Do I need to upgrade my PSU when upgrading my PC?

[guitarkid998]

I am going to be upgrading my graphics card soon, but I'm wondering if I'll need to get a power supply with higher watts to power my pc. My current power supply is only 500W 80 Plus Bronze.
I just got a new 2k monitor so I need to upgrade my GPU. I honestly have no idea if any of this matters in calculating the wattage. At the moment I have an i5-6600K CPU, a GTX960 GPU, four sticks of 4GB of G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 series Ram, a DIYPC Ranger-R8 case, GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-H170 motherboard, an SSD, and two 1TB Hard Drives.

Basically, I'm not a huge computer guy, so will I need to buy a different power supply with more wattage for my new card? Or is my CORSAIR CX Series CX500 500W 80 PLUS BRONZE power supply good for my new upgrade.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What graphics card are you planning to upgrade to? Most likely, you WILL want to upgrade the PSU as well. That PSU you have now is one known to be of poor quality in the long term, and the main reason you likely have not had issues yet with it is because your GTX 960 requires a significantly lower capacity than 500w.

Knowing what you are planning to upgrade to will tell us what will work, and what might be ok.

 

[guitarkid998]

What graphics card are you planning to upgrade to? Most likely, you WILL want to upgrade the PSU as well. That PSU you have now is one known to be of poor quality in the long term, and the main reason you likely have not had issues yet with it is because your GTX 960 requires a significantly lower capacity than 500w.

Knowing what you are planning to upgrade to will tell us what will work, and what might be ok.

I'll most likely be getting a RTX2070

 

[vMax]

I would factor in a new PSU at 650w as you are at the limit with your 500w and actually a little beyond the limit by adding a RTX 2070. Something like the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold series are very highly rated and not badly priced. They will last a life time...or there or thereabouts!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, you absolutely want a better, and higher capacity power supply.

I'd recommend this unit, minimum. If you want something a bit better, I'll be happy to make a recommendation for that too but this unit here is very good and should be plenty of capacity so long as you're not overclocking the CPU or GPU card:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $54.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-31 17:40 EDT-0400


If you want a better unit, maybe one step up from that, then this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($68.01 @ Newegg)
Total: $68.01
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-31 17:41 EDT-0400