Psu power usage

[wyndham]

Hi I have an old slimline PC with a 200w power supply
i have quite a few things plugged into it running of a molex splitter cable.
i want to know if there is anyway i can work out how many watts these extra things i have plugged in like harddrives,cdroms, usb devices are using so i'm not over straining the psu. its an all in one pc with built in video, the PSU seems to be a custom one so i can't just change it like a regular pc psu.

would this method work? get a basic watts meter which you plug into the mains then plug the power lead into. unplug most of the extra devices take a watts reading then take another watts reading with everything plugged in, take away the two figures to give me a watts used by the other devices to see if they add up to less than the 200w max it can handle?


any advice please?
is there more accurate equipment out there for measuring low dc power uasge my plugged hardware is using?

 

[totalknowledge]

Power @ the wall * efficiency would give you how much the computer is using. The efficiency would be the big question, and something you could only estimate.

 

[davcon]

Kill A Watt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001
You can buy these at stores like Home depot and Lowes = might be cheaper.

 

[pjmelect]

The 200W rating is the TOTAL power that the power supply can deliver to the computer, not the amount of power it can supply to peripheral devices. Monitoring the power into the power supply is a good way to estimate the total power drawn if you figure that the power supply is about 70 % efficient. Don't forget that the computer draws more power when the processor is fully loaded so run a program such as Prime95 to fully load it. You may be surprised at how little power the computer consumes I would bet that it is less than 140W fully loaded.

 

[davcon]

Yep! i was going to say 150W max.