Wasting Money on Power Supplies: How Many Watts You Need for a PC PSU (2020)
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Date: 2020-09-01
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Comments and reviews: 10
jankerson1
My system actually pulls up to 550W give or take from the wall when gaming.. Depending on the game. MAX I saw is 660W+ from the wall stressing it out. FURMARK and Prime 95 both running... System specs: i9 9900K 5.0 GHz, NH D15, 32 GB GSKILL Trident Z RGB, AORUS Z390 MASTER, EVGA RTX 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra, Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB, Samsung 860 EVO 1TB, Samsung 860 EVO 500GB, ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27 , Steel Series APEX PRO, Logitech Gaming Pro Mouse, CM Master Case 5, Seasonic Prime Titanium Ultra 750W......(Corsair HX 850 in the system now) The main issues I see are on both underbuying and over buying.... People will severely under recommend wattage all the time, like the bare min to barely run the machine with little no overhead at all. And then the crazy ones who buy those 1,000W + PSUs.... While people do need to give some wattage headroom for future upgrades etc as with the long warranties that the good PSUs have there days, 10 and 12 years. So that PSU could last through 2 or 3 builds. One could go with 30% to 40% over provisioning of actual gaming wattage without too much trouble and no negatives. Comes down to have many PSUs does someone really want to buy in a 10 to 12 year period? One or 2 or 3?
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My system actually pulls up to 550W give or take from the wall when gaming.. Depending on the game. MAX I saw is 660W+ from the wall stressing it out. FURMARK and Prime 95 both running... System specs: i9 9900K 5.0 GHz, NH D15, 32 GB GSKILL Trident Z RGB, AORUS Z390 MASTER, EVGA RTX 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra, Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB, Samsung 860 EVO 1TB, Samsung 860 EVO 500GB, ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27 , Steel Series APEX PRO, Logitech Gaming Pro Mouse, CM Master Case 5, Seasonic Prime Titanium Ultra 750W......(Corsair HX 850 in the system now) The main issues I see are on both underbuying and over buying.... People will severely under recommend wattage all the time, like the bare min to barely run the machine with little no overhead at all. And then the crazy ones who buy those 1,000W + PSUs.... While people do need to give some wattage headroom for future upgrades etc as with the long warranties that the good PSUs have there days, 10 and 12 years. So that PSU could last through 2 or 3 builds. One could go with 30% to 40% over provisioning of actual gaming wattage without too much trouble and no negatives. Comes down to have many PSUs does someone really want to buy in a 10 to 12 year period? One or 2 or 3?
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Daniel
I always over specify my power supplies, they're the most important part of the computer. They go wrong, computer goes bang. Experience and reading specs and reviews suggests they are most efficient when not run at full capacity, and a more powerful supply will run cooler and quieter when dealing with a lower load than its maximum. My 750w should be more than enough for my i7-6700k and GTX 1070, and it keeps the fan running slow with minimal noise. Most I've seen from my power meter is 350-400w when running full synthetic benchmarks and that includes the monitors.
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I always over specify my power supplies, they're the most important part of the computer. They go wrong, computer goes bang. Experience and reading specs and reviews suggests they are most efficient when not run at full capacity, and a more powerful supply will run cooler and quieter when dealing with a lower load than its maximum. My 750w should be more than enough for my i7-6700k and GTX 1070, and it keeps the fan running slow with minimal noise. Most I've seen from my power meter is 350-400w when running full synthetic benchmarks and that includes the monitors.
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LordBattleSmurf
Steve I understand your concerns/ arguments, but respectfully I don't think you appreciate the fact that when people look into my tempered glass case and see only a 3 figure power supply rather than a 4 figure 1,000 watt PSU gold+... they will completely lose all respect for me and think I'm just a poor casual thats masquerading as Elite PC Master Race. It's like those people in England with giant estates/ mansions passed down for generations, but the descendant can't even afford to maintain a proper wait staff/ groundskeeper! How embarrassing!
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Steve I understand your concerns/ arguments, but respectfully I don't think you appreciate the fact that when people look into my tempered glass case and see only a 3 figure power supply rather than a 4 figure 1,000 watt PSU gold+... they will completely lose all respect for me and think I'm just a poor casual thats masquerading as Elite PC Master Race. It's like those people in England with giant estates/ mansions passed down for generations, but the descendant can't even afford to maintain a proper wait staff/ groundskeeper! How embarrassing!
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Draken
Still rocking my Gold AX1200. Still going strong and so far no hiccups. I do like the silent operation until it getting over 40% usage.
I since 2012 and still kicking have used it for Crossfire and SLI through several builds. Is it overkill? certainly, did I buy it? No.
These days I am using it for my R9 3950X, 5700XT and barely sipping power off the wall, I do have several fans and drives (mostly SSDs now) so nowhere over 500 watts.
at least I know I have room for expansion. RTX 3090 might push it up there with a nice OC.
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Still rocking my Gold AX1200. Still going strong and so far no hiccups. I do like the silent operation until it getting over 40% usage.
I since 2012 and still kicking have used it for Crossfire and SLI through several builds. Is it overkill? certainly, did I buy it? No.
These days I am using it for my R9 3950X, 5700XT and barely sipping power off the wall, I do have several fans and drives (mostly SSDs now) so nowhere over 500 watts.
at least I know I have room for expansion. RTX 3090 might push it up there with a nice OC.
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Marco
I actually did expect lower values. I have a 2070 and an 4690k 4.4Ghz (yes I know, not exactly balanced) and use a 450W SFX power supply. My entire PC (including monitor) usually uses around 300 Watt (measured at the wall) so I think Im well covered.
But your numbers are way higher.
I looked a bit into it and it seems it comes down to modern cpus consuming about double than what my old i5 does. But it could also be that I never fired a stress test on it that loads everything fully at the same time.
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I actually did expect lower values. I have a 2070 and an 4690k 4.4Ghz (yes I know, not exactly balanced) and use a 450W SFX power supply. My entire PC (including monitor) usually uses around 300 Watt (measured at the wall) so I think Im well covered.
But your numbers are way higher.
I looked a bit into it and it seems it comes down to modern cpus consuming about double than what my old i5 does. But it could also be that I never fired a stress test on it that loads everything fully at the same time.
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lucianoag999
If you only game occasionally, I would recommend going with a power supply that will be loaded to let s say 80-85% while gaming. At higher load factors the efficiency doesn t drop down as fast as for low load factors. If you are using the computer mainly for office work you might be consuming 50-100W. Steve, can we have a follow up on that? Load at idle or office/media applications and the resulting efficiency? That would be great to encourage environmental awareness.
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If you only game occasionally, I would recommend going with a power supply that will be loaded to let s say 80-85% while gaming. At higher load factors the efficiency doesn t drop down as fast as for low load factors. If you are using the computer mainly for office work you might be consuming 50-100W. Steve, can we have a follow up on that? Load at idle or office/media applications and the resulting efficiency? That would be great to encourage environmental awareness.
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Toaster
Steve, you need to understand that i don't buy my power supply based on some gaming consumption.
My Power Supply needs to deliver even when every component draws 100% power. So for example, a test where prime95 with furmark and maybe some other things like hdd stress testing running simultaneously on the overclocked machine and a histogramm that looks at the voltage numbers could be a better indicator if my power supply is able to deliver rock stable voltages.
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Steve, you need to understand that i don't buy my power supply based on some gaming consumption.
My Power Supply needs to deliver even when every component draws 100% power. So for example, a test where prime95 with furmark and maybe some other things like hdd stress testing running simultaneously on the overclocked machine and a histogramm that looks at the voltage numbers could be a better indicator if my power supply is able to deliver rock stable voltages.
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Packerman
I ve been planning on building a computer since last winter, I ve got a great idea on all of the parts I want, cpu, ram, graphics card, mobo, and the peripherals, the psu is really the only part that I m not that confident on and I d like a good recommendation for a 650w 80+G and fully modular one. There s a 4 and 8 pin eps connector on the motherboard I m choosing so that would be nice to have as well
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I ve been planning on building a computer since last winter, I ve got a great idea on all of the parts I want, cpu, ram, graphics card, mobo, and the peripherals, the psu is really the only part that I m not that confident on and I d like a good recommendation for a 650w 80+G and fully modular one. There s a 4 and 8 pin eps connector on the motherboard I m choosing so that would be nice to have as well
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BigAl268
The thing that drives me the most Crazy is when I'm looking for say a 500-600w Gold rated PSU, but find a 750w Bronze rated for Cheaper and they all have good Costumer Reviews!
I Always get the Gold rated ones, but it's so hard to pass on that higher wattage one! I Have to remind myself that Gold Rated supplies come with a Longer Warranty over Bronze!
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The thing that drives me the most Crazy is when I'm looking for say a 500-600w Gold rated PSU, but find a 750w Bronze rated for Cheaper and they all have good Costumer Reviews!
I Always get the Gold rated ones, but it's so hard to pass on that higher wattage one! I Have to remind myself that Gold Rated supplies come with a Longer Warranty over Bronze!
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Darkflash
Very interesting. With the availability - If you could call it that at the moment - Of very high wattage power supplies I've been very curious what the usage numbers actually looked like. Turns out they're a little lower than I would have expected, leaving me with a bit more margin on most of my machines than I expected while still being within reason.
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Very interesting. With the availability - If you could call it that at the moment - Of very high wattage power supplies I've been very curious what the usage numbers actually looked like. Turns out they're a little lower than I would have expected, leaving me with a bit more margin on most of my machines than I expected while still being within reason.
reply
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