The NVIDIA RTX 4090 proved to be a power hog, puting enough stress to the 12VHPWR connectors on both the PSU and the graphics card sides, so I thought to run several games and monitor power consumption of the GPU and the whole system, under stock and overclocked speeds.
The RTX 4090 model I will use for this article is a Palit GameRock, which is on loan by Seasonic (thank you!) I have flashed it with the OC model’s BIOS to be able to increase its power limit to 500W, and I use a Seasonic Vertex 1200 Gold PSU with a native 12VHPWR cable. Moreover, I utilize a Powenetics V2 system to take accurate and detailed data on energy consumption and not only.
Test System
| Test System Specs | ||||
| Mainboard | ASUS Prime Z690-A Bios Version 0702 (10/22/2021) |
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| CPU | Intel® Core™ i9-12900KF (all cores @ 5 GHz ) |
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| GPU | Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC | |||
| SSD | XPG SX8200 Pro 2 TB NVMe | |||
| RAM | Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR5 32GB (2 x 16GB) 5200MHz | |||
| Power Supply | Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000 (Cybenetics Titanium) | |||
| Case | DimasTech Bench | |||
| Ambient Temperature | 25°C ±1°C | |||
| Drivers | Nvidia: 522.25 | |||
Test Results
The averages of the above results are the following:
Stock Speeds |
OC Speeds |
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The average GPU power consumption for all games I ran is 384W, below 400W. With OC speeds, it goes slightly above 400W. I was surprised to see how much Control stresses the RTX 4090. Even the highly demanding “A Plague Tale: Requiem” doesn’t require as much juice as the Northlight engine that Control utilizes. With close to 481W average GPU power consumption at stock speeds and close to 500W with OC speeds and RTX enabled, Control can be as taxing as Furmark! After several hours of Control gaming and if you use an adapter, the 12VHPWR connector on your graphics card can get hot! You better get an ATX v3.0 and PCIe 5.0 ready PSU to avoid adapters if you plan for hard-core gaming. I never liked adapters. In fact, I always advise whoever asks me to avoid them like the plague.
In the worst-case scenario, OC speeds, the maximum GPU peak power is at 683.18W, and the system’s max power spike is at 780.79W. These values show that a decent 750W PSU won’t have a problem handling an RTX 4090 with a 500W power limit and a potent CPU, like the Intel 12900KF. With an 850W PSU, you will have even more room to play with higher speeds at both the GPU and the CPU.
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I have a Corsair RM850x PSU, along with a Ryzen 5900X. I purchased Corsair’s official 12VHPWR cable to pair with my 4090 Founders Edition. Should I be concerned with the Corsair connector getting dangerously hot or system shutdowns? According to the Outer Vision PSU calculator I should be good, but I was hoping for a second opinion. Thanks!
Why are u worried? It is not only the connector what u should be worried of, for what u mention.
I have corsair RM850 (2021) and i was thinking of connecting my asus tuf 4090 OC (factory) using all 4 (8pin) pcie connectors. Is that ok to do? Ive heard that a 12vhpwr changes the power draw based on the psu power and i dont want to limit my 4090in regards to power. Ps: using a amd 5950x
If you use a quality adaptor you won’t have an issue but I would suggest a 1000W PSU at least, for your set-up.
That is plenty for the card, You’ll be fine