Enermax PSU Calculator Blows Cover On Unannounced Radeon RX 7000 And RTX 40 GPUs
The power supply unit (PSU) is the unsung hero of the PC, even if all the glory typically goes to the graphics card and/or CPU. Trying to figure out how much wattage you need is the tricky part, and using an online PSU calculator can help take some of the guesswork out of the selection. Evidently, it can also tip you off to what unreleased graphics cards are right around the bend.
That's the assumption, anyway, after taking a peek at the selection offered by Outer Vision's PSU calculator, which Enermax has integrated into its website.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with how these tools work, you select parts from a series of pull-down menus to get a rough estimate of the recommended minimum PSU wattage. So for example, a system with a Core i9-12900KF processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 RAM (2x16GB), an NVMe SSD and a 3.5-inch HDD for storage, three USB 3.0 devices, a high-end soundcard, and a 280mm AIO liquid cooler calls for a minimum 849W PSU, according to the PSU calculator.
That's right in line with what NVIDIA lists as the minimum system power (850W) for the GeForce RTX 4090. And while there are other factors to consider (modular cabling, efficiency, and so forth), it at least puts you in the appropriate ballpark. In this scenario, you can rule out shopping for a 500W PSU, and may even want to consider in a 1,000W unit.
What's interesting is that Outer Vision's PSU calculator references several unreleased GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA. As it applies to the latter, the only Ada Lovelace GPUs that officially exist are the GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080 16GB, and GeForce RTX 4080 12GB. However, the PSU calculator also lists GeForce RTX 4070 and GeForce RTX 4060 models in its GPU pull-down menu. Have a look...
As to the power requirements, here's what the PSU calculator recommends as the minimum wattage for each GeForce RTX 40 series GPU, based on the same specs previously outlined...
- GeForce RTX 4090: 849W
- GeForce RTX 4080: 716W
- GeForce RTX 4070: 680W
- GeForce RTX 4060: 594W
The PSU calculator doesn't discern between 16GB and 12GB variants of the GeForce RTX 4080, even though the memory configuration isn't the only difference. For reference, NVIDIA recommends a minimum system power of 750W for the 16GB model with 9,728 CUDA cores, and 700W for the 12GB model with 7,680 CUDA cores.
The calculator also appears to spill the beans on AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series, based on its RDNA 3 graphics architecture. Here are the models listed, along with the recommended minimum wattage based on the same Alder Lake setup...
- Radeon RX 7950 XT: 818W
- Radeon RX 7900 XT: 726W
- Radeon RX 7800 XT: 696W
- Radeon RX 7700 XT: 594W
There's no way of knowing if these are simply placeholders based on educated guesses, or if Outer Vision and Enermax are working with official data provided by AMD and NVIDIA. For what it's worth, the recommended wattage values are noticeably different than the cards these models are set to replace. For example, plugging in a Radeon RX 6900 XT calls for a 696W PSU, whereas the Radeon RX 7900 XT designation returns a slightly higher 726W recommendation.
You can play around with Enermax's online PSU yourself to see how different configs affect the recommended PSU wattage.
