Why High Wattage Power Supplies Are Stupid 

"Wattage will never exceed 800w" RTX 3090: hold my beer

High wattage psus are as unnecessary as the reflectiveness of that tech quickie shirt

Rtx 3000:allow me to introduce myself

more watts = more fps in minesweeper

Should you buy a 1200w power supply? Nope. Go straight for the 1500w

"Wattage will never exceed 800W" Intel CPUs: watch

Why am I being recommended this in 2020? Intel: ...

LTT: 1000+W PSUs are stupid... VEGA 64 Crossfire + i9 7980xe: Let us introduce ourselfs...

quite pathetic that most of the comments are not about the video, but are about being "first" or "last time I was this early..." or "notification squad" or "OMG WTF only 200 views" I was looking forward to some discussion of power supply needs and suggestions for systems etc. Instead...well what we have here. Guys, please..... GET A FUCKING LIFE

Modular power supplies are good for cable management

being somone in the eletrical background, if your pc Requires 300Watt. a 600Watt psu power curve is more energy efficient then a 300-400 watt one going full out. my standard gaming rig pulls 480Watts from the wall. so a 650-700 psu would work and use less power then a 550watt psu

There's a few factors that went into my decision to get a 1000 watt psu. 1, due to an insurance settlement, I had an insanely huge budget (at least in terms of general consumer components) while building my current rig. 2, the pc I was building was going to be used in my home recording studio, and as such, fan noise was important enough that I was already getting Be Quiet silentwings fans on a watercooling radiator. 3, I have a distinct childhood memory of the family computer's motherboard putting on a giant light show due to an insufficient power supply (Yes kids, this was before anybody started intentionally putting lights on motherboards).

Damn I guess that anti-matter reactor power supply I got was slightly over kill then.

I need 1.21 Gigawatts...where could I find a psu rated for that ?

True, having more watts is NO guarantee of more fps. But having a supply that has more available wattage than you computer needs is ONE guarantee that you won't be stressing it out. It is a stressed power supply that will fail. I have repaired MANY power supplies (AAMOF, I'm working on one right now - too), and ALL of the failures are due to just one reason: too much heat due to over-stress equals blown components. . . . . It is just that simple . . . . Buy/use a larger supply than your system needs; and it won't fail. Unless it was a crummy quality supply to begin with . . .

I'm a seasoned Electrical Engineer and understands computer power supplies quite well. I've worked on everything from industrial controls to military equipment. When you design something that you want to last forever, you use components that are rated for high power dissipation, but in use, don't ever subject them to their maximum ratings. We call it the "power margin" and as a rule of thumb, you try your best to keep it under 50%. (The more reliability you need, the higher you need the margin to be) Heat is the #1 reason electronics fail (instantaneous or sustained), and if you have components in your power supply that can easily handle it, your supply will last a long time. This is why higher rated power supplies are good. They are built to handle much more heat than you will every subject them to, which makes them generally more reliable than lower rated supplies in the long run. That is not to say all high power supplies use good components to start with. As a general rule, the bigger they are physically means they have big high power rated parts inside.

POWEEEERRRRR!!!!!!!! UNLIMITEEED POOOOOOOWWWWEEEEEEERRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only reason I have an 850 watt power supply is because the 750 watt version was only about £4 cheaper xD

Tech Tips and all related channels are the go to for tech advice. The content you all create is invaluable to today's need to know world. Everything from basic knowledge to high end enthusiast info. I thank you sincerely for all you do

all you need is over 9000 watt PSU and some RGB lighting.

"Buy a good power supply" Standing right next to a CX unit....

I need 1500W PSUs because they're the best looking ones

BUT BUT.... FUTURE-PROOFING?

Thanks so much man! Have a great week!

But...But ....But I need to run 23 fans XD

I have a 250 watt power supply. Bitches, don't be jealous.

With the 40 series and Ryzen 9 7950x.....yeah this didn't age the absolute best.

The Corsair 2500W KingPower External power supply with surge protection and full spectrum RPG light show is the best. Does your system lag? That's because you need at least 2000 watts for any computer, it will make your computer faster.

Why would you get 3 x 80mm fans? You mad?

I remember when ASUS had a online PSU estimator, and it always said a budget PC needed 900+ Watt..

Interesting video, thanks. When I was in the build process, I had picked a 550w PSU. Out of curiosity I looked at higher wattage PSU's of the same make/model and, at that time, I could get the 750w PSU for $20 less...I know I'll never need that much power, but $20 is $20.

A good rule of thumb might be total system power requirements times two. In terms of system reliability, a little redundancy goes a long way.

I love my new build i have a pentium 4 cpu 1 gb of ram and a gt 210 gpu but it runs great as i have my 1400w psu in there with a very nice case it is very nice to power my house with it daily love it.

I dont think high wattage power supplies are stupid. I think Trump supporters are.

This has aged like milk going off your guys' videos of the RTX 3000 launch lolol

I love that this popped up on my feed after LMG posted a picture of the new AX1600i on Facebook m

Hey maybe you tech guys can help me, My wifi is worse in my room, is my fan in my room blowing away and corrupting the data particles? All my google searches are slow in my room.

I have a 3,000 watt power supply for my computer. it has an Intel Pentium and a 30 gb hard-drive and 1 fan. but I feel like i don't have enough power :/

I love the freely donated* by a friend, Corsair HX620w Modular Power Supply, it more than meets my current supply needs easily and after checking on the CoolerMaster calculator, it will happily save me from buying a new PSU for my build as it's more than good enough for the upgrade. Sothat's some money saved, still got some old parts to sell though, like some Patriot gaming RAM.... *thanks to Steeley for the Power Pupply and the 2 "broken" matched pair of Samsung 22" DualSync Monitors that cost me 20p in capacitors and half an hour soldering both (same fault) to make like brand new! My current setup is beauttiful though, even if a little underpowered, CPU-wise.

Loved this video! Wish I had seen this before my friends pushed me to get a 1200W power supply for my PC...maybe I need new friends 😂😂

Just before I was going to bed... After staying up watching for 20 mins.

i7 6700k OC 4.6 GHz GTX 1070 FE OC 2050 MHz 500W 80+ Gold Just stick to the recommendations... they are more than enough

I'm so glad I went with an 850W (thermaltake toughpower grand). I bought it like 4-5 years ago and it was a rare display of foresight. I had a very average and dated budget AMD gaming rig at the time, now I've gradually upgraded everything besides the PSU, literally, including case and periphs. Nitro+ 5700XT just arrived today (no idea wtf I'm doing here instead of installing that... delayed gratification I suppose). Replaced FX-8320 AM3+ system (had XFX R9 290 GPU, gave that to a friend and built his first rig) with R7 2700x, Crosshair VII Hero and 3200Mhz TridentZ. That 8320 deserves some recognition, served me well for a very long time. Motherboard even longer because AM3/AM3+ were compatible. I even ran VR with _that_ setup, just to try it while upgrades were shipping, and it worked! Nitro+ RX-580 will be torn out in a minute for the 5700XT. I was very happy with the Sapphire so I stuck with em (plus it's the best looking IMO). Swapped Wraith Prism for Corsair H115i, added case fans and some RGB (yeah I know, _wannafightaboutit?_). Went from 1x 1080p to a 1440P monitor, then 2, then 3 for sim racing, then Rift CV1 for the same. Believe it or not, the RX-580 actually did pretty good with 1440p and VR, (at least I can be certain I was GPU-locked with the 2700x). Can't wait to try the 5700 though, never owned a GPU so close to "top tier." Also added a 240GB m.2 boot drive and 525GB Crucial MX-300 SATA SSD game drive to go with the 256GB Crucial MX-100 and 800GB + 1TB WD storage drives that I've had for 5+ years. The MX-100 is down to 85% life in HWinfo so I'm going to take it out and use it for a portable/test bench drive. Probably replace it with another 525GB MX-300 and try RAID because I've never done that. Probably RAID 0 array for the SSD's and RAID 1 for the HDD's. So I'm pretty sure I didn't need this PSU at first, but over time I've been so grateful for the headroom, never had to question it. I'd have to say 750-850W is the perfect PSU sweet spot. I gotta be getting close to peak efficiency now. Whatever fuck this, I'm putting my new GPU in.

I've been buying 850W power supplies since probably my second build (when it actually started to matter), even though my system builds haven't gotten close to that ceiling. I typically opt for this just so I have some overhead in case its needed, but also that my PSU isn't hitting a consistent max draw over time. Whether this gives me more life out of my PSU or not, I couldn't even guess. All I know is that aside for a rare hardware fault, my PSUs haven't been the cause of system death.

Welp, i was gonna go to bed :P

a platinum 650w PSU is probably more than enough for 90% of the builds out there

This is a very helpful video. Thank you for sharing.

AAah... I remember back in the old days when I bought a 400w psu for my Intel Sempron cpu on socket 478... and that was considered a powerful psu!

My power supply runs all my stuff. Not sure why people feel the need to connect their computers directly to a nuclear power plant.

i have a 750 watt PSU with a zero rpm mode. never heard the fan kick. not once.

Why have Luke video's become less frequent? Thumbs up even though I didn't learn anything, just for Luke and a good video.

Awesome vid, as a pc enthusiast & builder I love someone actually thinks like I do. Over kill is dumb. Know what you system should pull & go from there..

the rent is too damn high

Learned this at work back in late 2011. We were assembling a new machine, with the at the time new LGA2011 x79 with i7 3930k, 16GB 2133MHz ram and 4 evga GTX 670 FTWs, which was the most powerful consumer card at the time, running several layers of a 16k wide png image with hardware accelerated blur and 8 outputs at 1080p 60fps. GPUs heated up to around 80°C. Wattage meter between the machine and wall socket read just over 400 watts. I was quite surprised.

how many wats do I need to be safe for overclocked i9 xe, 2gtx 1080, 4 16gb rams, samsung 960 ssd, rampage vi extreme board and the rest of the system?

I over spec' PSUs for two of the reasons you mentioned - puts it in the middle of the efficiency curve and a low enough percentage loading that the fans are inaudible. There is also the arguement of less stress on components and so less chance of failure and/or short service life - just need to give them a clean out every few years. The relatively small difference in cost, when building a full system, is negligible compared to a 'close enough' power rated PSU.

o use a potato to power up my computer

Yes Luke, I knew all that already, but... I'm super-glad that You've made a video about this for people who didn't! KUDOS :)

Intel in 2020: I'm about to end this video's whole career.

2016: High watt PSU is stupid 2022: Require high watt PSU

ancient corsair vx 550 still chuging along, outlasted: 8800 gt,gtx 260 core 216,gtx 670,and now pushing a gtx 970 :)

Get the highest wattage power supply you can buy because you never know when you'll all the sudden want to build a cryptocurrency mining rig

The highest point of psu efficiency is at around 50-60% of load. So it is not bad idea to have psu with 200-300W more then you system consumes at peak

RTX 4090Ti: Aww YES YES I do see why you do be interested in that!

Unlisted Party!

my rig needed 345w at least to run I got a 550w PSU and I'm happy with it

Here, in 2023, you are wrong, we need 2000W power supplies to get ready for the RTX 5099 Extra TI Ultra

I went with a 750W EVGA, and I think I've got plenty of overhead for future upgrades

You just need to get a quality one. making sure the amps are enough to power what you want to install

You should mention though that 12v amperage is most important. Most cheap PSUs have high wattage but lack amperage, it just so happens most high quality, high wattage PSUs have great amps. Probably where the myth comes from people frying PSUs,boards,gpus...ect with low amp power supplies

You should revisit this with how much additional power oc's can draw

Heh its funny coolermaster's calculator said I needed a minimum of 992w for my fully loaded hp xw6600, and recommended their 1200w power supply :)

Ugh. So, LTT did some Internet research and came up with this video. I'm done with this channel.

Still using my Corsair HX620 for 10 years now

Just ran a PSU calculator on my current decade old tower components and on the parts I'm considering to upgrade too, and it came in over 80W lower. So I believe this is very true. Glad I didn't go crazy when I bought the new PSU recently.

hmm? was hoping this video would have results of it's wattage usage for each different power supply.

"power is power" I think Cersei once said that

Hi. Linus, Luke the gorgeouss Maxine and the rest of Linus Media. Thanks for the wattage calculator (Coolemaster thanks too- no more guessing).

Still running my 12 year old Antec 650 watt. Its going to power my next build too.

Tnx for this vid! 👍🏽

Here we are in the modern age and I'm upgrading from my 3060 which runs fine on a 600w psu with my current components to a 3090. The difference in the power draws on NVidias website is 170w for the 3060 and 350w for the 3090, so 180w difference. Plus Linus's review of the 3090 tested that it can run a peak draw of 450w... So not even a 850 watt power supply would not be enough as it could get dangerously close to that 850 ceiling. So I just bought a 1,000w psu and called it good, at least I won't have to worry about it getting underpowered and losing performance or damaging anything.

This didn't age well

I use a kill-a-watt device to monitor power draw and it's kind of shocking how little power my system uses compared to the recommended wattage.

Planning a new build and wondering what POWER SUPPLY I should use? Dual water cooled build plans: GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE LGA 1151 Intel i9 9900K Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD, 2TB x2 Samsung 860 PRO 2.5" SATA III 2.5in SSD, 2TB X1 Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB DDR4 3300MHz CL16 Quad Channel Kit (8x 8GB) Thermaltake WaterRam RGB Series DDR4 3200MHz 32GB (8GBx4) X2 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti LIGHTNING Z 11GB with led water cooling system Thermaltake The Tower 900 Full Tower E-ATX Gaming Case, Black Thermaltake Pacific RGB LED 6-Pack PETG G 1/4" Thread 16mm OD 12mm ID Fitting Kit Cooling X2 Thermaltake Pacific Liquid Cooling System RL560 560mm Radiator with 4 led RGB fans X2 Thermaltake Pacific Addressable RGB LED 5-Speed Adjustable D5 Pump/Reservoir Combo Certified Cooling X2 RGB Fans: 4 each for each of the 2 water system 2 more for hard drive and general case ventilation 10 fans total 4 independant led strip systems I Plan to do lots of extreme overclocking

Well this aged well. 3090s in sli

yet every build on this channel has a 1k watt plus power supply in it.

Hey! What do you recommend for an i7-7700K and an 8GB Radeon RX 480? (Everything else, basic parts.) Much appreciated!

He should do a follow up video on this.

*RTX 4000 series has entered the chat*

my power supply has a 10 year warranty, i bought a 1000 watt to handle any type of pc i may build, including custom loops. i dont need it all now, but i might within 10 years

I went to the Corsair PSU Finder site. Put in my components and it recommended a 1200w PSU. Which makes sense and when I measured the used wattage it was just over 1k.

knew it already (IT pro for decades here) but it deserves the thumbs up for those that did not to learn from.

This video aged about as well as raw unrefrigerated chicken

the wattage is nominal. just cuz your car can do 200kW doesn't mean it always produces 200kW power

Hardware is getting more efficient. X299: "hold my beer"

13900KS + RTX 4090 : Ominous laughter in the distance.

RU-vid STOP CHANGING YOUR SHIT FIRST THE COMMENTS NOW THE SUBSCRIPTIONS BOX

Cooler Master calculator actually says I need my 1000w PSU. lel crossfire 290s

Love my 1000 Watt Power supply, never have to worry about not having enough power.

I bought a 1 kW PSU (a few years ago) for 3 reasons. 1) It was on sale for about what a normal 600 W PSU would normally go for. 2) It had modular cables, which I really wanted because my case is a bit cramped. 3) I wanted to never worry again about whether my PSU is beefy enough, no matter what I put in my personal-use rig in the future. I figure that as long as it saves me from having to buy another PSU someday if what would have been the economical decision came up short, I've broken even.