Power Consumption Question

[Huser]

My current PC is kinda old and i am looking at slowly updating parts of the next few months.

Current Specs:
i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3k
Radeon 6870HD 1GB 256-bit
8GB RAM
650W Power supply

Im looking at upping the graphics card to a R9 290 4GB 512-bit but i am worried about my systems power consumption. The next item in line will be CPU and power supply since it will most likely be necessary by then, and then maybe bumping up to 16GB RAM. I know a 650W power supply is on the low end and looking at benchmarks i see the R9 290 under load consumes 400-420W of power. Will my current system be able to handle the update to the R9 290 without a power supply upgrade? I dont have a meter to check my power consumption but it seems my processor under load consumes 100-110 and the card consumes 400-420. I wouldn't think the rest of my system would consume 100+W but i thought i would check here first! Thanks! (BTW im new to the PC forums here so be nice )

[Biernot]

PSU is fine. 650W is plenty for any single-gpu system. The 400W for your graphics card are waaaay off. That card is more around 150-200W.

rule of thumb:
cpu: 80W (intel), 100W (amd), more with oc.
gpu: 150W (mid-range, e.g. radeon 7850 / gtx 660), 250W (high-end, e.g. radeon 7970, gtx 780)
rest: 100W (motherboard, ram, hdd, ...)

[Huser]

Okay thanks. I was just going by what i could find on the internet. This site (http://www.maximumpc.com/amd_radeon_...marks?page=0,1) was benchmarking the 290 and said he saw up to 420 watt consumption under 100% load. Thanks for the response though!

[yurano]

This site (http://www.maximumpc.com/amd_radeon_...marks?page=0,1) was benchmarking the 290 and said he saw up to 420 watt consumption under 100% load.

420W is likely an "at the wall" measurement of the whole system's power draw which also factors in PSU efficiency, adding to the total power draw.

If you have a quality 650W PSU, you will be fine.