Is 1000W enough for an RTX 5090 + Core i9-14900K?
No — 1000 W is not enough for this combination.
- noteSustained load: 944 W (Core i9-14900K 282 W measured peak + GeForce RTX 5090 587 W measured gaming + 75 W rest of system) = 94% of a 1000 W unit.
- problemSteady load alone uses 94% of the unit's rating — no margin for heat, aging, or anything extra. Recommended size: 1200 W.
The math, with sources
- GPU sustained draw: 587 W — GeForce RTX 5090 measured while gaming (TechPowerUp — RTX 5090 Founders Edition review, Power Consumption charts (Jan 2025 test suite)) — its rated board power is 575 W.
- GPU transient spikes: 644 W — GeForce RTX 5090 spikes to ~644 W for milliseconds (TechPowerUp — RTX 5090 Founders Edition review, Power Consumption charts (Jan 2025 test suite)). Spikes trip older PSUs that averages never show.
- CPU peak draw: 282 W — Core i9-14900K measured under heavy all-core load (TechPowerUp — Core i9-14900K review, multi-threaded power chart (Blender, CPU-only)). Games draw less, but renders, encodes and shader compiles hit this.
- Rest of the system: 75 W — Motherboard, RAM, drives, fans and USB devices — a fixed allowance.
- Sustained total: 944 W — 282 + 587 + 75 = 944 W of steady load.
- With 15% headroom: 1086 W — Sustained x 1.15 — margin for capacitor aging, heat, and staying near the efficiency sweet spot. (The sustained figure is already conservative: CPU all-core peak and GPU gaming peak rarely coincide.)
- Spike check: 1001 W — CPU peak + GPU spike + rest = 1001 W for milliseconds. The recommendation also covers this outright, so even a pre-ATX-3.0 unit is not spike-tripped.
- Recommended: 1200 W — The smallest standard size covering both 1086 W (sustained + headroom) and 1001 W (spike total).
Measured numbers from
- GeForce RTX 5090: TechPowerUp — RTX 5090 Founders Edition review, Power Consumption charts (Jan 2025 test suite)
- Core i9-14900K: TechPowerUp — Core i9-14900K review, multi-threaded power chart (Blender, CPU-only)
AFFILIATE_SLOT: tested 1200W ATX 3.x unit picks will be listed here. No links yet — added only once real recommendations exist.