What are the risks of not having enough watts?

[JoostinOnline]

With the GPU power consumption going through the roof with Nvidia's latest release, I thought this was a good question to ask. My understanding is that any power supply with sufficiently calibrated OCP should be fine if you pair it with a power hungry GPU. The GPU may be throttled, but there won't be damage. Is that correct?

[svmlegacy]

3 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

With the GPU power consumption going through the roof with Nvidia's latest release, I thought this was a good question to ask. My understanding is that any power supply with sufficiently calibrated OCP should be fine if you pair it with a power hungry GPU. The GPU may be throttled, but there won't be damage. Is that correct?

A system with OCP with blackscreen if OCP is tripped, no throttling.

[The_russian]

I don't experience with a variety of different power supplies so I can't say they all work like this, but the only time I have used more power than the power supply could provide was with a HDPlex. In my case the system just shut down as soon as the power consumption exceeded the amount available, basically as soon as I started a benchmark. I would suspect other power supplies would behave similarly. 

[Ankerson]

24 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

With the GPU power consumption going through the roof with Nvidia's latest release, I thought this was a good question to ask. My understanding is that any power supply with sufficiently calibrated OCP should be fine if you pair it with a power hungry GPU. The GPU may be throttled, but there won't be damage. Is that correct?

 

Various things could happen if the OCP doesn't kick in properly depending on the PSU and the quality, age etc of the unit.

 

The PSU needs to be matched to the system power and quality wise and with enough headroom so it's not running at near max capacity.

 

So the answer is no, just any power supply is not fine... 

 

If you are thinking the OCP will be a failsafe then you already have a problem... And with the thread title you need to start shopping for a PSU.. 

 

 

[GoldenLag]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

With the GPU power consumption going through the roof with Nvidia's latest release

well its more that the transiense is terrible on the 3080. you will find good but transiense sensetive PSUs tripping. 

 

on any decent PSU the OPP will trip. but you will find things like the seasonic Prime tripping. even if its a good PSU, its a transiense sensetive PSU. 

[JoostinOnline]

9 hours ago, Ankerson said:

If you are thinking the OCP will be a failsafe then you already have a problem... And with the thread title you need to start shopping for a PSU.. 

My PSU is fine.  My concern is for people who think because they had a 980/1080/2080, the 3080 will be fine for them.  Because that's how it's been for a long time.