Whenever i turn on my computer...

[computernewbie]

The lamp in my room starts to flicker, and my mom reports the lamp in the bathroom also flickers when my computer is on. Usually when my computer is on, so is the TV....Power Shortage?

Using a 850W PSU, and my system should take no more than 750W, would that be able to overpower my wall socket? (Note, the computer is the only thing i have plugged into one socket, not to mention with the surge protector), Is my computer taking more than 10A from the wall socket? Because im pretty sure 10A is as low as wall sockets get, and im quite sure the guy who built this house was a tad lazy....

Thanks

 

[dmblue]

You might want to check and see how many things ( lights, lamps, alarm clocks etc) are plugged into one breaker.

 

[jsc]

System specs?

You can buy or maybe borrow a Kill a watt meter to measure how much power your system is actually pulling from the wall.

 

[Paperdoc]

It's not the power consumption on the one wall outlet you are using that matters. It is the total power consumed by all devices plugged into several wall outlets that all are fed from one common circuit breaker. It is that breaker (usually 15 amps) that determines the total circuit capacity. To track that down you need to start turning off br4eakes one at a time to see ALL of the things that go off together. You already have one clue: besides your computer, you report that the TV, a room lamp, and a light in the bathroom all appear to be linked and may be sharing the same branch circuit. When you find all of the devices on the circuit you can add up their loads and see. At 110 VAC, 15 amps allows for 1650 Watts total, and normally you would wan to keep it under 1500W for a small error margin. However, the ACTUAL power used b a computer or TV is hard to determine, because the MAXIMUM power it COULD consume is what the label tells you.