By resolution
CPU ↔ GPU balance
Power supply
Look for
- A DC-DC, LLC resonant platform from a known manufacturer (OEM)
- A full protection set: OCP, OVP, UVP, SCP, OPP, OTP
- 105 °C Japanese capacitors
- ATX 3.1 with a native 12V-2x6 cable (for RTX 40/50)
- 80 PLUS Gold / Cybenetics Gold or better
- A 7–10 year warranty and independent test reviews
Avoid
- No-name units given away with cases
- Units with no certification, or sold on "peak / max" wattage
- Cheap group-regulated series at high wattage
- Brands that don't list their protection circuits
- Warranties shorter than 2 years
- Models with no reviews, sold on wattage alone
What to buy
The upgrades that would make the biggest difference for your game and monitor.
All games
60+ smooth
45–59 playable
30–44 struggles
under 30 not recommended
★ fills your monitor's refresh rate
How we estimate
Every graphics card has a performance index for 1080p, 1440p and 4K, and every CPU has a gaming index. A game's FPS on the reference system (RTX 4070 + Ryzen 7 9800X3D, High preset) is scaled by the card's index. The highest FPS the CPU can deliver in that game is calculated separately. The result is a soft minimum of those two ceilings, with penalties when VRAM, RAM or thread count fall short. The range shown is ±10%.
GPU_fps = Ref_fps × (Card ÷ RTX 4070)^e × Preset × VRAM
CPU_fps = Ref_cap × (CPU ÷ 9800X3D) × Threads
FPS ≈ (GPU_fps⁻⁶ + CPU_fps⁻⁶)^(−1/6) × RAM
PSU_peak = Card TBP + CPU max power + 50 W
Recommended ≈ PSU_peak × 1.4 (minimum: × 1.05)
- Graphics card indexes: Tom's Hardware GPU hierarchy (June 2026; Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 11 games, Ultra). Older cards are converted from the same site's 2022–2024 table.
- CPU indexes: Tom's Hardware 1080p gaming scores (October 2026). Ryzen 5000 and older, and Intel 11th gen and older, are approximate.
- Per-game reference FPS, VRAM and RAM needs are approximate for now and will be updated with test results.
- Not yet included: laptop GPUs, ray tracing, frame generation and 1% lows.