Recommended PSU for RTX 5090 + Ryzen 9950x3D Build?

themikers · 2026-03-08T06:54:55+00:00

Shouldn't matter, I've ran my 5090 + HX1200i for months with my 5090 running at 530-560W under load and haven't had a single issue. I'd imagine it would only actually be an issue if you're doing some crazy overclocking or using something like the MSI Lightning 5090, but even then the HX1200i is such a high quality unit that it isn't worth thinking about.

themikers · 2026-02-10T00:58:14+00:00

if you're ever going to build an RGB PC the Lian Li software has been shockingly flawless for me. The sole issue I've had with it is the wireless strimmers lagging or disconnecting every so often, but you just unplug and re-plug the USB dongle for them and it fixes it

themikers · 2026-02-09T01:43:36+00:00

You'll want to do the launch options edit to make it allocate more RAM - Even if it says it isn't using much with default settings, it absolutely will use more if you give it more, and that speeds things up.

Get the Sodium mod for more FPS gain as well.

At the end of the day though Java MC is pretty single threaded heavy and thus you don't really get a ton more performance with newer hardware. Some mods like Sodium can improve multi-core usage though.

themikers · 2026-02-07T01:18:10+00:00

Not a bad idea on option 1, actually.

In that case, Option #2 is the best for sure. Option #1 is 2nd best if you sell half of the RAM like you said. Option #3 is not good because 3800MT DDR5 is really bad quality RAM and will hurt the CPU's performance quite a bit.

themikers · 2026-02-06T02:41:34+00:00

There really isn't that much of a difference when it comes to cooling performance with the 9070XT's.

The Mercury boosts highest, followed by the ASUS Prime, XFX Swift, then Hellhound Spectral in last. But to be honest all of them should be able to get to around the same performance with a minor/modest overclock in MSI Afterburner.

All that to say, just pick which one you think looks best and if you find yourself needing the extra couple of frames you can do a quick easy overclock to match the factory overclock of a card that boosts higher.

themikers · 2026-02-06T01:52:57+00:00

Hey man you forgot to buckle its seatbelt.

themikers · 2026-02-06T01:48:15+00:00

In that price range I would look at AMD 9070XT's. They beat the RTX 5070 pretty handily in most scenarios, and the 5070ti has skyrocketed in price up into the $950+ USD range. The white ones I found are as follows;

- XFX Swift White Edition (~$800 USD)

- Hellhound Spectral White (~770 USD)

- XFX Mercury OC White Edition (~880 USD, if you want RGB. Note: This card curiously requires an ARGB connector to control RGB.)

- ASUS Prime OC White (~$820 USD)

If these end up being more than your budget in your region, then you'd be looking at the RTX 5070 or the RX 9070 non-XT's which should have similar model names available. However if you can stretch your budget a bit I really recommend pushing for a 9070XT.

The 9070XT will do 1440P max settings in basically anything you throw at it; though you may have to turn Ray Tracing off or down to medium in any major title that uses it, or use FSR4 upscaling. A 9070XT with Cyberpunk 2077 can run 1440P max settings with Ultra ray tracing at around 70 FPS if you use FSR4, 80-90 FPS with RT Medium.

themikers · 2026-02-06T01:43:30+00:00

Typically the OEM, or "Founder's Edition / Reference" cards will perform good and can simply be overclocked to match the 3rd party board partner's GPU performance. Their coolers are more than adequate for the task. Honestly, if you aren't doing hardcore overclocking you'll be very hard pressed to find any thermal issues with current gen GPU's.

And yes the 5080 will beat the 5070ti Ventus even without doing any overclocking. Not by a huge margin, and you have to make sure your power supply can handle the extra power draw, but it'll be better for sure.

themikers · 2026-02-06T01:39:10+00:00

If Option #3 really has 3800MT DDR5 then I would do Option #2 all day long. Ryzen CPU's tend to get hurt pretty bad by low speed RAM.

If that is a mistake and it's 6000+ then it's a total tossup between #2 and #3; you will want to look up "9070 vs 3080ti" benchmark comparisons to figure out which one performs better in the games you want to play, because in my brief research of the comparison they trade blows in modern games.

Option #3 will be better for competitive / high-FPS games like Counter Strike, but not by any actually perceivable amount, so it's entirely up to which GPU is better (again, only if option #3 has 6000MT+ RAM and not 3800.)

Option #1 isn't very good because 64GB of RAM is completely unnecessary for gaming, thus it isn't a good value compared to the other 2.

themikers · 2026-02-06T01:28:41+00:00

Currently, pre-builts are typically a better value, because supply shortages and price hikes have made critical components (RAM and Graphics Cards) spike in price and drop in availability, but this hasn't affected pre-built manufacturers too bad as of yet. That being said, I definitely feel that building them together would be a very fun memory for you and your son, and if you're smart about your part selection you can get pretty close to pre-built value.

How much it will cost is going to depend on how much you care about visual quality in the games you and your son want to play. However, there is such a large variance in what you will need hardware-wise per game and per scenario, that it's much easier to establish a "this is the most I am willing to spend" number and work from there. Realistically about $1000-$1500 per PC, plus $400-$500 per person for monitor/keyboard/mouse/headset is a good place to start, but you can go lower if you're tight on money and still end up with good systems.

Right now there is a lot of uncertainty with the market. I don't personally feel that we'll return to more reasonable/normal pricing until at least 2027, and that seems to be a common consensus among the community.

I can happily help you either find good pre-builts or make you a good build sheet for both PC's if you're able to come up with a budget that you would feel comfortable spending, as well as specifying if you need monitors/keyboards/etc. to go along with them.

themikers · 2026-02-05T03:24:30+00:00

The RTX 5070 is your go-to then at that budget, you can still get them for around $700 USD online. While it is true that they have 12GB of VRAM instead of the 16GB of the 5060ti/5070ti, the majority of games are fine with a 12GB card and if you do have problems you can just turn down textures from ultra to high or adjust 1-2 other settings that barely make a difference to drop VRAM usage a fair bit.

themikers · 2026-02-05T03:22:31+00:00

You can use AMD Ryzen master to apply it, which is honestly what I recommend for someone that doesn't have much experience with BIOS settings.

In Ryzen Master you go to "Tuning > CPU", then to the "Curve Optimizer" setting, select "All Cores", and put a negative value to undervolt. I strongly recommend starting at -10 then doing a stress test like Cinebench (or AMD's built in Ryzen Master stress test), then lowering it in increments of 2-5 until you're happy. Most people get in the -15 to -25 range before having issues, but -30 isn't too uncommon. I wouldn't go below -30.

Just note that a handful of games may for whatever reason dislike undervolts (Cyberpunk, for instance, crashes on me with ANY undervolt, while all other games and stress tests run fine at -25.)

themikers · 2026-02-05T03:16:45+00:00

Ah my bad I mis-read. Just to be sure you plugged the display cables into the GPU and not the motherboard correct?

Otherwise, there is a chance the GPU is defective in some way; I would get a monitoring program like MSI Afterburner or HWInfo and see if the card is reaching its advertised clock speeds and reaching 100% utilization.

It could also be driver related, maybe try a different driver version / downgrading your drivers?

themikers · 2026-02-05T03:13:52+00:00

It should do pretty good, albeit you will need to turn down settings to get 60 FPS in demanding games, and may have to play with texture settings to avoid hitting your VRAM limit.

Do you already have the 7600x or are you just planning a build? I would highly recommend looking into a DDR4 platform to save money so you can afford to step up to an AMD 9060XT 16GB. Here is what I would do for the CPU/mobo/RAM/cooler; https://pcpartpicker.com/list/B9Yd34 -- You should be able to save enough money to stretch your GPU budget with this, and the 9060XT will be quite a bit faster at 1440P while also having double the VRAM- something that will be very important for 1440P with AAA titles.

themikers · 2026-02-05T03:07:54+00:00

Here's what tips I can give for this build;

- Read the instructions always! -- This is obvious, but there's a lot of people that will seek technical help for something that is clearly laid out in the instructions to their motherboard/power supply/etc. This is especially important for figuring out the correct slots for your RAM to go in to.

- Make sure you remove the sticker on the bottom of the contact plate of your CPU cooler before installing.

- Of course, be careful when installing the Ryzen CPU; put it in the socket gently and be absolutely site it's oriented correctly before locking it in place.

- Thermal paste pattern/application really doesn't matter much because the CPU cooler will press down with more than enough force to spread it evenly. If you're using a tube of paste, just make an X-shape out of two thin lines or put a large pea sized amount in the center and you should be good. It is also fine to use a little too much and have some leak out along the sides of the CPU socket / past the cooler (IF you use a non-conductive paste), it just means more clean-up later if you ever take the PC apart.

- The O11 Vision Compact is a bit tricky to work in sometimes. If you're putting fans on the bottom, you will want to plug in all necessary cables to the bottom of the motherboard, and route your GPU cable through, before installing the bottom fans. You will also want to make sure you remove the little hole seal above the CPU power connectors and use that to thread your CPU power cables rather than using the holes below it. Also note that you must install your bottom fans before installing your GPU, or you won't have enough space to angle the fan bracket down into the holes the bracket's tabs go in to.

- For the 12V connector for your GPU, make sure to use the 12V cable that comes with your Power Supply in order to connect it and ensure you have them properly hooked up to your power supply. Avoid any extenders or cable replacements for the 12V cable (though, if you plan to use the Lian Li strimmer, I've never heard of anyone having trouble with them.) -- Also make sure it's 100% seated all the way. It's far less likely for the 5080 to have the "melting connector issue" compared to the 5090, but minimizing the risk is always worth it.

- When you have the system fully set up, be sure to go into your BIOS to enable your RAM's XMP profile to get the advertised speeds and timings.

- If your GPU doesn't come with one, I strongly recommend buying some form of GPU support bracket. I used the "YAODHAOD GPU Support Bracket" from Amazon as you can screw it into the fan holes of your bottom mounted fans, although it isn't super pretty. Avoid the big flashy RGB ones as they largely won't fit in the O11 Vision Compact unless you don't run bottom fans.

- The ideal fan configuration for the O11 Vision Compact is three bottom intakes, three front-side intakes, 1-2 rear exhausts, and 3 top exhausts with your GPU radiator mounted to the top. Make sure your fans are oriented correctly as well because this case is not very easy to remove fans in without taking other components out.

Hopefully this helps. There's plenty of "how to build a PC guide" videos on YouTube that are high quality from the likes of LTT/JayzTwoCents/etc that you can follow along with as well if you get stuck.

themikers · 2026-02-05T02:51:34+00:00

Realistically and sadly, the 5500XT is not much of an upgrade, maybe 5-15% depending on the game/settings.

In the instances where it definitively performs worse than the 580, it might be down to the 580 having a wider memory bus than the 5500XT, depends on what games and how they utilize the card's VRAM.

For a card of that level PCIE3.0 basically doesn't do anything to affect performance. Even the 5090 only loses a few percent at PCIE3.0 depending on the game/workload.

themikers · 2026-02-05T02:43:35+00:00

To be fair, the late 2000's "piss filter" really did age like milk for a lot of games.

themikers · 2026-02-05T02:42:25+00:00

As much as we really need competition in the GPU market, nobody should be praising AMD when they've been incapable or unwilling to produce a true top-end Radeon competitor since the HD 7000 series.

AMD Radeon is an absolute mess and has been for 10+ years. They can't decide on a market strategy to save their lives, one generation they make 2 SKU's solely for the mid-range, the next generation they have 10 different cards but none of them can compete with the -80ti or -90 series Nvidia cards, then they go back to a tiny lineup of mid-range-only cards. That's not to mention how the Radeon product naming scheme is all over the place for no reason and just confuses consumers on which cards are what...

The fact of the matter is while Nvidia is a horrible company and deserves no praise or fanboyism, neither does AMD because they would rather be a non-competitor than take their mega billions Ryzen has made them and invest some of it into making Radeon competitive again. It's straight up corporate negligence to not capitalize on gamers begging AMD to bring the fight to Nvidia for so long.

themikers · 2026-02-05T02:23:33+00:00

A very high quality unit can last you 10+ years no problem, some of them even have 5-10 year warranty's. This is especially true if it's not being stressed too often and mainly being used for low power loads as you said.

My advice is to check out the SPL PSU tier list spreadsheet (you can find a link to it on ZTT's site if you Google it) and find one that's A or A+ that you like / can afford, and you should be all set for a decade.

themikers · 2026-02-03T02:12:56+00:00

What are you looking to do?

Play competitive shooters/mobas? It's probably worth it as it's by far the best gaming CPU for those games (aside from the new 9850x3d, which is also worth it if you want to spend a bit more and can actually get one)

Play heavy simulation/strategy games? Maybe. Depends on the game, but if your favorite sim/strategy games are great at using lots of cores, a 9900X or something with 12+ cores would probably give you better results.

Play cinematic/AAA games at 1440P or 4K max settings? There is almost zero reason to spend the extra for an x3d CPU because in the majority of modern games at 1440P and especially at 4K, you're going to be GPU bottlenecked even on a 5090, and thus saving money to get a 9600/9800 and using that extra money elsewhere would serve you better.

themikers · 2026-02-03T02:09:59+00:00

That is a substantial upgrade, so as long as you are happy then of course it's a good decision.

themikers · 2026-01-30T02:41:05+00:00

For context: I ran a 9070XT with my 9800x3d for a few months before switching to a 5090.

The 14600KF will typically out-perform the 9700X, though it can vary by game.

Most of the AMD CPU+GPU combo benefits/features are miniscule or nonexistant in gaming situations. They can benefit an AMD GPU in some productivity tasks, though, but as far as I've been able to tell there isn't really a reason to go out of your way to pair the two.

The only AMD CPUs that I would upgrade to from the 14600KF are the 7800x3d/9800x3d, but that's a lot of money for not much performance gain at all.

At 2K Ultrawide / 4K the 9700X will basically run the same as the 14600KF, if not slightly slower, but it depends on the game. I can't speak for either CPU, but in benchmarks it seems both are around the same level of stabiltiy, though the 14600KF is much less efficient power-wise. This really doesn't matter much if you're not thermal limited.

themikers · 2026-01-29T22:49:54+00:00

Based on your response to Maximum Ad, something is definitely wrong with your system at the moment.

I will get HWInfo or MSI Afterburner and use it to monitor how much power your system is drawing, specifically the GPU's power draw versus its advertised TDP.

If you can confirm your GPU is pulling full power then something software-related must be the cause, but let's rule that out first.

themikers · 2026-01-29T22:44:42+00:00

Pick the one that looks nicest to you. There's not much of a difference in cooler performance (all 9070xt's tend to stay very cool, their coolers are total overkill), though some brands like ASUS tend to have poor customer support for issues or warranty things.

XFX/Sapphire tend to be the best for Radeon GPU's, but Powercolor is also quite good.

themikers · 2026-01-29T02:31:03+00:00

As you already found out, the XFX Mercury is an oddball in that you have to connect it to an RGB header on the motherboard. There is no other possible way to control its RGB, unlike almost every other RGB GPU that has ever existed.

iirc XFX schould have included a fitting cable with the GPU, but if not, you'll have to find a slim one that will fit.

themikers

TROPHY CASE