| System Configuration | Typical Load | Peak Spike | |---------------------|--------------|-------------| | Office PC (i3, no GPU) | 50W–80W | 100W | | Gaming PC (i5 + RTX 3060) | 280W–320W | 360W | | Gaming PC (Ryzen 7 + RTX 4070) | 400W–460W | 520W | | High-end (i9 + RTX 4080) | 550W–650W | 750W | | Extreme (Ryzen 9 + RTX 4090) | 700W–850W | 950W+ |
These often fail at half their claimed wattage and can take your motherboard or GPU with them. The PSU is the one place not to cheap out. computer power supply wattage
Notice that even an RTX 4090 system rarely pulls 850W continuously. So why do people buy 1000W PSUs? Two reasons: efficiency sweet spot and transient spikes. Modern GPUs, especially from NVIDIA’s RTX 30-series and AMD’s RX 6000/7000 series, can draw 2–3x their rated TDP for milliseconds. A 300W GPU might spike to 600W for 1/100th of a second. | System Configuration | Typical Load | Peak