PSU Recommendation Massive Overkill?

[WallacEngineering]

So I recently picked up a Red Devil RX 7900-XTX after finding an epic deal and watching reviews.

 

Within those reviews obviously a lot of them covered power consumption. Its pretty obvious that the card draws about 300 watts at full load by default. Definitely a fairly power-hungry card, but NOT insanely power hungry.

 

Whats weird is the suggested PSU by both AMD and Power Color is a 1000-Watt PSU. Why...? Thats insane overkill, is it not?

 

I mean even overclocked the card pulls about 350 watts, and even if you pair this with a powerful CPU like the Intel i9-13900K, ur still nowhere near 1000 watts even with full 100% load on both simultaneously... So its weird that this card recommends a 1000 Watt PSU.

 

This isn't just slightly overkill, its like 50% over what the card actually requires. If you leave it stock and get a powerful 200 watt CPU then add in 100 Watts for fans and accessories that's a total system power draw of about 600 watts at 100% load on both GPU and CPU.

 

The only GPU on the market that actually warrants a 1000 watt PSU is the completely unreasonable monster that is the RTX 4090.

 

I just find it weird that the suggested PSU is so hugely overkill when a 750-Watt Gold system could probably handle the 7900-XTX without issue, and Im 100% certain that my existing 850-Watt Platinum Seasonic Prime does NOT need to be upgraded. I should even be able to overclock the entire system without issue as no, Im not getting a 13900K.

 

Its just weird, I wonder why AMD/Power Color decided to recommend such an insanely overkill PSU. Anyone else find this odd?

[jaslion]

So they cannot be blamed for recommending something that can be proven false in a broad way.

 

Basically that psu shutting down due to spikes issue has made them up the recommended psu a lot to avoid legal issues

[RONOTHAN##]

12 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

Within those reviews obviously a lot of them covered power consumption. Its pretty obvious that the card draws about 300 watts at full load by default. Definitely a fairly power-hungry card, but NOT insanely power hungry.

Don't know if we're reading different reviews or what. The Red Devil type cards are about 400W under a gaming load, closer to 450 if you overclock it. The reference cards are the ones closer to 300-350. 

 

15 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

I mean even overclocked the card pulls about 350 watts, and even if you pair this with a powerful CPU like the Intel i9-13900K, ur still nowhere near 1000 watts even with full 100% load on both simultaneously...

The aforementioned 450W for the 7900 XTX, 350-400W for the 13900K (450 when overclocked), plus 100W for everything else in the system and you do end up around 900-1000W 

 

That said, there's also the issue of transient spikes, where these cards will pull well over 500W over the span of a few milliseconds. That extra power can trigger OCP on lower wattage PSUs, even if the average wattage is fine, so the recommendation is more to make sure that it doesn't accidentally trigger OCP. It is definitely overkill for a more average setup, you'll almost certainly be fine with a good 850W, but they want to make sure that if you use a bad 850W unit you can't complain that the card is faulty and they can say your PSU isn't adequate. 

[WallacEngineering]

6 minutes ago, jaslion said:

So they cannot be blamed for recommending something that can be proven false in a broad way.

 

Basically that psu shutting down due to spikes issue has made them up the recommended psu a lot to avoid legal issues

Ya that was the same conclusion I came to because I suppose you COULD technically push close to 1000 watts out of a system that features an RX 7900-XTX if you go to the absolute most extreme lengths.

 

For example if you push air-conditioning or some other form of sub-ambient cooling into the system giving you more overhead, you can push the 7900-XTX to just over 400 watts, then you could get an i9-13900K and use that same sub-ambient cooling to push about 400 watts out of it as well or even more if like Linus you have an actual industrial water chiller on hand (LOL that video was hilarious).

 

I suppose if you create this "Absolute Worst Case Senario" then you might actually NEED a 1000-watt+ PSU.

[WallacEngineering]

4 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Don't know if we're reading different reviews or what. The Red Devil type cards are about 400W

I went off Linus's review, who reported about 315 Watts on the standard "OC" BIOS and also stated that the "Silent" BIOS locks the card to 303 Watts. Apparently the difference in the BIOS switch is miniscule this time around for some reason with the OC BIOS offering only a tiny difference of 40 MHz.

 

But I am aware that 400 watts is possible if pushed to the absolute limits with a way to get temps under standard for more headroom and more capability to push higher voltage (see my previous comment just now)

 

But Ya I suppose the overkill recommendation must be done these days with these insanely power hungry modern components and what you can push them too if you try hard enough, just to avoid legal issues

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, WallacEngineering said:

I went off Linus's review, who reported about 315 Watts on the standard "OC" BIOS and also stated that the "Silent" BIOS locks the card to 303 Watts. Apparently the difference in the BIOS switch is miniscule this time around for some reason with the OC BIOS offering only a tiny difference of 40 MHz.

Yeah, that's the reference card. The triple 8 pin cards like the Red Devil are much more in the 400W region. 

Spoiler

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/xfx-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-merc-310-oc/37.html

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-taichi/37.html

 

Those power figures are all at stock settings. Can't find one of the Red Devil specifically, but from the little I've seen of that card it's not much different than those. 

[WallacEngineering]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah, that's the reference card. The triple 8 pin cards like the Red Devil are much more in the 400W region.

 

No actually Linus did review the Red Devil just not on the main channel, and well I suppose it wasn't too in-depth so I suppose it could be wrong:

 

https://youtu.be/KzIuMMIfTq8