Will 450W PSU be enough for PowerColor Radeon™ RX 5700 XT?

Andrewxe · July 10, 2023

I am trying to upgrade my current rig.

I have Corsair VS Series™ VS450 — 450 Watt 80 PLUS. Even though PowerColor site says minimum 650W, will my current PSU be enough for the RX 5700 XT?

I have my specs on the PSU calculator

r00tb33r · July 10, 2023

Yeah, it will work.

Neutraliz · July 10, 2023

It will work, technicly. I mean it will boot and goes into windows, web browse and everything. But you might experience issues when gaming.

Thoses calculator aren't precise, and doesn't account for a lot of things, including power efficiency losses, and most importantly power spikes, aka transient power.
And GPUs does that.

It can range from just overdrawing (which result in heat and/or power unefficiency), your GPU underperforming, game crashing to a straight power cut for safety reasons. (But no, it will not burn or explode)

Dukesilver27- · July 10, 2023

PSU calculators only account for the max TDP, which always overestimate the actual power usage.

And suggested PSU by GPU manufacturer is based on the highest power draw of the current CPU, basically they are covering their asses by suggesting the minimum capacity if you have one of those CPUs.

While gaming, your power draw may range somewhere between 300-400W, including mild OC by the GPU manufacturer, so strictly speaking from power draw, it is okay.

However, the PSU is low quality and has to be quite old by now. Safety is quite a concern here. I'd advise against it.

jaslion · July 10, 2023

Orange or white label vs450? Your link doesnt work.

Orange = hard no it will end badly

White = potentially it shuts off around 400w

What are your other specs? As in silly things like nr of case fans

mariushm · July 10, 2023

5700XT consumes up to 220 watts. For very short periods of time (like milliseconds at a time), it peaks to 250 watts.

The 9400F can consume up to around 100-110 watts in heavy CPU benchmarks, while gaming maybe a bit less.

Everything else in your system (fans , mechanical hard drives if any, 12v rgb leds), add another 20-30 watts on 12v output.

So you need a power supply that can supply at LEAST 250w + 100w + 50w = 400w on 12v output. That's a minimum of 400w / 12v = 33.3A on 12v.

Look on the label and see if your power supply can supply this much power on 12v.

Keep in mind also that some models were only rated for continuous power at 30c ambient and if the temperature around the power supply goes over 30c you are supposed to derate the power supply by around 10-20%, making it a 360-400w power supply.

So will it work? Probably yes, because when you're gaming your CPU is not gonna be pegged at 100% so it's not gonna consume 100w. Same for the video card, it's not really gonna consume 220 watts all the time.

BUT, your psu will run at close to 100% when you're gaming and that's not good, considering it's a budget psu where they cheaped out on lots of things...

Ideally though, you should aim for at least a 600-650w power supply, which can provide at least 500 watts on 12v output.