Best PSU for RTX 5070

Of the new GPUs announced by NVIDIA, the RTX 5070 might be the best value for money proposition. Decently powerful, but not privy to the same premium that flagship 5090 is.

That being said, if it’s been a while since you’ve upgraded your GPU, then you’ll need to make sure that your power supply is sufficient for the task, so let’s take a look at what you need, then make some choice recommendations. Luckily, the 5070 only has a 250W TGP.

• PCIE 5.0 X 16 slot (For best performance)
• 650W Power supply or greater.
• 2x PCIe 8-pin cables (adapter in box) OR 300 W or greater PCIe Gen 5 cable

As expected, we see a way less excessive TDP as compared to the 5090, and it instead lands a little closer to the 5080. This is good as it means you won’t need to spend as much money to sufficiently power the 5080, but if you do over-spec for the PSU, you’ll have more headroom.

Given the more pedestrian requirements of the RTX 5070, we’re going with the RM1000x. 1000W is enough to easily power a gaming PC with a 5070 and all the regular trimmings. Additionally, the latest variant of the RM1000x is ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 compliant and comes with a native 12V-2x6 connection. This means you do not need any adapters or anything like that to power the 5070.

Here’s the power table and the cable listing for the RM1000x, so you can see exactly what you’ll be able to plug in.

If you’re trying to be a little more thrifty but would like to exceed the minimum recommended PSU wattage for a 5070, the RM850x is a really strong choice here. You get all the same benefits as the 1000W model (Native 12V-2x6 connection, Cybenetics Gold efficiency and A noise ratings etc.), but at a slightly cheaper price.

The story here is almost identical to the 1000W version, but with slightly fewer watts and cables. Still enough to build a great gaming PC, though.

Even the RTX 5070 is an expensive GPU, so if you’re really trying to maximise the value of your PC build, then the CORSAIR RM750e is the correct PSU for you. There is no future proofing here, so if you upgrade to a better CPU or GPU later on, you’ll probably have to get a higher wattage PSU. But if you’re happy to go a while without upgrades, the RM750e will be totally fine.

You will fewer connections here, but the CORSAIR RM750e does come with a cable that takes two of the 8-pin connections on the PSU and converts them to 12VHPWR. The only downside of using a cable like this is that it takes up 2 connections on the PSU, so there is less expandability down the line.

Find below a couple of infographics to clarify the difference (or lack thereof) between the 12VHPWR and 12V-2x6 cables, and how to power a card that needs this standard if your CORSAIR PSU does not have a native 12V-2x6 connection.