe Walker LOL I have run an overclocked R9 5900x and RX 6600 (admittedly low power draw) with multiple case / CPU cooler fans, RGB lighting, 2 SDD, a NAS HDD no problem on a 550w power supply for about a year. The stock config (factory clocks) draws a max 340w with GPU and CPU 100% concurrent load
Fan power consumption is actually low (unless you have 30 fans or something 😱). And for lighting, as long as it's low power LEDs it shouldn't use up too much power.
@The Guy Named Hubba you man probably
@Wolfz You still might want to charge your Tesla with it at some point.
@The Guy Named Hubba Mine is without lights thats probably why
One other thing, a higher rated power supply can ride out a power line glitch for longer. The Front End capacitors are larger. We have to put in at 1200W Supply for a 400W system to get 30mS , typical spec is 15mS , but some UPS and power transfer switches are slower than that.
And now just the rtx 4090 alone consumes like 500 W
@Luke People upgrade their rigs, and PSUs degrade - faster when they are closer to their limits. My fans alone are more than 100w(if all were full load). After 5 years someone could experience instability and not realize that is the issue. Especially with some of those spikey GPUs. My 4090 absolutely would not open a game with my Seasonic PX750. I've almost doubled up to 1300w. I can over clock, I can add peripherals, drives, fans, watercooling- even 10 years down the road, with peace of mind.
Most are under 450w and even lower with no performance drop with undervolting. So people are still buying 1000w PSUs they do not need. Nothing has changed.
Nearly every time I have built a system I find a good quality 650 to 750 watt PSU costs within 10-20 bucks of a similar quality 450-550 PSU. To ensure an upgrade path I would never drop below a 550 watt PSU anyway, so usually I bought something 100 to 200 watts higher for close to the same price. There was almost always a great deals on a 650- 750 watt on Amazon, Newegg, etc so overkill city in all my builds. I know I don't need that much power, but its one less thing I usually have to worry about when troubleshooting my system.
Great informative video. We see the power draw certain device draw, however, as you mentioned those voltage spikes with the 3080's and up. Not that we would be over clocking, but if the suggested power watts was 850, would it be benefical to go with 1000 watts?
I’m running a evga 3090 and a 10900k undervolted on a 850w supply. I haven’t had any issues, even playing vr racing games on my sim rig I haven’t seen anywhere near that amount of power usage but I know it may be on the low end of what people are comfortable with. But I do plan on changing it for something higher when the time comes I upgrade my board and cpu to something newer.
I just love how Steve said a 250w cpu wouldn't really be a thing and then youtube suggested the 13th Gen Intel video right after 😂
Yeah, cracked me up when he said “250w would be an unreasonable scenario.” Reminded me of the old 16kb of RAM meme.
So I was recently looking at some Super Flower PSU’s and I had seen a 750w 80+ bronze for $100, meanwhile, I also found a 750w 80+ gold for $145, and was wondering if there really is THAT big of a difference between as bronze and gold PSU because I heard that the savings in between the two are minimal and in order to even save money on your electrical bill (because of a PSU) you would need to hit a certain and consistent wattage which most people don’t even hit. (If it’s any help I’m not an overclocker nor do I run any sort of rendering programs etc if that affects PSU choice).
There are calculators for this... Generally the repayment period for the upgrade is about 3 years.
A good psu will last 10-20 years. Buy a quality one once, and you'll kinda never need another one!
you guys should do a video covering power spikes on some of these newer video cards (3080, 6900xt) and some old cards (vega 64). it seems there are some cards spiking high enough to trigger overcurrent protection on power supplies that should be more than capable. Seems you guys tested with one massive PSU (1600w) which i'd expect would handle these spikes just fine. would have been good to see how lower capacity/quality PSUs did on these benchmarks. Power Spikes/overcurrent protection is important and ruins builds that, on paper, should be 100% fine.
Would love to see an update when the new gpus are all out. See how big Navi and the 3000 compare
Hehe new GPUs go BRRRRRRRRRTTTT
Your state of technology in 2020 series is super helpful for my plan for a new build, I'm ordering next week. Thanks so much!
Your case overview specifically, and this. Exactly what i was looking for at those moment
[now I only need to be pointed into the direction of a 27" non-curved 1440p 144hz IPS or VA hdr400+ Gsync monitor with below 10ms response time, 10 bit colors and vesa mount for 300 Quid. Any help? ^^]
These numbers are all fine and good, but what happens when you add in multiple hdds, extra fans, AIO coolers, etc etc?
It would be nice if you touched base on these...
For fans I add 5w, pumps, drives and so on I add 10w per item.
So glad I went for 650W, I read some comments that suggested for OC it is needed, but in the end I went for 650 not the 550 I had originally. Considering these numbers, still too high but at least not complete overkill.
Back in the day, before 80 Plus was standard , i would recommend people to match the psu wattage to the max expected power consumption of the rig they were building. This usually amounted to 350 but not more than 450 watts for a typical gaming rig of the time.
Reason was the sub par efficiency of the PSUs back then where it was not uncommon even for quality models to hover around 75% under load.
Considering that even gaming rigs are idling most of the time at 50 watts you could find yourself wasting the same amount of power in heat if you opted for a 600w+ PSU as efficiency is worst at low load conditions.
Nowadays i just recommend buying 550w 80 Plus Gold. It is the market's quality/price/availabilty sweetspot and is powerful enough if the manufacturers decide to push out chips with excessive power needs without wasting too much while idling.
This is why I love GN. Always answering questions I wanted to know but didn’t know how to ask
Got a RM550X this, should be enough (I hope) for a Zen3 4600 + RTX 3600
How to ask how many watts you need: -How many watts do I need?
You're welcome.
@mike h uh?
mike h If only everybody in the world were as cynical as you, it would be so much better huh?
This has helped me a lot, I was about to spend way more than needed on a new PSU for my new CPU/GPU combo. Thank you.
Could you do a video about the most reliable/stable memory brands? Especially when under heavy loads (near max usage/load, 64 gigs, heat, etc). For computers that are typically used for work, art, 3D, music production, video editing, etc. I don't know if there's a way to benchmark these things? Thanks for your consideration. New viewer btw, love your videos!
Thank you! I was wondering if the 600 watt PSU, I bought twelve years ago, because it has blue LEDs, should be replaced when I finally get into my next build. Both it, and my acrylic case, will be reused for about another year before moving all the components into something else. I may even get an AIO at that point.
When I built my latest system (32GB DDR4, GEN4 NVME drive, Radeon VII, 3800X), I bought a 750W PSU. I expected I wouldn't need that many watts and it would give me the freedom to upgrade components without worrying about hitting the ceiling down the road. 750W seems to be way overkill based on Steve's data. I can't imagine getting anything smaller, even if I don't need it, though.
@Elgan I think for the future I’d like to build a whole new pc but for now I’ll just use what I have and thanks
@Toasted Box Technically you shouldn't need to, but if you have the cash, I would go ahead and drop a 1000watt PSU in there to future proof yourself (The Seasonic FOCUS line of PSUs are fantastic for the money, I've owned a 750w and 1000w and they're amazing)
I went ahead and put a 1000watt PSU in my system because the 750w unit I had only had 2 8pin pci-e pwr connectors and my 3080 requires 3 of them (which blew my boomer mind. I remember when having to provide aux pwr via molex was crazy shit lol). It doesn't hurt to have that extra wattage either. You could run a 3080 in a current system with 16gb of RAM and 8\16 CPU, BUT, it'd probably be more efficient with a 1000w unit.
TL;DR You'll be fine, but upgrade if you have the cash to save a headache in the future.
@Elgan I am getting a 3060 TI with a Ryzen 9 5900 X and I’m planning to overclock the CPU, I already have a 600 watt psu. Should I upgrade my psu or no ?
750w is a really good sweet spot if you're regularly building with flagship parts.
The Ampere PSU requirements are WAY inflated.
I think they're more of a CYA situation, opposed to a 'here's what you'll need' situation.
I just ordered a EVGA RTX 3080 ftw3 to run alongside my 3700x and I would bet you my rig that... my rig.. xD Will never draw more than ~500watts, with a stock CPU and OCd 3080 in a worst case scenario.
I think most of the overdoing it on the PSU wattage is because most people don't understand how power works, nor do they realize that your whole system isn't maxed out ALL THE TIME.
I'm a fan of the 750-850 watt PSU's the beautiful things about having a high efficiency and not drawing more then 500 watts is the life span of the PSU keeps it through many builds. Long gone are the days of the quad GPUs that were drawing 250+ watts a card. The way they calculate wattage over each rail is probably more important then the actual max output of the PSU
Quad GPU in general especially with the GX2 was absolutely hysterically bad.
I'm a fan of "overspending" on PSUs. Bought a HX1000i like five years ago, it's survived two total rebuilds(save for the PSU, obviously) and still powers my 3900x/6900xt Liquid Devil flawlessly.
And now what's happening with the newly release GPU's from AMD & Nvidia. You will need at least a 850W PSU's attached to these new octa-dongle cable connecters. I've always informed people to buy at least a 850W PSU so that they don't have to worry about that particular component during future upgrades.
Finding a good PSU at over 600 watts isn't hard, but finding one for someone who wants to build a custom system that's usually inexpensive is going to have a hard time finding a good PSU in the 400 watt range, and that's frustrating. I feel like I should try to have a separate channel where I can test these things out and then review those.
I think a CPU-only setup (integrated GPU) would have been good for completenes
I bought a platinum Fractal ion power supply for the 10 year warranty at 760w. I knew it was overkill. Not only was it cheaper than many gold psu options at the 600w mark (And importantly in stock where i found it) but they accidentally sent me the 860w version and didnt recall it. I think i did quite well.
@K1W1 Pyro Thanks for the info and yes, I was aware of these issues. Johnnyguru also did a review on the gold toughpower, which is what I have, and it does, indeed have all Japanese caps and they gave it a 9.2 overall score. Several other sites also confirmed these results. Also, my own voltage monitoring shows solid results, as well.
@mfrey0118 be *very* wary of thermaltake power supplies, they have a reputation for being dodgy and misleading marketing.
They've marketed units as having "Japanese capacitors" simply because they had a couple of Japanese caps mixed in with the Chinese ones.
The main issue with Thermaltake is they use multiple different OEMs, so their Quality is extremely variable depending on which OEM actually made the unit before TT slaps their label on them.
Heres an example where they may have a couple of Japanese Rubicon capacitors, they also have a pile of Taiwanese "Teapo" brand caps.
www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2017/05/08/thermaltake-smart-pro-rgb-850w-bronze-power-supply/
But here is another which actually has all Japanese caps because it was made by a different OEM
www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2017/03/13/thermaltake-toughpower-dps-g-rgb-1000w-titanium-power-supply/5/
My first "motherboard killer" PSU was made by Thermaltake, we killed 2 boards with it before realising it was the PSU going *way* out of spec (It would eventually put 30 volts on the 12v rail after a few minutes, and not trip OCP)..
Basically their units are a crapshoot because they have had a tendency to use different OEMs even for models in the same line.
Techpowerup reviews and Jonnyguru both do good *in depth* teardowns of these units... so its a good starting point to get a unit thats had a teardown review with *over wattage* testing up to failure/shutdown point..
Gotta appreciate sites that literally test a unit till it either catches fire, or the OCP circuit shuts it off... It makes buying a unit they reccomend easy:)
@K1W1 Pyro Agreed, I am running a Thermaltake ToughPower 750W gold rated modular PSU on my 3700X/5700XT combo and it works great. Japanese capacitors and long warranty told me this PSU is well built and should offer enough headroom for future upgrades.
@Smiley TeK Yes bro, that's for sure LOL :)
@mfrey0118 Headroom also = Cool & Quiet running PSU.... that lasts a long time... my original Corsair HX850 has lasted 12 years and is still going strong ;)
Its 1st system was a Core2 Quad 9650 and Radeon 3850.. now its happily powering a Ryzen 3700x/5700xt .. Good quality PSUs are a sound investment.. Divide the $200ish price tag by 5-6 upgrade cycles and its great value.
My Corsair TX 650 lasted 7 years in a gaming rig but died ince i used it for 14 months 24/7 ethereum mining with continuous ~500 watt draw running 6 graphics cards (Rx560s w/mining bios)
Still bloody good value... and a lesson for anyone who thinks 450w is enough for a contiuous 450w loading... you want HEADROOM because HEAT KILLS (eventually). The PSU is not the place to save money... its one component that can survive several upgrade cycles *if* you buy wisely.
Would have been nice to see more realistic combinations eg typical budget 70 watt Nvidia graphics cards. That's where the massive overkill is happening.
@gamers nexus, probably a long shot, but i was wondering if you could do a test on OC stability with a low end PSU, mid range and high end? I want to see some data and whether a cpu with cheaper PSU would requite more voltage than one with a better PSU regardless of wattage.
When I was doing analysis for which Power Supply I needed to get for my (amazingly still) upcoming eMachines ET1331G-07w Sleeper PC project that'll have a Ryzen 3950X or 5950X and Radeon VII, I ultimately had to go with EVGA's 850BQ, an 0850 Watt unit with 080 Plus: Bronze certification that was literally the only one that would fit in the case; the ET1331G is a very strict Micro ATX case and thus I was put in a situation where I had very a slim amount of options for which PSU I had to go for due to dimensional limitations, but given that the 850BQ is easily enough to handle a Sixteen Core Ryzen chip at Stock and a Radeon VII running on an Undervolt, I will very likely be okay knowing I chose a part that not only fits, but was the cheapest option that I could get at the time (January 07 of 2020) and was the most effective due to its capacity.
Most Ryzen 3950X/Radeon VII builds without any tuning will ultimately hit the 0550 to 0600 Watt region under a full load, 0400 Watts coming from the card alone in peak spikes, which is why AMD recommended that users of the Vega 020 part must get no lower than a 0750 Watt Power Supply to run the system effectively; in my situation, having an extra hundred for allotted capacity is a proper Safety Net, I don't expect that I will ever have a system down the road that will ever go this high in power draw again but considering that the eMachines Sleeper will have up to six or eight Hard Drives and SSDs combined and no less than four fans (this includes the two on the NH-D15: Chromax Black), it's better to play it safe and have more wattage allowance than you need just in case those brief power spikes really demand a lot from the unit, nobody truly needs above 0850 Watts unless they enter Multi~GPU or HEDT territory that I can very easily say that number is the sweet spot for a Handicap Free experience for those who are trying to prolong their system to its optimal limits and have some major headroom if an Overclock is in their future.
I honestly don't think I've ever bought anything higher than a 750w PSU and I consider that overkill, but just want to leave myself comfortable room to upgrade since I'll likely be using it for 5+ years.
GN, please do an updated video to this, with considerations for 40/7900 series cards and their power characteristics.
At least this isn't the 1990's where cheap PSU's meant your system blowing up at some point.
Yes it happened to me once when I was a student.
@I3v1ckUK's-comment/post "At least this isn't the 1990's where cheap PSU's meant your system blowibg up at some point.
Yes it happened to me once when I was a student.":
To quote Marvin The Martian (slightly-modified, of course):
Was there a kaboom?
Was there a Earth-shattering kaboom?
clip-share.net/video/3fcaXmpZydI/video.html
This is mainly why I started searching today while thinking on adding some port adapters to my computer. I had some of those power issues in the past adding too many USBs and using the computer in the summer during late nineties and early 2000s.
even expensive ones done it. Enermax killed two of my mainboards. And all I got from them was a replacement - just the psu. Not the cables, not even a box. Just the naked power block.
Enermax is on my black list ever since.
This didn't age well for Gigabyte
@Agrisim Farming Or if you buy a 115$ from one well known Taiwanese brand
Would love to see a repeat of this video for the 3080, especially with the 5900x and 5600x which are likely to be common combinations. This video makes the 750W recommendation for the 3080 seem suspect...
@Elgan what part? the RTX 3080/90's 4-550W power spikes OR the Ryzen 5000 power usage?
750? I’ve read I need at least a 850 what with this type of graphics card, ryzen 9 5900x and rub fans and m.2 ssd but I’m honestly thinking I probably only need a 650 watt now just to be on the safe side but probably good get away with 500w
@zakura ayame I don’t know. But I can tell you that the 3080 can have spikes of 500w on the founder’s edition. The rog strix even higher. That’s not to mention the 3090. The new world bug is something else entirely. It’s blowing capacitors related to power spikes and also has other bugs related to huge fps spikes that were in the initial menu. All cards have momentary spikes above TGP
@Jason Handley ty for the info ... so you are telling me a wombo combo today can spike up to 900w if both hit max load? That isn't the New World bug thing?
Not that most people will have the most power hungry combo out there.
Are we stepping back in time with the power and heat? :p
@zakura ayame You are looking at AVG power usage. The transient power spikes On the 3080 FE model can hit 500w. That doesn’t mean it’s going to draw 500w all the time, that means it’s going to have power spikes of up to 500w. Those spikes combined with a 12900k can cause an 850w psu to trip OCP and shutdown. Do a quick google search you will see this is a little more common than you think
I think a lot of the reason why Wattage of PSU's increased so much over the years was because of the SLI craze of the early 2000s. Before that, you could quite literally throw any PSU onto your computer and it would work perfectly fine.
When people and Nvida / AMD started pushing this narrative about how having two video cards was the next greatest technology in computers people started running into power consumption issues. Manufacturers started making "SLI Ready PSUs" , which had 500+ watts of power and "Special SLI Amp cables" that were touted as designed specifically for when you need to plug in 2! cards or connectors into your GPU(s). 12v rail! was such a buzzword those days.
Then we had these magical dual GPU cards as flagship designs at the end of each series lifeline, that just made you even more crazy about PSU requirements. Put dual cards with dual gpus with your dual PSU setups! Make those Frames in games melt!
It was madness, and manufacturers were all too happy to create even more elaborate boxes of metal wroth hundreds more than they ever were before to supply the crazy. But when all that ended as fast as it started ...they still needed a reason to sell these big bulky monstrosities to consumers. So for the while it's been "add more storage space, put it in a raid config, look at all these colored lights and bubbles!" etc., etc..
As CPUs, GPUs, and all other computer components have become insanely efficient with power usage and space .. the only thing that hasn't changed is the power supplies. They're even less needed these days, but they'll never tell you that.
Well unfortunately, GPUs tend to consume more power nowadays, with the 3070 for example consuming around 250W rather than 150W or so from the GTX 1070 days, and compared to 250W for the flagship GTX 1080Ti.
Although for equivalent performance, of course CPUs and GPUs have gotten far more efficient. A Ryzen 9 7950x is as if not more powerful than a Threadripper 3970X from just 3 years ago, and while less significant in their magnitude of improvement, GPUs such as the RX 6600 XT can compete with the GTX 1080 Ti at about 60% of the power consumption, at least going by TDP.
An internet friend of mine laughed in my face (over disc) when I told him my build and mentioned I had a 750W PSU. He told me I probably couldn't even use half my PC because it was "starved". I tried to explain to him that I test these things myself with a Kill-A-Watt outlet monitor and under load my PC barely hits 500W.
@StandingDonkey only just read this, but you are using the wrong rating for 2400W, 16A breaker is sufficient for this. My 10Kw shower uses a 45A breaker. Hell my kettle is 3000w and plugs into a 16A ring main.
@phantom His build is able to hit 500w because in Steve's video he only showed the collective wattage of cpu & gpu. There are other things in a pc that can contribute minor wattages into the whole consumption. i.e. HDD, SSD, RGB, FANS etc.
But the CPU & GPU are responsible for the major & vast amount of power consumption.
What
You need atleast 2300W PSU for the average PC
@Aereto bigger ups so you can run more stuff through it like your monitors tv and modem. Bigger tends to get you more battery backup plugs. Gotta finish that round of pvp or save that job.
Great video, thanks! I have 2 systems with the same hardware but different case/PSU, 9900k and 2080ti on both and on power meters they read idle at 82w and 480w on load, One has a EVGA 550w PSU and the other a Thermaltake 850w. On 24/7. More than a year after built and still no issues... no OC of course ;)
@Robert Puškarić Huge difference on hardware but that could be many other things...
Bruh i have 1060 and fx6300 cpu with 500w psu and my pc shuts down sometimes
@haziq ahmad-24 9900K, Strix Z390-I Gaming and Strix 2080ti on EVGA 550 B3
Really 550 running 10900K nd 2080ti peacefully?
The problem with PSU's which are at or near operating wattage is that noise is introduced which will affect downstream Audio and Video components. I had a flashing pixel problem in my VR HMD which went away when I supplied my GPU with two independent 8 pin Power looms.
10070k oc'd ; 1080Ti oc'd ; 700W PSU.
I have two 1000W PSUs. One is an OCZ Z-Series Modular and the other is an EVGA 1000 G2 Supernova, both are 80+Gold . I have them because I used to run twin R9 Furies on a 990FX motherboard with an FX-8350. I am one of the few that actually used the PSU as intended.
Got myself a 750w corsair rmx because the 850w variant was unreasonably more expensive. Felt a bit anxious that I had shot myself in the foot and not bought a big enough psu until I watched this. Thank you!
Something to note is that according to the official Cybernetics tests of the Seasonic PRIME Ultra 650 Titanium PSU 100% load is considered to be 650W at the output of the PSU, not at the wall, while Steve measured power consumption at the wall. The report considers 100% load to be 649.638W DC and 709.002W AC (dividing the two gives you the PSU efficiency rating of 91.627%).
@Gamers Nexus Decent PSUs will specify how much power they can deliver on a per-rail basis, not just in total, and most good PSUs (at least that I've seen) usually describe their rating specifically in terms of the 12V rail, not just in total (e.g. my EVGA 650 G2 is rated for 649.2 watts on the 12V rail IIRC).
@Xattr well, i can miss the money and the psu isnt something i want to hold back on. For future upgrades etc. Dont think i "got fucked over" ;)
@Pedro Fleck the power limits imposed are still total board power limits.
@flandrble I don't know about other GPUs, but I have a Vega 56 blower and the blower uses PCIe power while the GPU itselft uses the 2 8 pin power.
@yooo l yes, your besquirting psu is strong enough.
I bought my RM1000 for a dual system in one case (gaming PC as well as a recording / encoding / media PC). Ended up pulling out the second PC and replaced it with full custom water-cooling and SLI when that used to be a thing. Was it overkill? Maybe but I bought it in 2014 and have a 3080 on the way as well as a waterblock so I'm really happy with it so far and will give me the power to keep going.
A 2022/2023 update would be nice. But tbh things haven't changed THAT much. Long story short for most people; just go for a solid 750w/850w PSU (preferably 850). Enough for most setups.
@Neko Nugget you must have misunderstood my comment.
@[;' I mean what’s the problem with people buying higher watt gpus. I don’t think they affect u in any way
It’s just a psu and higher watts are out there
Obviously right now power consumption is increasing no point in getting a 750 if u plan to upgrade
@Fuetre dont believe that. I also supposedly had that with 5700xt and 750w, however that was just the graphics card and nothing to do with not enough power.
even for a 4090 and 3090ti a 750w is generally enough if you only have/use 1 gpu and not like 100 drives and other things, or overclock, and use a 13900k on full power at same time. but even then 1000w is easily overkill and more than you need.
I have a 9900 K, 3090 Ti and a Corsair 850w Titanium PSU. Everything was fine for ~3 months, but now I'm getting restarts when loading some games, or going into graphically intense scenes, even though they were fine before.
@Fuetre I had a 7900 XTX and my Seasonic PX-750 black screened as soon as I launched a game - on default settings. Mind you, this was before the first driver update. I have a 4090 now and it will absolutely not run on the 750. I upgraded to a 1300w so I have headroom for future additions like watercooling and plugging in peripherals.
I'd say all you did in this video is proved a point, but the CPU and GPU are only two parts of a multi part equation. I think it would be worth doing a video to help people determine how to calculate the PSU wattage they need for a standard computer, a beefy comp with and without overclocking, and an all out PC with water cooling, fancy light, and RGB everything.
AMD and NV recommend power supply wattage for a reason. More power supply wattage you have less stressful it feels under load and longer life will have in general. Also there could be some current spikes at start and when it is working, they could be fine for hardware but too high for power supply so it can shut down coz of overload. As an additional bonus you will have less noise and more power efficiency and also no need to replace it when upgrade to more powerful hardware. So in general you dont need over 1kW power supply, but 650W more sounds reasonable especially if you are planning to upgrade. PSU is a last part of your pc you want to save money on, coz when it fails consequences can be way more expensive than 50$ you can save on it.
No wonder power supplies are so expensive, Steve has them all.
@BobRooney No, it's Steve!
no, its greedy companies that hiked up prices by making up stories.
Bruv
hahaha
I've been using several different 750 Watt Antec power supplies for a very long time now. The AMD processors have all been rated at 125 Watt nominal. Add to that a mid-level graphics card with two power plugs and you have about 250 - 300 Watts nominal. With the rest of the motherboard, a hard drive and an optical drive plus a handful of USB ports, and 750 Watts is more than comfortable. I've never had PSU shutdown. Adequate cooling is imperative, especially if reusing legacy ATX computer cases made in the late 1990's - early 2000's. Systems then simply didn't draw as much power and therefore didn't generate as much heat. I've been told I could get away with 500 Watt supplies, but even with a couple very old high quality ones in my boneyard, I wouldn't use them. Some headroom with demand vs capacity helps them run cooler. OTOH, a 1000 Watt supply would be complete overkill for my current systems. I don't plan on considering more than 750 Watts for a personal desktop build in the foreseeable future. The Antec have proven to be highly reliable, durable and quiet.
I ran an AX1200 on a moderate to semi-enthusiast level and it lasted for 12 years. Just replaced it with an HX1200(Platinum). Well worth the money considering all the power outages due to storms and whatever else over the years. Powered on/off usually multiple times daily over that time. The built-in protections and quality components are well worth it.
I was searching around the internet for hours about Power supplies and this is the most helpful one because you actually showed real usage scenarios and numbers!
I'll be getting a 600 watt power supply for my build which will peak at around 200 to 300+watts
I always first look at the +12v amps to determine the main critical output wattage (Amps x volts equals watt5).
Thanks for the video. It's very helpful!
I bought Red Dead Redemtion 2 this week and it really works good between high and ultra.
The only problem is that my PC completely shuts down randomly from time to time.
I guess the problem is my 8 year old PSU...
windows event ID 41 (63) bugcheckCode 0? Thats what I get in BFV only, RDR2 is fine
A lot of PSUs are most efficient around 50-70% load so oversizing them can actually save you money over time. Also, getting a good deal on a Platinum 80+ PSU is a good idea.
@Josh Bell If you run the system 24/7 365 even 2% adds up. The components also last longer when not pushed to their margins.
yeah but as the chart for the 1600i shows the difference in efficiency between 200 watts and 7-800 watts is like 2 percent. As long as its a good power supply with decent components the price savings is going to be so small it won't matter.
Real question for a semi savvy diy personal pc builder, Does it plausibly extend the life of your product to buy a power supply that is more capable than what you need? I know that is what the bronze, silver, gold etc ratings are for, but is running them decently below their max capacity extend the life of product?
I've seen people report their 3080's shut down their PC with a 750W PSU. Although, this issue may be limited to certain 3080's or PSU's.
So, it could be just fine for everyone else. Although, I wish I had gotten a 850W PSU just to feel more "safe" about it, especially if I ever upgrade to a future GPU.
I guess by then, I might have to end up buying a higher wattage PSU.
That's because of huge transient loads (eg.: peaks), which basically trip the OCP (because the voltage falls too low => current increases).
This can be both a PSU and GPU issue => They both should have more/bigger capacitors to accommodate the big transient.
Interesting video. I'm using a 500W power supply and I already knew it was overkill, but I wanted a fully modular one and the 500W gold was cheaper than the 450W gold for some weird reason when I bought it.
Nothing makes me happier than knowing that my PSU's fan doesn't even have to spin with the amount of load it is under.
Yeah,, old school PSUs ran the fan all the time. Modern systems are amazing.
My PSU has a switch, I leave the fan on intentionally to help with case exhaust. It will never turn on otherwise. 750W
I have the XFX XTR 650W and I've never heard the fans spin in over 4 years
Well, when you combine the 13900K and 4090 Ti, There's a need.
Excellent video. My intended processor was in the benchmark, so I'm very convinced now. Thank You
Thanks for the video, I got a 1660 super a few weeks ago for my very casual gaming rig and was using an 800 watt el cheapo power supply from 2011 that wouldn't run the graphics card. I got a 550 watt Corsair RM 550x. I actually did the power supply calculator thing on some website and my total load came in at about 400 watts. I was surprised it was so little. Anyway saved $50 Australian by not getting a 650 or 750 watt power supply
huh i bought a cheap power supply 750W from MATRIX (i have seen this brand here a lot and i assumed it wouldn't be extra crappy than the non branded ones) and have been using it mabe 3 years now, it has been into 2 systems so far, an old ddr2 2gig + e8400 intel cpu, to now currently serving a ddr4 8gig + ryzen3 2400G apu + 1650 (non ti or super also no additional power required) and i have not had any problems with it, everything as i expect it does. I can't find reviews online, maybe im not looking enough, but the usual ones i see are questions to which people say its probably best avoided...
Maybe i was lucky, or the psu is not as bad as i have 'heard', besides i don't overclock and if a 10900K intel with a 2080 ti draw up to 500W then no way my build would get that far up.
Why would I need a power supply inside my computer? That's what the wall outlet is for
@Safetytrousers no. The stage at the socket is 242v, the standard and other labelling are just that. A label. The 'harmonisation' was a pretty pointless exercise and hasn't altered the grid in any way in the UK or Europe. The source of this is my fluke testing equipment and the thousands of homes I test every year all over the country. I remember learning about this new label in 2003 when it was done and it effected nothing whatsoever in the UK or Europe, they just shifted the tolerances in either country to envelope the existing voltages, the idea was to make the consumer items capable of running either voltage by spreading the tolerance of item. The national grid is pretty good in the UK and I've never seen a household supply below 238v and that was in a rural area.
@Gamers Nexus all you need is FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!
@Christian Fahey I reiterate, find me anywhere (that is not an individual person in a chat or forum) that says the average voltage in the UK is 240v. I have found you four that say otherwise.
@Christian Fahey Easy.
''The mains supply in the UK is an alternating current (ac) voltage at a frequency of 50 hertz (Hz) and a voltage of 230 volts (V)'' - BBC.
''Just like the rest of Europe, the voltage in the UK is 230 volts and the frequency is 50 Hz.'' - WorldStandards
''Although the normal voltage in the UK is 230 volts'' - SP Energy
''In the UK, mains electricity is currently required by law to be delivered at 230 Volts,
within a tolerance of +10% / -6%, that is, within the range 253 Volts to 216.2 Volts. The value of 230 Volts is said to be the ‘nominal voltage'' ''Mains electricity is delivered at 230 volts to our homes'' - twothirtyvolts
@Safetytrousers Find any entity that says the average voltage in the UK is 230. Because it is not. Even the company you chose to use as reference admits that.
So basically for most systems 550w 80+ gold is good enough, but would be better to get 600w or 650w
Once we get our new hardware releases end of year/next year, will you do a revisit on this? very interested in seeing bar charts with all new power hungry hardware
I never thought about this, my pre built pc only had a 350w power supply and it came with a RTX 2060.
Might explain why I had games crash my entire pc so often, I had to completely restart my pc to fix it.
Steve should have a video about how a lack of inventory of PSU's at retailers leads DIY'ers to get overkill units rather than wait 5 months to finish their builds and not a misunderstanding of the wattage needed to power their rigs.
For sure, I would rather be safe than sorry and get a 850 watt power supply with a 10 year warranty than save 50 bucks and get one that I *think* might work and won't have that warranty.
You know it's going to be a good day when they use the exact CPU/GPU combo in their testing that you've been considering buying. Not only that, they're using the same CPU/GPU combo I plan to upgrade to sometimes in the future. Feeling a lot better about the 600W PSU now.
Good to know that the Corsair AX650 I bought in 2012 is still good to go. Coming up to 9 years of every day use. I upgraded to a 3900X last year and have been looking at getting a new GPU too. I had my eye on a 6800XT, but I guess that's not going to happen any time soon. So when I get the 7800XT ;p , my PSU will be going on 10 years and will still be good for a few more. So I guess if you're planning on hanging on to a PSU it is worth it to get one with a bit more power capacity and good efficiency. To allow your setup to grow and evolve over the years. The price was somewhere around €140 ~ €145 in 2102. If I keep it for 3 more years, that's < €1 per month, and that's not bad at all.
just about the same here.. almost ten years later and my seasonic 750w psu is just starting to wake up 😄
I apologize if this is a dumb question. I am soon to build a desktop and was wondering a question about the power supply and fan direction. All my previous cases/power supply setups blew air horizontally at the top rear of the case. Would directing the airflow from the power supply vertically upward be beneficial? Are any cases/power supplies setup this way? Thank you.
Steve: "If you're running a CPU that can take up to (this is an unreasonable scenario) 250W..."
Intel: "Hold my beer"
So thinking back on this one GN I just think you mostly turned out wrong here at least in a number of ways from my perspective.
I bought a 1050Watt Seasonic silent snow for less than I could now if I could find as nice a PSU without going into an entirely other class like the ASUS THOR. Now it will be fine for my foolish 5950x 6900xt 570s build too. Everything went up by so much that buying big was wise. For my sons twin rig I went with the similar 700watt model thinking I was being reasonable here as he doesn't quite demand as much from his gear. I actually had to send in the 700 just after store coverage expired he's looking at upgrading his GPU after my venerable 290 died in his care short few years after his twin card died... and paying more than I had for for an upgrade almost side grade PSU. To be sensible now I'd be buying again (that sucks) choosing in many cases between either as nice looking or as power efficient a power supply and not both certainly not also as potent else I'd be looking at paying double what I had.
Considering the boy is getting a foundational upgrade one way or another, either continuing borrowing my b550 Asrock and 5700g and adding the GPU to that or upgrading to the 5900/Asus B550 F system I'm building and he just doesn't have the tech lust I do... though he plays far more games... the 850 might just need replacing again for another graphics update alone even in the future. Had I just got two of the 1050watt I would surely have had more capacity than needed for a time but would have spent less and in the long run made less waste and generally might have event saved more power.
I feel it's worth saying old as the video is but you guys generally get so much right though.
As a person with 1950x dual gpu and 4GHz overclock and works 8h a day on 3D with blender, it was a fun video to watch, but... That's about it 😀
I did skip through some bits so could have missed this, but don't most PSUs have the highest efficiency rating at around 50%?
I realize that this comment is a little late but here goes. PC Power & Cooling PSUs have set up (at least the last time I bought a PSU) their PSU with a single 12 V rail, not multiple 12 V rails where each one is limited in amperage. To me this makes a lot more sense than limited rails. What is your take on this? I am a retired electrical engineer.
Have you done any testing on state-of-the-art power supplies? (Brigeless PFC, integrated magnetics, synchronous rectification, 0 EMI, 0 ripple, 98% efficiency, .999 PF).
The lack of low wattage PSUs is crazy when you do a non-gaming build. I recorded my dad's PC as maxing out under 30W from the wall. It has a 400W Bronze PSU because it was the cheapest quality ATX PSU I could find.
I would have loved a power brick or otherwise small/non-ATX mount but it would have added at least 50% the price onto the build for something that was ok to be ugly & bulky.
check out HDPLEX.com They have tiny PSUs, but probably not what you're looking for. I found them when I was looking into ways to DIY a gaming laptop with RC car lipos and desktop parts when I noticed an ITX motherboard and two-slot GPU are almost exactly the same size as my old Thinkpad T500 with the lid closed, with enough extra space for a 68Wh lipo.
@Vergo Bret Thank you sir!
@Derek Moore You need a device in between your PC's power cord and the wall outlet with power monitoring functionality. They make single plug devices for this exact purpose(Kill-a-Watt is a brand that makes these) but I use a UPS(Think a power strip with a battery to keep you running a bit longer when a power outage hits.) Both of these display information on a small screen.
JayzTwoCents did a video on extension cords where he used one of these throughout the video, I'd recommend searching that up to see how it works in video format.
@Vergo Bret I'm still not sure how to measure. Can you describe the process in layman's terms, I'm a bit of an idiot.
@Derek Moore On my UPS battery backup, you could just use a Kill-a-Watt if you just wanted to measure the power consumption. Worth noting you're also measuring efficiency losses of your PSU this way not just component usage.
Huh, looking at this, it seems I could've saved myself some cash if I went with a lower power supply, as I'm on a R5 3600 paired with a GTX 1650 Super(only card left in stock that wasn't a GT 710 back when I bought this in late November) on a 450 watt power supply. Better safe than sorry, I guess, plus it gives me expansion headroom.
interesting. My system is supposedly pulling at the max 530W according to several PSU calculators. Running with a Corsair RM650X 80gold. It works very well and i doubt i will actually draw 530 watts at all
Those calculators are designed just to give you an idea, in the real world your system will pull much less. I'm running my r5 2600x and rx580 on 450 from Corsair with no problems.
Steve : "...so if you are runnig a cpu that takes up to - this is kjind of an unreasonable amount-250 watts"
Core i9-12900k:
I have the EVGA 650 GQ 80+ gold semi-modular PS.
Spent months researching power requirements, 80+ ratings, modular vs semi vs non, what PSUs came with black cables, then saw this on sale $30 off.
Black Friday and Boxing day FTW.
Thanks for this very well done and informative video covering this topic.
I didn't see it - I'd love to know the expected usage through part picker, and then what it actually draws.
When are we ever going to see a video where he can provide simple and clean answer 😢
I love how anything to do with Pc part testing or building they have to put out a disclosure statement longer then a pharmaceutical add in fear of all the backlash. Some guy finds some hypothetical situation that proves the content creator in the wrong then everyone jumps on the bandwagon and shames them. I find today the content creators putting out reviews of products as well as the guys doing new builds to be just awesome unfortunately I find the community watching sucks.
clip-share.net/video/7bliFw1Z9wM/video.html
Thats what happens when you want quality for the things you want, someone gotts do it, and technology goes like this so...
Gamers: What are all these extra watts for?
Nvidia: It's a surprise tool that will help us later
@Triliner The problem is the power spikes can spike to pull over that number depending on what else you're powering. Might be fine year 1 as well but PSUs usually lose 5 to 10% of their max output over 4 to 8 years of constant usage a year.
@Auntie Pha You can run a 3080 on a 600W PSU.
@Mirage 50-100W is enough, future proofing is other thing.
Mid tier hardware isn't really that power hungry, from one calculator for 5600x and 3060Ti iirc was 400 or 450W recommended, get 700W and be set for [however long psu will last].
@Mirage Right on, I agree with you 100%. The funny thing is I have spent a ton more time on this single thread defending my PSU usage than I have spent troubleshooting my PSU problems since I bought that 750 watt EVGA gold, which are zero. lol Thanks for the message Bluemishka.
@Birb 50-100W headroom isnt a lot at all, especially if you change your hardware for something more powerful.
I spent 40 years in physics labs. I like your process - solid conclusions.
That was so helpful, thank you. I have an 850w PSU and most likely of your numbers I could have gotten a 500-600w PSU.
@mintcat exactly. I get what he's saying when you see people who need a 750w power supply buy some $400 1600 watt PSU, but if you're looking at the 750 watt I would just spend the extra $10 for the 850 watt version instead. Nothing wrong with overhead as UNDER powering a board is way worse than having excess
@Mike Edwards I agree. I rather have to much then barely enough. I've seen weird PC issues come up because the PSU was within range but still not enough.
there's nothing wrong with overkill. I like having 30-40% overhead over what I need as the money difference is barely noticeable. better to have it and never need it, and need it and don't have it. Especially if you some day add a next gen GPU in later on down the road or a next gen CPU (cough, Rocketlake, cough) that can use HUNDREDS of watts more than the previous gen). I mean, he's right that you don't need insane 1600 watt PSUs, but nothing wrong with having a a few hundred watts overkill
Steve is a good power supply. I got a Steve too, very handy and fix itself. My Steve sleeps under my desk and only wakes up to drink mountain dew and eat Doritos when he isn't fixing my PC. 10/10 recommends
@Lord Inquisitor Stefan Austerius my Steve is old school and only drinks Bawls
I can confirm this. Except for the drink. There are some that prefers coffee.
Steve commendment day
Steve: You don't need a 1000 watt PSU for this type of setup
NVIDIA 3000 Series: You're right... I could use a little more XD
It's not about the amount of watts, it's the friends we make along the way.
10 years ago, I bought chieftec CFT 14 750W fully modular and at that time, one of the better units, and more expensive units for....~$90 US. Today, similar 750W PSU is ~140 US. and a 500W one, as we could see on your video, are ~90 $US. They are fighting, not. They can charge whatever they want now because they are without any challenge, they all made a deal so consumer almost has no choice. How silly is it that you can get used 1200W CM top line PSU (used but properly working) for 150$ US ? You don't have much savings on a $90...that class of PSU was ~$60 some years ago (while trashy PSU were ~25
You think ever rising USA debt doesn't affect inflation and the buying power of ze dolar?