The TDP (thermal design power) of Nvidia RTX 50 series graphics cards has leaked, showing a slight increase in demand compared to the previous generation. Low-consumption GPUs seem to be a thing of the past as performance takes centre stage.
Power supply manufacturer Seasonic has updated its wattage calculator tool, adding Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs into the mix. According to this tool, upcoming graphics cards based on the Blackwell architecture are expected to consume up to 500W on the high end. While the manufacturer doesn’t directly display this information on its page, you can find the rating by downloading the results in text format.
From it, we learn that the GeForce RTX 50 series is rated as follows:
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has a 500W TDP – 50W higher than RTX 4090
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 has a 350W TDP – 30W higher than RTX 4080
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 has a 220W TDP – 20W higher than RTX 4070
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 has a 170W TDP – 55W higher than RTX 4060
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 has a 100W TDP – no desktop RTX 4050 to compare
A 16-pin power connector powers all models, probably the revised 12V-2×6 variant, including the low-power RTX 5050. If true, this is unfortunate since it would force budget users wanting an RTX 5050 to upgrade their PSU for a PCIe 5.0 compatible model or use an adapter. That said, Nvidia may let its partners choose their preferred connector for this entry-level GPU. Regardless, the main question is whether or not the lower-end keeps all the series features, such as media encoders and next-gen Nvidia DLSS.
Even as the best graphics card sporting 500W, RTX 5090 needs just a single cable. Better yet, there’ll still be room to spare for some overclocking. We just hope there won’t be any burning incidents this time around.
As usual, take the information with a pinch of salt. While it’s more reliable than your standard leak since it comes from an official partner, it’s still early days. Things could change between now and when RTX 5090 and 5080 should launch later this year.
