3d ago

What's the REAL minimum power supply needed for a RTX 5060 Ti?

Hello, technologically minded peoples, I have a question for you.

I would like to know what is the real consumption of a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and what's the real minimum power supply required to feed one the needed juice.

I ask to know if my father also needs to change is current power supply or not. (For the graphic card itself, he doesn't have a choice but to replace it, since his curent one died.)

19 comments

Depends on your CPU and whatever else you have in your PC (e.g. is your cooler a beast too? Do you have six spinning disks? etc).
Generally speaking, 750W should be fine if you're using a boring air cooling setup with an SSD or two.
- Depends on your CPU
  absolutely. some cpu can draw more than the 180 watts of a 5060ti, even without actual 'overclocking', all by themselves when boosting their own clock (such as intel's "turbo power"). even a '65 watt' ultra 7 265 can get up to that.
- @riskable@programming.dev First, thanks for your help.
  The cooling system is a Noctua with two fans. (Don't remember the exact name right now.) For the storage, he only have one SSD & one HDD, but he also have a DVD drive. As for the CPU, his PC starting to be a bit old, he is thinking of also changing it, (which mean changing the motherboard too) but depending on the cost, he might do that latter.
- Crazy. My 1070 was way overpowered with 500W. And even my 7800XT runs fine with it...
  
  The power supply is only going to output what it needs, nothing more. The wattage is a max rating. Oversizing will never harm anything

With a normal CPU around 65W, you would be just fine with a 450W PSU, probably 350W too.

the mininum is dictated by the rest of the components and decision to limit future upgrades down the line.
after you are aware of what cpu you are using
amd and intel sub 250 cpus usually 150w or less
amd high end and alderlake(12gen, and arrowlake), peaks at 250w
intel raptor lake (13-14th gen) 300w
hedt cpus like threadripper fall under a similar class.
peak 5060ti is just under 200w alone.
add an arbitrary 50w to cover rest of components.

The card is rated for 180 watts. It has a single 8 pin power connector, which means the maximum it could possibly draw is 225W. Pick a power supply that will provide that plus whatever the rest of the computer draws. I would suggest oversizing the power supply a bit so you don't use more than about 75% of it's rated output.

(Σ (max TDP of all system components) ) + 20%
Rationale:
PSU works best at 20–80% load
Component TDP are an average; actual power usage can go way down, but also spike above spec for short bursts
Brownout is one of the messiest issues to troubleshoot
Additional considerations:
Check the PSU rail distribution
If separate rails, make sure the GPU rail can meet GPU's TDP+20%
If multiple rails, each should meet whatever is connected to it +20%
If using HDDs or other start-heavy components, factor in the initial power spike (staggered start is also an option). GPU starting at almost idle should compensate for the overall power requirement, but still factor it into the rail calculations

Consider undervolting cpu and gpu and you will be able to get away with a leaner psu. I always do this and there really is no downside if you overclock the gpu a little to compensate for the undervolting. Your system will run cooler as well often stopping cpu/gpu from throttling down, so with a bit of luck you can even gain performance while saving on power. It depends on the cpu/gpu combo, but you can expect to save around 50 Watts under full load with both components properly undervoltet.
Here's a very good guide for undervolting your gpu under windows, it's meant for nvidia gpus but the process is very similar with amd gpu's and/or under linux.
https://github.com/LunarPSD/NvidiaOverclocking/blob/main/Nvidia%20Overclocking.md
- Overclocking usually requires overvolting to keep things working. Underclocking though, is a good way to gain stability.
  
  That's how it used to work, but modern GPUs pretty much auto-overclock based on their assigned power target. Undervolting traditionally would mean less power at the same clock. But modern GPUs would just see more power available in the budget to boost clocks further instead. At least in most cases. If you go extreme enough on the undervolting it may hit a point where it won't boost clocks anymore and actually start reducing power consumption.

Whatever the box says.
I've tried to cheat fate before by being just 50w under the label and got screwed for it.

According to https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5060-ti-16-gb-test.92119/seite-8#abschnitt_leistungsaufnahme_gaming_die_lastspitzen it peaks at 201 W.
As others mentioned, the rest of the PC is important too, but there's also differences in PSU quality. IIRC ATX 3.x requires them to actually be able to supply the nominal power continuously, with short spikes up to twice that. While older and cheaper PSUs often listed the peak output which they couldn't sustain, that's why a lot of power supply calculators recommend a much higher wattage than strictly necessary.
So, assuming a "65 W" AMD CPU which maxes out at 88 W plus the 200 W GPU plus a 50 W buffer for mainboard and drives etc., a good new 350 W PSU should run such a system (assuming you could actually buy one, the lowest ATX 3.x PSUs I've seen start at 450 W).
But to answer the question if you can continue to use your old PSU you a) need to know how much the rest of the system needs, mainly the CPU (which as others have mentioned can range from under 100 W to ~300 W), and b) the real power your PSU can supply which depends on its age and quality - maybe tell us the exact CPU and PSU in question.

As a point of reference, I have a 5070 ti oc (300W tdp, suggested PSU 700W according to techpowerup) with a ryzen 7 7700 (65W tdp) and I use a Silverstone SFX 700 W 80+ platinum and it works great. I've monitored the GPU wattage and it generally doesn't go above 200ish in practical usage.

You'll need to list the rest of the components, since the GPU won't be the only thing being powered.
You can plug them into PCpartpicker and it should tell you if it's sufficient or not.
Worth noting that power supplies are most efficient running at ~50% of capacity, so if you're far off from that number, it will make sense to just get something larger, as it will pay for itself in the long run.

https://www.newegg.ca/tools/power-supply-calculator
The 50 series cards are pretty efficient and don't have the transient spikes issue of the 30 series. You can get away with having a lower wattage PSU that is closer to your actual requirement instead of 40-50% headroom that used to be suggested.

12 jigawatts

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