You’ll soon be able to slot an Nvidia RTX 4090 into your PC, with the launch date of the RTX 4000 flagship just around the corner, but you may want to check your power supply before placing any orders. While an 850W PSU is recommended for the GeForce graphics card, you might need a bit more juice to get some models of the pixel pusher running in your rig.
We’ve known that the RTX 4090 would be a power hungry graphics card long before its official reveal, with practically countless leaks painting the GPU as insatiable for watts. This, thankfully, isn’t quite the case, but pairing the most powerful RTX 4000 model with the best power supply money can buy may still be a necessity of sorts.
Looking at Nvidia’s official product page, the Founders Edition versions of the RTX 4090 should run just fine on an 850W power supply. However, when looking at some models made by the likes of Asus, MSI, and other board partners, as highlighted by harukaze5719, this recommendation can break the triple digit barrier, coming in at 1,000W.
The reason behind this larger power draw is down to several factors, including after market cooling solutions, factory overclocks, and RGB LEDs. Even so, this is still a significant increase versus the best graphics card on the market right now, the RTX 3090 Ti.
Should the cost of running an RTX 4090 send a shiver down your spine (let alone its actual price), then waiting for an RTX 4080 could be the way to go. Alternatively, AMD RDNA 3 GPUs could offer comparable performance to team green’s Lovelace offerings while consuming much less power.