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Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics card is a power-guzzling beast, that’s a given, but we weren’t expecting to see some of the numbers third-party card manufacturers recommend for the power supply wattage (PSU) required by this GPU.
In some cases, we’re looking at a 1000W recommendation, and one company has even pushed the demand to 1200W, an unimaginably required wattage not too long ago. (Note that this is the PSU’s wattage, not the card usage).
You may know that Nvidia’s official recommendation is an 850W PSU, and indeed this is the level that some third-party graphics card makers hold with some of their RTX 4090 cards (even away from entry-level versions).
As Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab) points out, that includes MSI (with the RTX 4090 Suprim X), PNY (Verto Epic-X), Galax (SG, ST), Inno3D (X3 OC iChill Black). These all have an 850W requirement.
Then there are the graphics cards that require a 1000W PSU, these are models from Asus (ROG Strix OC), Gigabyte (Aorus Master) and Zotac (AMP Extreme, Trinity).
And finally, there’s Palit who advises buyers of his GameRock OC version of the RTX 4090 to have a 1200W power supply.
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These are all the best graphics cards from the respective manufacturers (or at least more expensive models), as Tom’s points out, so these will be the thirstiest graphics cards (when they come out next week).
The base RTX 4090 models do indeed adhere to Nvidia’s 850W recommendation, but with these supercharged third-party creations, with nice cooling and increased clock speeds, it’s no surprise that they’re power guzzlers. And we can see the logic in delivering increased power requirements in a better-safe-than-sorry way for the manufacturer.
Especially when these models are the graphics cards likely to be bought by the really industrious overclocking PC enthusiasts, so the GPUs are likely to be pushed really hard and maybe team up with a power-guzzling Intel CPU. (Alder Lake Core i9 offers high power consumption, and Raptor Lake in ‘extreme performance’ mode is supposed to go even further with its wattage guzzling).
What mapmakers are thinking is that maybe they should consider what can happen in these kinds of scenarios where very power-hungry GPUs and CPUs are running in combo, when the system is fully running with a demanding game or heavy app of some sort – and all is well. overclocked to boot. Indeed, as Tom points out, Asus said it assumes 4090 owners will overclock their graphics card and processor, and as noted, that’s very likely when it comes to this high-end area.
As to why Palit has increased its demands to 1200W, the company has not shared its opinion with that move, and it’s not really clear. The Palit GameRock OC does boost to 2610MHz, which is certainly faster than some RTX 4090s, but 30MHz lower than the Asus ROG Strix OC which sticks to a (just, ahem) 1000W recommendation. We can only guess that Palit is using an abundance of caution here, or perhaps there has been an error (or slip of the key) with the spec sheet here.
All of this underscores quite a bit of a minefield power requirements become with today’s PCs, if you have graphics cards that take that kind of toll on the PSU, not to mention flagship processors that can pull around 250W (Intel’s 12900K – while the incoming 13900K , as mentioned, rumor has it that it will hit more like 350W in that performance mode).
Not to mention that buying a PSU isn’t as easy as buying, say, an 850W model. You need to make sure you’re getting a quality power supply, rated gold (at the very least) and one from a trusted brand (like those picked in our list of the best PSUs). These makers provide the products that have been tried and tested by the enthusiast community and provide the best experience in terms of stability, which is a must especially if you are already overclocking high performing hardware.
We always recommend carrying some headroom anyway when it comes to the PSU recommendation, and it seems card makers are proactively doing this with their faster RTX 4090s with all the bells and whistles. But avid overclockers will know this well anyway, and this area is of course hardly the domain of the average consumer.