Hi there. So here’s my dilemma. I currently have 3 drives in my rig - one 500 GB SSD for OS (and where WoW is installed), one WD 1 TB Black for other games and one 4 TB HDD for storage purposes. I would like to replace the 1 TB black with a 1 TB SSD (or maybe even two) which will be dedicated for games.
My concern is power - I have a 2 year old thermaltake SMART RGB 700W 80+. Other components of my rig are a Ryzen 5 2600, one 16 GB DDR4 stick, and a 1660 ti GPU. Does a 1 TB SSD have the same power draw as a 1 TB WD Black or should I consider upgrading my PSU as well? I’m going for the SATA SSDs as my measly A320 mobo doesn’t have slots for those stick type SSDs. Thank you all!
Typically, a power supply can support as many devices as it has connectors for; though video cards are the biggest power draw you really have to worry about.
SSDs actually draw less power than your typical HDD, so you’ll actually save power making the swap. Over the years I’ve mostly been hovering between 600-750 power supplies, while having 4-5 internal storage devices.
On an unrelated note, ever thought about getting two sticks of ram for dual-channel support and improved performance?
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If you have modern hardware, they generally are more efficient than they used to be.
These days 600w (a SOLID 450 to 500w even) is plenty for almost everyone, even overclockers.
Especially since SLI/Crossfire is pretty much dead, the need for huge PSUs is gone.
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Hard Drive Power Consumption
| Solid State Drive SSD |
0.6 to 2.8 W |
| 2.5" Hard Disk Drive HDD
|
0.7 to 3 W |
| 3.5" Hard Disk Drive HDD
|
6.5 to 9 W |
You can fit dozens of SSD/HDD in your case and not have to worry about power since your CPU/GPU pulls around 200w gaming.
Awesome! Thank you all! I guess I’m swapping out that HDD with an SSD then with no hesitation. And yes that 16 GB RAM stick was the only DDR4 the shop had when I bought my rig at a PC store. I’ll probably look into going for a two stick form factor but that would be low priority at the moment.
You may want to consider it a somewhat higher priority. Maybe even see if you can trade locally for 2x8.
There’s a significant performance increase by having dual channel memory, especially in more CPU bound games.
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I will look into that. Thanks!