I'm putting together a PC and already bought an MSI MAG A650GLS 650W 80+ Gold power supply. Several people have told me it should be sufficient, but a technician I trust says I should have bought a 750W unit instead. My components are an RX 9060 XT 16GB, Ryzen 7 5700X, Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite AX V2 motherboard, WD_BLACK SN7100 1TB M.2 drive, 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 500GB Kingston SSD, a 1TB Toshiba HDD, a Peerless Assassin CPU cooler, and five RGB case fans. Is 650W enough with reasonable headroom, or would 750W provide a meaningful advantage?
4 Answers
A rough worst-case estimate puts the complete build around 350–450W, depending on the exact graphics card model and workload. Adding some extra margin still keeps you well below 650W. I’d keep the PSU and focus on making sure the GPU power cables are connected properly and the unit has adequate airflow.
You have a comfortable amount of headroom, especially since the MSI model is a modern ATX 3.x power supply designed to handle short-lived power spikes. A 750W PSU would work too, but it isn’t necessary for these parts unless you’re planning a substantially more power-hungry future upgrade.
The 650W unit should be completely adequate. This system is unlikely to approach 650W, even under heavy gaming loads. The GPU is roughly in the 160–200W range and the 5700X is a relatively low-power CPU, leaving plenty of capacity for the motherboard, drives, memory, and fans.
The only reason to choose 750W or higher would be future-proofing for a stronger graphics card or CPU. For the listed hardware, replacing the 650W supply would mostly buy extra unused capacity rather than solve an actual power problem.
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