Is my PSU powerful enough to support a 3080 and 2060 Super?

[amiller546]

Hi everyone, I want to use an extra GPU that I have to display to my 2 side monitors and use my main GPU for the center monitor where I play my games. The main is a 3080, the other card is a 2060 Super. Currently the 3080 is outputting to all 3 displays (32” 1440p). I don’t particularly plan to use the 2060 for mining, the main goal is to free up the main gpu for max performance. Also, I might as well use the extra card since I have it.

 

I have two main questions:

1. Is this possible in the first place?

2. is my PSU powerful enough to support this use? And how would I be able to tell?

 

My computer

MoBo: Asus ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming

CPU: Intel i7-9700k

GPU: PNY 3080

RAM: 32 Gb RAM

Wifi Card: Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz

Storage: 1x NVMe drive 1x Sata SSD 2x HDD

PSU: Corsair 850W

 

extra GPU: 2060 Super founders edition

 

Thanks!

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, amiller546 said:

1. Is this possible in the first place?

I mean, yeah, you can use one card for one display and another card for the other two, but it doesn't have a noticeable performance difference. Honestly, the drop from PCIe x16 Gen 3 to Gen 3 x8 that you'd get for adding in the second card would probably be a more noticeable performance downgrade than having your 3080 power all three displays. This just seems like a waste of time. 

 

4 minutes ago, amiller546 said:

2. is my PSU powerful enough to support this use? And how would I be able to tell?

The 2060 would be at idle at all times doing what you want it to do, meaning it would be drawing at most 20-30W. If your current PSU is fine, you're probably gonna be fine with both, though again, this is kinda pointless to do. 

[will0hlep]

unless your running games on the other monitors as well as your main monitor I doubt you'll see any performance boost. Also, unless you have an enterprise board you'll just cut your bandwidth to the GPU which might even harm performance. Plus your thermals will be worse (further hurting performance) and your energy bills will go up for little to no gain (maybe even for negitive gain).

All in all, it's just not worth it. Sell the 2060 or use it for something else.

[_Omega_]

My 6800Xt is powering 4 Displays at once sometimes with 3 being 1080p and one being 1440p ultrawide... just a pure picture or a video is not putting noticeable pressure on the GPU its only when it needs to render something like a game... if you really dont want to connect the second display to the GPU use the iGPU of the CPU, thats way more efferent

[--SID--]

Enable the iGPu in the BIOS and connect the extra monitors to the motherboard!

[amiller546]

27 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I mean, yeah, you can use one card for one display and another card for the other two, but it doesn't have a noticeable performance difference. Honestly, the drop from PCIe x16 Gen 3 to Gen 3 x8 that you'd get for adding in the second card would probably be a more noticeable performance downgrade than having your 3080 power all three displays. This just seems like a waste of time. 

I'll be honest, I didn't expect that. I'm glad I checked before doing this little project.

 

Thanks!

[SpookyCitrus]

No point in adding such a card just to run secondary displays, it would make no performance difference compared towards just plugging all three into the same card.