You could power at least an RTX 3060 Ti with this 600W PSU, on sale for just $40

You could power at least an RTX 3060 Ti with this 600W PSU, on sale for $40
Save $25 on EVGA's W1 series 600W power supply unit. (Image credit: EVGA)

The power supply unit is never the star of the show (we all like to brag about our CPUs and GPUs), but it's one of the most important parts of any PC build. Just as importantly, it dictates what level of GPU you can stick in your machine. EVGA's W1 series 600W model offers up enough wattage to power a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and is discounted to $39.99 at Best Buy right now.

That's $25 below its regular price, and a good value for a 600W model from a reputable brand. It's not brimming with bells and whistles, mind you—the cables are attached, not modular, and it's not a digital unit to provide advanced monitoring—but it is 80 Plus certified.

EVGA W1 Series 600W Power Supply Unit |$64.99$39.99 at Best Buy
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EVGA W1 Series 600W Power Supply Unit | $64.99 $39.99 at Best Buy
You could build a nice midrange gaming PC around this power supply, which has enough headroom to handle a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and perhaps even an RTX 3070.

It's also compact, measuring 3.35 (H) x 5.9 (W) x 5.5 (L) inches, so it should have no trouble fitting into smaller PC cases.

As for the connectors, it serves up a 24-pin main connector, a 4+4 pin CPU connector, two 6+2 pin PCIe connectors, six SATA connectors, and three peripheral connectors. That's enough for a robust setup.

Is a 600W PSU enough? That mostly depends on the GPU, followed by the CPU and other hardware. NVIDIA somewhat conservatively recommends a 600W PSU for the RTX 3060 Ti, and a 650W PSU for the RTX 3070. However, I've seen firsthand an RTX 3070 running on a 500W PSU as part of an OEM system. I strongly suspect this EVGA model could handle it as well, though without having tested it myself, I can't say with 100 percent certainty.

You can use an online PSU calculator as a rough guide. I've often leaned on OutVision's, and according to its estimate, a '502W' PSU would be good enough for a PC with a Core i5 10600K, GeForce RTX 3070, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, an NVMe SSD + SATA HDD (7,200 RPM), four 140mm case fans, and a Corsair Hydro H100i V2 all-in-one liquid cooler.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).

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