The GeForce RTX 4080 is already available on the market, and the truth is that with this graphics card NVIDIA has not only achieved a significant leap in terms of performancebut it has also significantly improved the values โโof efficiency and has been able to achieve fantastic working temperatures.
To better understand everything that surrounds the GeForce RTX 4080 in terms of efficiency, without going into complicated explanations, it is enough to say that it is more powerful than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and consumes 134 watts less (312 watts vs. 446 watts). Obviously, this will be noted on the electricity bill, and it is also key to determining the power source that we will need to be able to move it optimally.
I know that, as happened at the time with the GeForce RTX 4090, some of you still have doubts about what power supply we will need to move the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, and that is why I have decided to publish this article. I will also talk about other important details, such as the space it occupies in the chassis and the recommended minimum processor to be able to get the most out of it.
You need a 750-watt power supply to power the GeForce RTX 4080
That is to say, the requirement drops by 100 watts compared to the GeForce RTX 4080, but the truth is that this recommendation is a bit inflated, because in reality for an average configuration it would be enough with a 700 watt power supply. The reason is very simple, this graphics card consumes 312 watts at stock frequencies, so with a team consisting of an Intel Core i5-13600K, 32 GB of DDR5, two PCIe NVMe SSDs, an all-in-one liquid cooling kit of 360 mm and the GeForce RTX 4080 we would have an approximate consumption of 616 watts.
Obviously, if we have a configuration with a higher consumption, such as a Core i9-13900K, or if we are going to overclock, we will need a more powerful power supply. For example, if we keep the previous configuration but change the processor to a Core i9-13900K and overclock the total consumption of the equipment could reach 770 wattsapproximately, which means that at least we would need a source of 800 watts.
Keep in mind that custom and overclocked models from some assemblers may require a slightly more powerful source. It is also important that the power supply has three additional power connectors, which are used by the 16-pin adapter that this graphics card includes, although as I told you when analyzing the GeForce RTX 4080, two would actually be enough if we are not going to overclock.
Chassis space and processor: two recommendations
The GeForce RTX 4080 is a very large and bulky graphics card, as much as the GeForce RTX 4090, so we will need a large chassis to mount it. It occupies three slots and measures 12″ longbut we must also be careful when connecting the 16-pin power cable, since we should not bend it excessively in the first section of its route. If we do, we could have serious problems and the cable could overheat.
As for the processor, the GeForce RTX 4080 is a very powerful graphics card, and just like the GeForce RTX 4090 it has a strong dependence on the processor at low resolutions. If we move below 2160p it is easy to find ourselves with a bottleneck in less powerful CPUs, so the ideal thing to get the most out of it is to have a CPU with at least six cores and twelve threads and a high IPC. A Core i5-13600K or a Ryzen 5 7600X would be in the sweet spot. The Core i5-12600K and the Ryzen 5 5600X would also comply, although we would notice a difference in lower resolutions and in CPU-bound scenarios.
When it comes to temperatures you don’t have to worry, the GeForce RTX 4080 is a very cool graphics card, and it will not become an “oven” inside your PC, Quite the contrary, since as we told you in our analysis, their working temperatures did not exceed 65 degrees at full load.
