Magic PSU?

[Plermpel]

Hello,

 

I read everywhere about how much power the 3090 needs. But since my CPU hasen't arrived yet, mine is in my girfriends rig at the time. The PC is equiped with a  3700X, 2 Sata drives, an M.2, 32Gigs of Ram and a whole lot of RGB and fans. All that running off a 650W EVGA PSU.

And guess what, without a single problem. It takes about 30min of Stress Test (prime95+FurMark) to get the fan even spinning. Under full load the whole system sucks about 600W from the wall under full load. And it did never crash so far.

 

So what is this all about, PSU marketing?

Or is my PSU just magic?

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, Plermpel said:

So what is this all about, PSU marketing?

Or is my PSU just magic?

Neither. It's just a recommendation, not a hard requirement, and it's a very conservative recommendation at that so people would hopefully be using the GPU with a beefy enough PSUs.

[Naijin]

46 minutes ago, Plermpel said:

Hello,

 

I read everywhere about how much power the 3090 needs. But since my CPU hasen't arrived yet, mine is in my girfriends rig at the time. The PC is equiped with a  3700X, 2 Sata drives, an M.2, 32Gigs of Ram and a whole lot of RGB and fans. All that running off a 650W EVGA PSU.

And guess what, without a single problem. It takes about 30min of Stress Test (prime95+FurMark) to get the fan even spinning. Under full load the whole system sucks about 600W from the wall under full load. And it did never crash so far.

 

So what is this all about, PSU marketing?

Or is my PSU just magic?

Kitguru did a test with the RTX 3090 testing wall power draw while running 3Dmark Time Spy for 30 minutes. The cpu they used is an i9 10900k. The total system power draw was around 500W or even slightly higher. This benchmark doesn't load the cpu all that much. I'm sure once you stress an overclocked cpu AND an RTX 3090, the 650W might not be enough. The 3090 alone can draw up to 370W, an i9 10900k over 200W and that is without other components or peripherals.

[tikker]

2 hours ago, Plermpel said:

Hello,

 

I read everywhere about how much power the 3090 needs. But since my CPU hasen't arrived yet, mine is in my girfriends rig at the time. The PC is equiped with a  3700X, 2 Sata drives, an M.2, 32Gigs of Ram and a whole lot of RGB and fans. All that running off a 650W EVGA PSU.

And guess what, without a single problem. It takes about 30min of Stress Test (prime95+FurMark) to get the fan even spinning. Under full load the whole system sucks about 600W from the wall under full load. And it did never crash so far.

 

So what is this all about, PSU marketing?

Or is my PSU just magic?

Are you sure Furmark is fully stressing the GPU? I think nowadays GPU Boost will throttle the card in this type of load (previously it was done in the drivers when e.g. Furmark was detected). I'd try other benchmarks or some games as well to test other load scenarios.

 

As others have said, it's a recommendation and as such may be slightly higher than what is actually needed to avoid getting customers complaining their recommendations don't work. On the other hand I have read the power spikes of the RTX 3000 series can trip the overcurrent protection of lesser PSUs, so your mileage may vary.