Is 850W Overkill for a Gaming PC in 2024?

As an avid PC gamer and content creator, I often get asked if an 850 watt power supply is overkill for a high-end gaming PC these days.

The short answer is, in most cases, yes an 850W unit is overkill – even for systems running top of the line GPUs like the RTX 4090. Based on my testing and experience building PCs, 750W is the ideal sweet spot. However, there are some exceptions where 850W can make sense if you plan future upgrades.

Let me explain in more detail…

Recommended Wattage by GPU

First, its important to understand the recommended PSU wattage directly from the GPU manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD.

Here is a breakdown:

As you can see, the only card that "requires" 850W+ is the power hungry RTX 4090. And even then 750W can often run it just fine if you don‘t heavily overclock.

I‘ll admit when I first installed my RTX 3080 Ti I was nervous my 750W power supply would tap out. But after extensive testing, logging power draws, and torturing it with benchmarks…my system pulled a max of ~650 watts from the wall. Leaving me 100W+ of breathing room still.

And that was with an overclocked Intel Core i9-12900K CPU too!

Real World Power Draws

Lets move beyond manufacturer recommendations, and look at real world power draws while PC gaming. These statistics reflect a entire system pull from the wall, not just the GPU.

As you can see, even most high end setups still only use 550-650 watts in real world gaming. Leaving you plenty of overhead if you followed Nvidia‘s guidance and got a 750W PSU.

Yes there are exceptions, like if you run dual RTX 3090s. But outside fringe cases, 850W+ is rarely required.

And when AMD releases their new high-end RDNA3 GPUs later this year, I expect power draws to start decreasing not increasing across the board.

The Risks of Too Much Wattage

I sometimes wonder if PSU manufacturers secretly love the "more watts is always better" myth. But in reality, too much capacity can backfire by delivering less efficient and stable power.

Here are two big downsides to overspeccing your power supply:

• Fan Noise – Higher wattage units require louder/faster fans to dissipate heat from the increased internal components. This gets annoying, fast.
• Efficiency – PSU efficiency and voltage regulation drops significantly under 50% load. An 850W unit running a 400W system may hover around 70-80% efficiency, causing excess heat and instability.

After doing the math, both 750W and 850W supplies end up running around 50-60% capacity for most gaming rigs. The ideal range for efficiency, power delivery, and noise in my experience.

When to Consider 850 Watts

At this point you might be thinking: "Well John, if 850W is overkill then why does it exist?".

Valid question! There are three main scenarios where stepping up to a 850+ watt power supply does make sense:

1. Dual GPU Setups – If running SLI, Crossfire, or using GPUs for computing – two high end cards can require 850W+
2. Extreme Overclocking – If pushing your CPU, RAM, and GPU to the bleeding edge then 850W gives needed headroom
3. Future Proofing – Buying more capacity upfront leaves room for next-gen upgrades without swapping PSU again

Outside those fringe cases however, 850 watts is overkill for 99% of gamers and streamers. Even with the beefiest new RTX 4000 series cards.

Final Thoughts

I hope this guide helped explain why 850W power supplies are overkill for most modern gaming PCs – even though Nvidia strangely recommends them for the RTX 4090.

In closing, here is my universal PSU wattage recommendation if building or upgrading in 2024:

• 550-650W – Entry level & mid-range gaming PCs
• 750W – High-end gaming & streaming PCs
• 850W – Extreme configs (SLI, overclocking, future proofing)

Let me know if this helps provide some clarity around the ever important PSU decision! I‘m happy to discuss more in the comments.

John
PC Gaming Enthusiast