How much power should my PC be drawing?

[Shabuti]

Hey so I just recently replaced my 15+ year old Antec Earthwatts 650 with a Corsair RM750. Only really because I felt it was time, the Antec actually wasnt showing any problems. Im also looking into upgrading my graphics card, and didnt really take that into account when getting this new power supply. So I wanted to know what my options were, and for that I needed to know what my current rig draws.

Bought a power meter, and playing cyberpunk at 1080p high settings for an hour Im showing my PC drawing 360watt maximum from the wall. Which if my calculations are correct, puts my PC current power requirements around 320 watts. Does this sound right? Sounds a bit low to me, especially given my equipments age. My specs are as follows, and aside from the PSU and RAM all were purchased new in 2012:

Intel i7 970 3.2GHz (no OC, turbo mode off 130tdp)

ASUS P6x58-e pro motherboard

6 x 8GB (48GB) Patriot Viper DDR3 1866

Evga Founders Edition GTX 680 4GB OC (1.2ghz core/3ghz ram)

3 x 140mm fans
2 x 120mm fans

7200rpm 2TB hard drive
256GB SATA SSD
USB powered external bluray drive

I was looking at upgrading to either an AMD 7900XTX if I have enough available power, maybe run it without boost clocks to keep power draw down if need be.

Or also looking at an nvidia 4070 for more power efficiency.

 

[johnb35]

Minimum recommended psu for the 7900xtx is 800 watts while the 4070 is 650 watts. Your current setup is probably under 400 watts.

 

[Shabuti]

Minimum recommended psu for the 7900xtx is 800 watts while the 4070 is 650 watts. Your current setup is probably under 400 watts.

Right. I know what they recommend for power but I also know everyones power draw varies so I figured maybe I could get away with a 750 instead of 800.

So if my calculations are correct then given that my 680 is reporting around 180watt on average power draw then moving up to a card thats 335w then I should be sitting around 475watts which should be ok with a 750watt psu right?

Does that all sound about right?

 

[johnb35]

Just compare a few psu calculator websites and see what you get. The recommended psu will have some headroom for upgrades but not much. For more headroom go 100 watts over minimum requirement.

 

[Shabuti]

Just compare a few psu calculator websites and see what you get. The recommended psu will have some headroom for upgrades but not much. For more headroom go 100 watts over minimum requirement.

Ok, thank you. I think Ill go ahead and get the 7900xtx when the time comes. Iv heard that it tends to have power spikes that draw alot more power than its supposed to, but I guess worst case scenario Ill have to cross that bridge when I get there.

Im also planning on replacing my hard drive with a 4TB ssd as well and I can always disconnect my dvd drive that I dont really use anyway and gain a few watts to spare.

 

[beers]

I think Ill go ahead and get the 7900xtx when the time comes.

I hope you're also planning to replace the rest of your system.

 

[Shabuti]

I hope you're also planning to replace the rest of your system.

Well no, not at the current moment. As of now, I havent encountered anything thats really pushed my cpu at all. Even cyberpunk at best uses 50%, usually doesnt go over 40%.

As of right now, in every test Iv done Im benchmarking pretty close to a 3GB 1060 in games.

Of course, that may change with a new graphics card. But, another bridge Ill cross when I get there.

 

[beers]

Compared to even an ‘old’ 8700k you’d be losing nearly half the performance even on 1080

 

[Shabuti]

Compared to even an ‘old’ 8700k you’d be losing nearly half the performance even on 1080

Hmm, very interesting. Ill give it a whirl with my 970 and see what happens. Iv been thinking about getting a new platform, mostly because this computer was submerged for 2 weeks in a flood. I was able to clean everything up and its worked good since and that was almost 4 years ago now only problem I have though is almost all of my USB ports are wonky. I have 2 good ports that dont give me issue, the rest are very finiky.

Honestly as long as Im getting constantly above 30fps smooth Im fine with it. Im not one of the 60fps requirment people, I dont play online shooters so ultra high framerates mean nothing to me.

I know my 680 is holding my whole system up right now, so thats first on my list to upgrade. From there, if Im getting the kind of performance issues shown in that video Ill look into a new build. Id be surprised if it was that big of a difference though, seems excessive but my 680 just isnt keeping up with my 970 at all to know right now.

I can say though, Iv done alot of testing with my cpu and I recently did one in cyberpunk. And with my 680, at 1080p high settings going from 3.2ghz to 4ghz with my cpu yielded no performance increase. Not even 1 fps. And this is the only game I have currently that really uses my cpu above 20%. Most of my games dont really go over 20% usage.

 

[Shabuti]

Compared to even an ‘old’ 8700k you’d be losing nearly half the performance even on 1080

After going through the comments, a few things have been pointed out about that video.

1. The memory configuration for the 970 indicates its running in single channel, and much lower clock speeds than the 8700k. So not exactly a 1:1 comparison being done here. 16GB indicates either 2 x 8 GB or 4 x 4GB. Either way, the memory for the 970 was at a significantly reduced performance configuration when compared to the 8700k. The X58 platform supports at least 2133mhz, bit higher than the 1866mhz tested.

2. I havent run all of the specific benchmarks this guy has, but alot of people in the comments are claiming that the synthetic benchmark numbers were alot lower for the 970 than they should have been.

It seems as if the person who did this comparison didnt really give the 970 a fair shot.

 

[gillmanjr]

I'm not sure about the 7900xtx but I know for sure you would be fine with a 4070. I run an overclocked and water cooled 13600k, 4070ti, and a LOT of RGB and a 650W PSU is enough for my system. I know this because I had one. I upgraded it to an 850 just to give me more headroom, but my system was perfectly stable with the 650.