Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell graphics cards could be more power hungry than their Ada Lovelace counterparts

A listing on Seasonic's official wattage calculator for PSUs suggested Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs would be just as power hungry as their predecessors, with the GeForce RTX 5090 guzzling up to 500 Watts under load. Now, prolific leaker Kopite7kimi says they could require more juice than their Ada Lovelace counterparts.

Apparently, the GeForce RTX 5090 will consume more than 550 Watts at full load. The mid-range GeForce RTX 5070 could go over 220 Watts and even the GeForce RTX 5080 up your power bills (exact wattage unknown). This is an interesting development because on the laptop side, the GeForce RTX 5060 is said to max out at 115 Watts (vs. 140 Watts for the RTX 4060). 

Nvidia's decision to increase power consumption across the board is alarming because numerous GeForce RTX 4090 12VHPWR connectors have melted due to excessive power, and that situation will only get worse with the GeForce RTX 5090. That said, Nvidia might not have a choice as the node shift from TSMC 4N to 4NP is a minor one and architectural changes can deliver only so much of a performance increase at the same power draw.