GeForce GTX, RTX and Radeon RX, What Model Does Your GPU Need?

Before starting you should bear in mind that, when choosing a power source for your equipment, there are several factors that influence in addition to its maximum power, such as its energy efficiency or the amperage (current intensity) that it is capable of. deliver on their + 12V rails. Leaving this aside but of course taking it into account before choosing, below we are going to tell you what the manufacturers say – in this case, ASUS – about the power your source needs to have depending on the processor and GPU you have.

Power supply power with NVIDIA GPU

These are the ASUS recommendations regarding the minimum power that our power supply for NVIDIA GPUs should have, regardless of whether you have an RTX or GTX but in all cases relatively modern, starting with the Turing architecture. The power is also detailed in the table depending on the type of processor you have, be it Intel or AMD.

So, if you have for example an Intel Core i7-8700K processor and your GPU is an RTX 2080, according to the manufacturer you would need a power supply of at least 650 watts. If your computer incorporates an Intel Core i7-10700K processor and you intend to buy one of the new RTX 3090s, in that case the recommendation is that your power supply has, at least, a power of 750 watts.

Power supply power with AMD GPU

If the chosen graphics card is an AMD Radeon, then we will tell you what ASUS says about the power of the power supply that you should have, also depending on the type of processor you have. You will notice that it is curious that here, for the Radeon Vega, the power they recommend is quite excessive.

With these recommendations, if for example you have an AMD Ryzen 7 3600X processor (AMD’s best seller) and a Radeon RX 5700 XT, the recommendation is that your power supply has a minimum of 750 watts of power; If you had a Ryzen 9 processor and a Vega 64, then they recommend 850 watts of power.

Are these recommendations correct?

It can be seen from a league that these recommendations are very generic, and they can really be correct in general terms but with certain nuances. We are going to take the largest example, an Intel HEDT or Threadripper processor and a Vega64 liquid. This graphics card has a TDP of 345 watts, while an AMD Threadripper 3990X processor has a TDP of 280 watts. Added, this gives us 625 watts, to which should be added the consumption of the rest of the system, approximately 150 watts so as not to fall short. This would give us an estimated maximum consumption of 775 watts, so if the power supply is of good quality, we would personally recommend a more power towards 1,000 watts than the 1,200 that ASUS says.

Let’s take another example a little more “rational”. Imagine a person who has an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X processor, whose TDP is 95 watts, and wants a next-generation RTX 3080 from NVIDIA, whose TDP is 320 watts. Added together we have a CPU and GPU consumption of 415 watts, and if we add the 150 watts (which is pulling at the top) of the rest of the system, the sum gives us 565 watts of maximum consumption. With this combination, ASUS recommends a 750 watt source, and in this case it is much more successful than before, but it will also depend on the quality of the source, obviously.

So in summary, these tables can serve as a point of reference with which you will be sure about the power that your power supply needs depending on the processor and graphics card you have, but we repeat, it will always depend on the quality and the certification of its efficiency.