Best GPUs for 600W and 650W Power Supply

We are supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.

When it comes to building a PC, choosing the right power supply unit (PSU) is crucial for ensuring optimal performance and longevity of your components.

While a high-quality 500W PSU can typically handle mid-range GPUs, if you’re looking to power more demanding hardware, such as a higher-end graphics card or a multi-GPU setup, you may need to consider a more powerful PSU. In this case, PSUs with a wattage of 600W or 650W may be more suitable options for GPUs like RTX 3070 Ti, RX 6800 XT, or RTX 4070 Ti, as long as you don’t overclock. 

However, it’s still important to prioritize a PSU from a reputable manufacturer that can consistently deliver reliable power, with most of the power being supplied on the 12V rail.

Cooler Master V Gold V2 power supply with a strong 12V rail

GPUs that generally considered good match for a quality 600W and 650W power supply are:

• RTX 2080 TI – 600W
• RTX 3070 Ti – 600W
• RTX 4070 Ti – 600W
• RTX 3080 – 650W
• RX 6800 XT – 650W

Let’s see some more details about these cards and some expert reviews with their pros and cons.

NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti

The RTX 2080 Ti is a powerful graphics card that was released by Nvidia in 2018 as part of their GeForce 20 series. This high-end card is designed for demanding applications such as gaming, video editing, and 3D rendering.

With its TU102 graphics processor and 11 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 352-bit memory bus and a bandwidth of 616 GB/s, the RTX 2080 Ti is capable of delivering impressive performance across a range of tasks. It also features advanced features such as Tensor Cores and RT Cores, which enable it to perform complex calculations and ray tracing for more realistic graphics. However, the RTX 2080 Ti requires a 600W power supply unit and has a TDP of 250W. The card has four output ports: one HDMI 2.0, three DisplayPort 1.4a, and one USB Type-C. The RTX 2080 Ti supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3, and CUDA

*The FPS values are for the maximum preset

Pros:

• The RTX 2080 Ti delivers excellent performance in 4K and 1440p resolutions, outperforming previous generation cards.
• The card shows strong potential for improved frame consistency and better overall frame rates compared to previous generations.
• The RTX 2080 Ti is better at handling anti-aliasing at higher levels than its Pascal counterparts.
• The card effectively cools the VRM and VRAM under stock conditions.
• The RTX 2080 Ti offers a tangible increase in performance compared to the 1080 Ti, with gains ranging between 22 to 30 percent.

Cons:

• The RTX 2080 Ti is significantly more expensive than other graphics cards, with a price ranging around $1100 to $1200 per card.
• Overclocking the card causes the GPU core temperature to climb to 77 degrees Celsius, and VRM temperatures to rise up to 90 degrees Celsius for the hottest MOSFET, which is larger than necessary.
• The voltage slider does nothing to improve performance or maximum clocks when overclocking.
• The cooling and power management of the card are shown to be limitations, with the fan profile set to favor lower noise levels sacrificing clock speed in the process.
• The card’s features like ray tracing and DLSS have not yet found practical use cases in gaming

NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti

The RTX 3070 Ti is a GPU from the GeForce 30 generation, released on May 31st, 2021, with a launch price of 599 USD. It has 6144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, as well as 192 Tensor Cores and 48 RT Cores. The GPU is built on Samsung’s 8 nm process, has a die size of 392 mm², and includes 8 GB of GDDR6X memory with a memory clock of 1188 MHz and a memory bandwidth of 608.3 GB/s. It has a boost clock of 1770 MHz, a TDP of 290W, and can be handled by a 600W PSU. It includes one HDMI 2.1 output and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and has a dual-slot design with a length of 267 mm and a width of 112 mm

RTX 3070 Ti does best as a 1440p gaming solution, which remains the sweet spot in terms of image quality and performance requirements. Overall performance ended up 7% faster than the RTX 3070 and 13% slower than the RTX 3080, so the added memory bandwidth only goes so far toward removing bottlenecks..

Some pros of RTX 3070 Ti:

• The RTX 3070 Ti is a good graphics card for gaming at 1440p and 4K resolutions.
• It has a good memory bandwidth of 608 GB/s, which is a 36% increase from its predecessor, the RTX 3070.
• It has an MSRP of $600, which is half the price of its more expensive counterpart, the RTX 3080 Ti.

Some cons of RTX 3070 Ti:

• The RTX 3070 Ti has only a minuscule upgrade to its core, with just 7% more cores than the RTX 3070.
• It has no increase in ROPs, which are raster operation pipelines that help render images on screen.
• It has only half as much VRAM as the RTX 3090.

AMD RTX 4070 Ti

The RTX 4070 Ti is a graphics card with a GPU named AD104, based on the Ada Lovelace architecture and manufactured using a 5nm process by TSMC. It has a release date of January 3rd, 2023, a launch price of $799 USD. The card has a dual-slot design, is 285mm long, 112mm wide, and 42mm tall. It has a TDP of 285W and requires a suggested PSU of 600W. The card has 12GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus with a bandwidth of 504.2GB/s. It has a base clock of 2310 MHz and a boost clock of 2610 MHz, with a memory clock of 1313 MHz. The RTX 4070 Ti has 7680 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, 80 raster operations pipelines, 60 streaming multiprocessors, 240 tensor cores, and 60 ray tracing cores. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3, and CUDA 8.9. The card has one HDMI 2.1 output and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and requires one 16-pin power connector.

*The FPS values are for the maximum preset

Pros of RTX 4070 Ti:

• Cheaper than the RTX 4080 16GB and performs similarly
• Impressive 4K and 1440p gaming performance, especially with upscaling technology like DLSS
• Can outperform AMD’s top RDNA 3 GPU, the RX 7900 XT, in some instances at 1440p
• Comparable to RTX 3090, but almost half the price
• Preferred option in the current market for its performance and value, apart from the RTX 4090

Cons of the RTX 4070 Ti:

• Slightly more powerful than RTX 3080
• 192-bit memory configuration
• Only DisplayPort 1.4a

AMD RTX 3080

The RTX 3080 is a graphics card released in September 2020 as part of Nvidia’s 30 series, based on the Ampere architecture and built on Samsung’s 8nm process. It has 8704 shading units, 272 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. It also features 68 SMs, 272 Tensor Cores, and 68 RT Cores. The card has a base clock of 1440 MHz and a boost clock of 1710 MHz, with 10GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit memory bus and a bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s. It has a TDP of 320W and requires a 650W PSU . The card includes one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, with a power connector of 1x 12-pin. Its dimensions are 285mm x 112mm x 40mm and it has a dual-slot design. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 3.0, Vulkan 1.3, and Shader Model 6.7.

Pros:

• Improved cooling solution compared to previous designs.
• Nvidia used the space efficiently to make full usage out of the space available to cool the product.
• Partners are doing a standard approach for their coolers, which means better performance or better acoustics.
• Memory bandwidth is helping a lot here, with 19 gigabits per second baseline.
• 80s to 90 percent improvement over the 1080 ti at 4K, which is a massive change.
• Improvement in ray trace in applications, which is absolutely a benefit of the newer generation of RT cores.

Cons:

• Overclocking was not particularly worth it with the founders edition card that was tested.
• The improvement goes down as you go down in resolution.
• Thermal performance needs more work.
• Difficult to compare two coolers which have different power limits and different noise profiles.

*The FPS values are for the maximum preset

AMD RX 6800 XT

The RX 6800 XT is a graphics card released on October 28th, 2020 as part of the Navi II generation. It features a Navi 21 XT (215-121000177) GPU with RDNA 2.0 architecture, manufactured on a 7nm process size at TSMC, with 26,800 million transistors and a density of 51.5M/mm². The card has a base clock speed of 1825 MHz, a game clock of 2015 MHz, and a boost clock of 2250 MHz. It has 4608 shading units, 288 TMUs, 128 ROPs, 72 compute units, and 72 RT cores, with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, a 256-bit memory bus, and a memory bandwidth of 512.0 GB/s. The card has a dual-slot design with a length of 267 mm, a width of 120 mm, and a height of 50 mm, and requires a suggested PSU of 650W with two 8-pin power connectors. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 2.1, Vulkan 1.3, and Shader Model 6.7. The RX 6800 XT has a launch price of $649 USD.

*The FPS values are for the maximum preset

Pros:

• Strong performance at lower resolutions like 1080p and 1440p.
• Competitive pricing compared to NVIDIA’s offerings.
• Better performance than NVIDIA’s cards at 1080p and 1440p.
• Good option for high-refresh gaming when paired with a high-performance CPU like the Ryzen 5000.
• Good value for rasterization performance.

Cons:

• Hit and miss performance at 4K, where it may not matter which card you choose.
• Not as good as NVIDIA for ray tracing performance.
• AMD’s first foray into real-time ray tracing.
• Cooler is a weak point of the FE

Other GPU models that will run on 600W and 650W PSU

Clearly GPUs with lower TDP requirements than the one presented can indeed run on a 600W or 650W power supply. However, it’s crucial to consider any additional hardware that you  may have in the system. If there are multiple SSDs and NVMe drives, more than two sticks of RAM, liquid cooling, or RGB lights, a higher power PSU may be necessary.

Can a 600W and 650W PSU run a RTX 3070?

Yes, a 600W and 600W power supply can run an NVIDIA RTX 3070 graphics card.  According to the official specifications RTX 3070 is a dual-slot graphics card that has a TDP of 220W and requires a minimum power supply of 550W and has one 12-pin power connector.

Can a 600w and 650 W PSU run a RTX 3060?

You can run and NVDIA RTX 3050 on 500W and 550W power supply without any problem. Based on the official specifications RTX 3060 is a dual-slot graphics card that has a TDP of 200W and requires a minimum power supply of 550W and has one 12-pin power connector.

Can a 600W and 650 W PSU run a RTX 3090?

Yes, good quality 650W power supply may handle RTX 309, however, it is advisable to get at least 700W PSU. Official specifications specs RTX 3090 as a triple-slot graphics card with TDP of 350W and a suggested power supply requirement of 750W with one 12-pin connector.

Can a 600W and 650 W PSU run a RTX 3060 Ti?

RTX 3060 Ti can run on a 600W or 650W power supply with enough power on the 12V rail. Official specifications specs RTX 3060 Ti as a dual-slot graphics card with TDP of 200W and a suggested power supply requirement of 550W with one 12-pin power connector.