Need a help picking out the right wattage PSU, internet is full of mixed information.

[_ben--]

 

Upgrading my PC and need a new power supply as I am terrified of using mine for a new card, and can't.

Current rig:

 

Ryzen 5 2600

GTX 970 (getting an RX 5700 (non xt))

Gigabyte B450M DS3H

16 GB 2400 mhz

250GB Sata SSD

1TB 7.2k RPM HDD

650W generic random power supply I must've taken out from an old PC, hell it has a single 6pin with the other for the gpu coming from a 2x molex to 6pin adapter (surprisingly GPU draws the rated amount of power at 100% usage) and has no on or off switch

 

There's a lot of information online that all differs ever so slightly, some say 100w overhead, some say multiply your load wattage from a PSU calculator by 1.4 or 1.5, some say go for double as PSUs are at their most reliable and efficient at 50% capacity. That last part is what's interesting for me, as I'm working on a budget and don't think I can let myself spend more than half of the GPU price on the PSU as I've already upped my budget from 30 euros used to 60ish new/used and I've read that if I decide to go for a budget option its best to go for higher wattage ones for the previously stated reason.

So what information is accurate? OuterVision's calculator estimates the load wattage to be at around 340 Watts. Should I go for a 550W one, a 600w or even a 750W?

Used market here in my country is scarce, mostly filled with old high wattage corsair PSUs and random AliExpress types, which makes me look more at new budget units (like the bQ System Power 10 or various Deepcool PK series models), but the PSU tier list puts most of those at E tier, which I assume is due to a lack of reviews for them rather than them being a bomb risk. I mean, my sketchy PSU is yet to shut my system down once and my GPU is nearly always at max draw during games. It even handled furmark tests with power limit set to 110%. Thats one of the reasons im sceptical of statements that buying anything under B or C tier is a huge risk.

 

Anyway, any help is appreciated, I'm here to get help and learn some PSU information as well!

[Poinkachu]

40 minutes ago, _ben-- said:

 

Upgrading my PC and need a new power supply as I am terrified of using mine for a new card, and can't.

Current rig:

 

Ryzen 5 2600

GTX 970 (getting an RX 5700 (non xt))

Gigabyte B450M DS3H

16 GB 2400 mhz

250GB Sata SSD

1TB 7.2k RPM HDD

650W generic random power supply I must've taken out from an old PC, hell it has a single 6pin with the other for the gpu coming from a 2x molex to 6pin adapter (surprisingly GPU draws the rated amount of power at 100% usage) and has no on or off switch

 

There's a lot of information online that all differs ever so slightly, some say 100w overhead, some say multiply your load wattage from a PSU calculator by 1.4 or 1.5, some say go for double as PSUs are at their most reliable and efficient at 50% capacity. That last part is what's interesting for me, as I'm working on a budget and don't think I can let myself spend more than half of the GPU price on the PSU as I've already upped my budget from 30 euros used to 60ish new/used and I've read that if I decide to go for a budget option its best to go for higher wattage ones for the previously stated reason.

So what information is accurate? OuterVision's calculator estimates the load wattage to be at around 340 Watts. Should I go for a 550W one, a 600w or even a 750W?

Used market here in my country is scarce, mostly filled with old high wattage corsair PSUs and random AliExpress types, which makes me look more at new budget units (like the bQ System Power 10 or various Deepcool PK series models), but the PSU tier list puts most of those at E tier, which I assume is due to a lack of reviews for them rather than them being a bomb risk. I mean, my sketchy PSU is yet to shut my system down once and my GPU is nearly always at max draw during games. It even handled furmark tests with power limit set to 110%. Thats one of the reasons im sceptical of statements that buying anything under B or C tier is a huge risk.

 

Anyway, any help is appreciated, I'm here to get help and learn some PSU information as well!

What country if you don't mind me asking.

 

tl;dr

550w is already plenty of headroom for your system. Like... PLENTY.

 

Easiest way that people here often use to give advice is to use PCpartpicker, see the total watt then add like 100w atleast.

One of the reason is simply so that the PSU won't work at 90%-99% load (Basically it makes the PSU work harder), in which most PSU also works less efficiently at that load level.  (It draws more watts from your wall socket)

 

System Load Watts / Efficiency level = Amount of watts being pulled from the wall.

example : 500 watts system load , 80% efficiency = 625 watts being pulled out from the wall socket.

 

 

 

Not to mention the PSU fan gonna work at higher RPM as well

 

 

About sketchy PSU, well.

For low load stuffs they're probably fine.
For higher load though they may start to exhibit problems or goes straight to catastrophe mode.

 

As for their efficiency level, who knows.

 

So yep, it depends on the PSU actual quality and what it's used for.

[bmx6454]

17 minutes ago, _ben-- said:

Upgrading my PC and need a new power supply as I am terrified of using mine for a new card, and can't.

what are you planning on upgrading to? that would be useful in recommending psu's.    edit: apparently i'm blind..

17 minutes ago, _ben-- said:

mean, my sketchy PSU is yet to shut my system down once and my GPU is nearly always at max draw during games. It even handled furmark tests with power limit set to 110%. Thats one of the reasons im sceptical of statements that buying anything under B or C tier is a huge risk.

getting lucky doesn't mean it isn't a sketchy psu. I've learned that the hard way. best not to gamble on cheap psu's when it can be helped.

[Spotty]

RX 5700 is about 175-200W, Ryzen 2600 is about 65W. RAM consumes a couple of watts. SSD will draw about 0.5W, HDD will draw up to around 10W. Other things like case fans are fairly negligible. Motherboard and USB devices maybe 20W, possibly more if you have a bunch of USB stuff plugged in or a bunch of RGB. All up probably around 300W for the system.

A decent 550W power supply will be more than enough.

[Spotty]

Just now, bmx6454 said:

what are you planning on upgrading to? that would be useful in recommending psu's.

Their post says they're replacing their GTX 970 with a RX 5700.

[mariushm]

Ryzen 2600 consumes up to around 80-100 watts. (from 12v output)

GTX 970 consumes up to around 180 watts. RX 5700 consumes up to 200 watts (peaks to, average max is 185w)  (from 12v output)

 

ram consumes around 2-3w per stick or for every 8 GB, so around 5-6 watts for those 16 GB  (usually converted from 5v) 

a mechanical drive consumes around 6-10 watts  and a SSD consumes up to 10w (only when writing a lot of data, during regular reading it's usually under 5w)  (ssds consume only 5v, hard drives around half from 5v, half from 12v)

Your motherboard (chipset, onboard audio, network, etc) will consume around 10-15 watts.... mostly from 5v. 

Fans consume around 2-3w from 12v each.  

 

So technically you would be fine even with a 500w power supply, or any power supply that can supply at least around 400 watts on 12v but most people think of power supplies as something to last at least 5-10 years, a long term investement, and in a few years you may want to upgrade video card to something more modern. 

 

Newer video cards tend to have very brief bursts of power consumption, like for example card consumes up to 250-300 watts but may consume 350-400w for 20 milliseconds every 10-15s or something like that.  Power supplies designed for 400-550w total output may not be designed for such sudden bursts and may shut down or reboot thinking there's something wrong with the hardware pulling that much power so suddenly.... so it makes sense to buy a more beefy power supply like in the 650-750w range, even if you don't need that much.  The price differences are not that big. 

 

Don't buy something cheap, something with ridiculous wattage, buy a decent psu that has good reviews.

 

 

 

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, bmx6454 said:

best not to gamble on cheap psu's when it can be helped.

And usually it can be helped even on a budget as long as you arent scared of buying used quality psus over new garbage (atleast comparing at the same price)

 

1 hour ago, _ben-- said:

650W generic random power supply

Send a picture of the unit and its wattage table

 

It already handles a gtx 970 so it cant be that bad but just need to make sure an upgrade is neccesary or only reccomended/outright uneccesary

 

Also what country and budget? Used psus are a good way of getting quality units for cheap and essentially makes hanging onto an old or meh psu pointless when you can grab a quality used unit for like 20-30$ or a quality 850w gold like the rm(x) for like 40-60$

[_ben--]

5 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

And usually it can be helped even on a budget as long as you arent scared of buying used quality psus over new garbage (atleast comparing at the same price)

 

Send a picture of the unit and its wattage table

 

It already handles a gtx 970 so it cant be that bad but just need to make sure an upgrade is neccesary or only reccomended/outright uneccesary

 

Also what country and budget? Used psus are a good way of getting quality units for cheap and essentially makes hanging onto an old or meh psu pointless when you can grab a quality used unit for like 20-30$ or a quality 850w gold like the rm(x) for like 40-60$

An upgrade is necessary. I said in my post that my current sketchy PSU has only a single 6 pin connector and messing with additional 6pin to 8pin and more molex adapters is the kinda jank I'm trying to avoid by upgrading. My questions weren't necessarily what wattage to buy, more so about the information available online and how much of it translates to real life. I. E., is it actually a bomb risk to buy a Deepcool PK600 powersupply, even though it's under e tier in the PSU tierlist, likely do to a lack of proper reviews. And if I am a buying budegt/low tier PSU (even if from a know brand) would I be better off buying something higher wattage to ensure it's always at its most reliable, efficient state

 

I'm working in a budget of 50-60 euros, and as I've said in my post, the used market here in Lithuania is scarce, mostly filled with 10+ year old high wattage corsairs and AliExpress PSUs or ones pulled from old Workstations/crappy prebuilts. Re read my post if it's not too much trouble, I feel like a high majority of answers here glimpsed through the post and just gave me information I already have, like what my total load wattage would be.

 

 

[_ben--]

6 hours ago, mariushm said:

Ryzen 2600 consumes up to around 80-100 watts. (from 12v output)

GTX 970 consumes up to around 180 watts. RX 5700 consumes up to 200 watts (peaks to, average max is 185w)  (from 12v output)

 

ram consumes around 2-3w per stick or for every 8 GB, so around 5-6 watts for those 16 GB  (usually converted from 5v) 

a mechanical drive consumes around 6-10 watts  and a SSD consumes up to 10w (only when writing a lot of data, during regular reading it's usually under 5w)  (ssds consume only 5v, hard drives around half from 5v, half from 12v)

Your motherboard (chipset, onboard audio, network, etc) will consume around 10-15 watts.... mostly from 5v. 

Fans consume around 2-3w from 12v each.  

 

So technically you would be fine even with a 500w power supply, or any power supply that can supply at least around 400 watts on 12v but most people think of power supplies as something to last at least 5-10 years, a long term investement, and in a few years you may want to upgrade video card to something more modern. 

 

Newer video cards tend to have very brief bursts of power consumption, like for example card consumes up to 250-300 watts but may consume 350-400w for 20 milliseconds every 10-15s or something like that.  Power supplies designed for 400-550w total output may not be designed for such sudden bursts and may shut down or reboot thinking there's something wrong with the hardware pulling that much power so suddenly.... so it makes sense to buy a more beefy power supply like in the 650-750w range, even if you don't need that much.  The price differences are not that big. 

 

Don't buy something cheap, something with ridiculous wattage, buy a decent psu that has good reviews.

 

 

 

 

I've found a decent 750W gold rated unit from Deepcool used, that falls under the C tier in the PSU tierlist, but that's still over double my maximum load wattage and I very much doubt I'll be every upgrading to any higher tier GPU that would have a significantly higher TDP, I mostly stay within the mid tier. I am however wondering how big of an issue would it be if I were to buy something that falls under E tier (likely for a lack of credible reviews) that would be more within reason of my current and likely future usage, like a 550 or a 600w unit. I've read around that if you're buying a lower tier, budget unit, it's better to go for higher wattage ones as it will never go over 50-60% capacity and will be less likely to fail, work more efficiently and last longer. I. E. it would be better to buy a say 750w unit than a 450-500w one even if they are from the same brand and same line. How much of that is true?