Power supplies must handle peaks of 1800 watts

We’ve already talked a lot about PCIe Gen5 power supplies. In fact, the new connection 12 volts A single cable pass allows up to 600 watts of continuous power. We have already tested one of these power supplies with GIGABYTE UD1000GM PCIe 5.0.0 Update. Like the current RTX 3090 Ti, the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4000/5000 and AMD Radeon RX 7000 cards will use this connector. But what do we learn here from Stephen Estmanthe power specialist at Intel, is that next-generation graphics cards can sometimes demand peaks 1350 W (For the 3090 Ti which is given at 450W) for 100 milliseconds. So, with RTX 4090 For example at 600 watts, lPeak consumption can reach 1800W. Concretely, it should be borne in mind that the TGP of the card can be tripled for short periods of time.

ATX 3.0 Power Supplies: More Important Than You First Think

Obviously to handle this properly, you have to pass The new ATX 3.0 standard. As we have already explained, current power supplies are very outdated in terms of design. We are living in great development. With ATX 3.0, the PSU will be able to supply such power spikes while still providing power to the rest of the computer components like CPU, RAM, SSD, etc. This is so that the computer does not crash due to a lack of power in the power supply. So these new generation blocks use stronger and larger capacitors. Likewise, and also for this reason, it is recommended to use blocks with higher wattage for future graphics cards, being able to withstand such consumption without turning back for necessary short periods of time.

As we saw during testing, the new cable for PCIe Gen5 has four signal wires. This allows communication between the power supply and the graphics card so that the latter knows what power is available.

The board manufacturer now knows that it is allowed to push 200% of the maximum power rating of the power supplies for 100 microseconds or 120% of the maximum power rating of the PSU for 100 milliseconds.

Also note that according to Intel, if you have a 300W GPU, a 300W CPU and have 150W for the rest of the configuration, a well-designed 750W ATX 3.0 power supply is sufficient. On the other hand, with a block in ATX 2.X, it would take a 1100W block for the block to handle peak GPU consumption. As you will understand, the ATX 3.0 power supply is a major development that should not be overlooked.