Nvidia’s new RTX 40 series is on the horizon, lumbering towards us like a power-hungry monster, according to the latest leaks.
The latest batch of leaks from the notorious Kopite7Kimi has sparked fears in the hearts of users worried that their current machines won’t be able to feed the upcoming Nvidia GPUs, codenamed Ada Lovelace. With rumors circling about the power draw from these cards ramping way up, Kimi has come through with yet another David Lynch-esque tweet about the upcoming power needs for each card.
A truth. The power limits: AD102, 800W; AD103 (DT), 450W, AD103 (Mobile), 175W; AD104 (DT), 400W, AD104 (Mobile), 175W; AD106 (DT), 260W, AD106 (Mobile), 140W. But I don't think we need to use the full power cap.
— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) June 18, 2022
In the tweet, Kimi states that the various different cards are going to require a much more hefty power supply to get them going. The AD102 is suspected – and pretty much confirmed – to be the Nvidia RTX 4090 and in the future, the 4080 Ti.
For perspective, the 3090 currently uses at the very maximum, around 500 watts. The extra 300 watts is where the worries have begun to stem from. Some machines can only run a 3090 with over a 1000W power supply and in the current crisis of electricity prices going way, way up across the world, it’s beginning to cause some to form little beads of sweat.
The others in the list include the upcoming 4080 (AD103), 4070 and 4060 (AD104), as well as the 4050 (AD106).
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The GPUs given the 50 endings are usually Nvidia’s budget gaming cards, with the 3050 offering a solid 1080p performance. Currently, it pulls around 150W, so tacking on an additional 100W to it can suddenly jump cheap builds a few bucks more because you’ll need to grab a different power supply.
RTX 4090 800W power draw – is it real?
Given Kopite7Kimi’s accuracy with prior leaks, the 800W power draw of the RTX 4090 could very well be real. However, not all is lost as the numbers listed are just the absolute maximum these cards can reach. The TDP and TGP for each one will be lower, meaning that the total power being drawn out of the card shouldn’t hit that top end of 800W unless pushed to that degree.
If you’re planning on rendering a video and also playing a quick game while it does so, you’re going to start heating up closer to that side of things, but playing a game or doing some content creation on its own won’t see you hitting those massive spikes.
Though this doesn’t mean that we’re going to get away without having to buy new power supplies and cooling for the inside of the PC. Some people are concerned that the upcoming RTX 4000 cards, specifically the 90 variant is going to be asking for a lot more from a build to be able to cool it.
