Is 450w good enough for GTX 1080?

[jingsaw2859]

I currently have an XFX 450w PSU with an i5-6600 and an overclocked GTX 960. I would like to upgrade to a 1080 but I don't know if this PSU will be enough.

 

[MatthewGB]

Try using a PSU calculator. If it says load usage would be 400W or less, your PSU is fine.

 

[Herc08]

Um, no. You are wasting money trying to get a 1080 with that small PSU. Why not upgrade the PSU first? 500 to 650 should be best, as NVIDIA recommends. I always get more to get that breathing room

 

[RCFProd]

Um, no. You are wasting money trying to get a 1080 with that small PSU. Why not upgrade the PSU first? 500 to 650 should be best, as NVIDIA recommends. I always get more to get that breathing room

Why wasting money? The XFX 450w is actually more than enough to run a GTX 1080, with more than 100 watts of head room at all times.

 

[Herc08]

Here is your recommendations:

Thermal and Power Specs:
94Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)
180 WGraphics Card Power (W)
500 WRecommended System Power (W)4
8-PinSupplementary Power Connectors

 

[RCFProd]

A good quality 400 watts power supply or better is enough to run a GTX 1080.

 

[Herc08]

A good quality 400 watts power supply or better is enough to run a GTX 1080.

400 watts? That's pushing it a bit, don't you think?

 

[RCFProd]

It really isn't. I think AMD listed a 750 watts power supply requirement for the R9 390X too for example, but it runs easily fine with a good 550-620 watts. Manufacturers usually list higher wattage because people tend to use lower quality ones. Nvidia Pascal is just really efficient, they don't need even a 450 watts to run with headroom.

GTX 1080 Tom's Hardware round-up Review

Founders edition power consumption:

Idle
7W
Idle Multi-Monitor
10W
Blu-ray
11W
Browser Games
94-113W
Gaming (Metro Last Light at 4K)
173W
Torture (FurMark)
177W

As efficient as Intel Skylake's i5-6600 is, it should be smooth sailing.

 

[MatthewGB]

The recommended PSU recommended by the manufacturer is generally just BS. Here's an example. Lets assume you're running the most power consuming CPU ever, the FX-9590, combining that with a 1080 and then an SSD and 7.2k RPM HDD, plus 4 sticks of 16GB RAM each. That would consume 280W at load. 280W. I mean, what the actual hell must be in your computer to get 500W usage?!

Actually, you could run 2 GTX 1080's on a 500W PSU. (Not a 450W PSU. That would be cutting it a bit close.)

 

[Herc08]

I get that, because BF1's requirement is a i5-6600 when an Haswell chip works just fine. It's just when it comes to something as powerful as the 1080, I would want to make sure there is no room for error. But again, this is all just recommendations.

 

[MatthewGB]

@Herc08 Maybe do some research on PSU requirements before telling people to waste money on stuff they don't need.

 

[RCFProd]

Let's try to keep it polite.

 

[Saga Lout]

Let's try to keep it polite.

Yes, let's.

Anyway, I'm not sure you can actually waste money on a PSU; it's the most important component in the box. I'm surprised a 400Watt unit would fit in many modern systems with a separate graphics card. It's always best to have a few spare Watts lying around. They don't take up much space.

 

[jingsaw2859]

So I'm very cheap and I'm currently looking at the cheapest 1080 I could find which is the Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Turbo OC 8GB. Are there any disadvantages this card has compared to the more expensive ones? Why are the prices so much different?

 

[MatthewGB]

If you're spending that kind of money, you're gonna want to get at least 2 fans on that card. If there's only 1 fan like the reference edition and it can become very loud and hot. Additionally, what monitor do you have and what games do you intend to play? You may not need such a powerful GPU.

 

[RCFProd]

So I'm very cheap and I'm currently looking at the cheapest 1080 I could find which is the Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Turbo OC 8GB. Are there any disadvantages this card has compared to the more expensive ones? Why are the prices so much different?

The cheapers ones usually operate at slightly lower clock speeds, are a bit louder and run a bit hotter. However, usually, they offer better performance per dollar compared to more expensive models which come equipped with better heatsinks and cooling solutions.

However, even the cheapest GTX 1080 is perfectly adequate and should run without issues.

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GAMING X 8G Video Card ($639.99 @ B&H)
Total: $639.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-12-26 17:04 EST-0500