The GeForce RTX 4090 has a legendary power-thirst, but some manufacturers are hyping it a bit much.
Graphics cards are usually the most power-thirsty component in a gaming system, and that’s been the case for quite some time now. Things are approaching absurd levels, though. The GeForce RTX 4090 has a total board power spec of 450 watts, and NVIDIA itself recommends an 850-watt power supply to support it. Some of the GPU company’s board partners have their own ideas about what kind of power supply you should use, though.
Then again, speaking frankly, both AMD and Intel are caught up in a CPU multi-core performance arms race. This is great news for the 3D artists and software developers out there that can make use of the massive multi-core performance of modern microprocessors, but the reality for the majority of users—even almost all gamers—is that just eight cores is more than enough CPU power. Chips like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Core i5-12600K draw less than 100 watts of power while gaming, so even an 850-watt unit should be gross overkill for your system with its shiny new GeForce RTX 4090.
