Excess often sells in the world of gaming PCs, but Asus' new 3000 W power supply makes little sense for even the wealthiest of whales

The old marketing saying of 'sex sells' frequently gets converted to 'excess sells' when it comes to computer tech, and for the 20th anniversary of the ROG brand, Asus has taken this to another level with a new 3000 W power supply unit for gaming PCs.

It's not the power rating that's so eyebrow-raising about the Asus ROG Thor 3000W Titanium III Edition 20, as 3 kW PSUs aren't anything new in the world of workstations. For example, Corsair has the WS3000 and Asus itself has the Pro WS 3000W Platinum. However, for gaming PCs, it's completely overkill and totally unnecessary, even if you're overclocking the twangers off every single component in your rig.

And yet, that's the exact market that Asus is selling its latest mega supply to. Making matters even worse is the fact that the PSU sports four 12V-2x6 power sockets, despite the fact that you can only game on a single RTX 5090. Sure, you could slap another three into your PC for giggles, but it won't help to make anything run faster.

For AI workloads, it's a different story, but that's not mentioned in Asus' marketing, nor is it what ROG is all about. The Thor 3000 W Titanium III Edition 20 does have gaming-related features, such as an OLED display that can be magnetically attached to the PSU or your PC's case via an extension cable, plus a voltage monitoring system to prevent your RTX 5090 from self-destructing.

But no gaming setup is going to get anywhere near the unit's 3000 W power limit (1600 W when using a 115 V supply), and even though the Thor's peak efficiency will be around the 1600 W mark, that's still far more than you're likely to need.

Well, unless you just happen to have an overclocked 800 W Asus RTX 5090, plus a heavily PBO'd Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, a mountain of DRAM sticks, an even bigger mountain of Gen5 SSDs, plus a small warehouse-worth of fans and RGB lighting.

Of course, I am applying logic to a product that isn't logical. It's not really a gaming PSU at all: It's an over-the-top statement from Asus, simply because it can, and partly because the whole ROG brand has become synonymous with this line of thinking.

But even if you can afford it, I would recommend that you look elsewhere for an all-singing, all-dancing power supply, because when you look closely at Asus' images for the new PSU, you can see that it's just a spruced-up standard design. The main power switch and some of the connectors also look somewhat wonky, indicating that this isn't a special, hand-crafted unit. Ho-hum.