How can I tell if I'm overloading my power supply?

[grantbaxter]

Hello everyone,

I've got a 400W power supply in a mid tower case. I've got 3 7200RPM hard drives, CDBurner, DVDROM, Zip250, 3.5 Floppy, ATI All in Wonder, a network card, a modem, and a hard disk controller installed. I'm getting concerned that I'm overloading my power supply. When I hooked everything up together, my screen got a little dimmer -- purplish. (The Monitor has it's own power supply) How can I tell if I'm taxing my powersupply too much?

Thanks,
Grant

 

[FatBurger]

If you're taxing your PSU, there's no hope for the world. Besides, the monitor wouldn't be having problems because of a weak power supply, since it has it's own. Your video card might not be working right.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[ejsmith2]

I've *heard* it said that if the 5v rail is dropping below 4.9, it's time to swap out a psu. You're better off adding amps, including rush rates.

The only thing that is going to matter on the 12v rail is a peltier. So, on the 5/3.3, you've got: 6 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 20 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 42 amps

Add a processor (30 or under)=72 amps

You're under-budget. Even though I didn't include the sys. memory or chipset. Even with a 1.4 ghz tbird(~32amps).

If you want a little leeway, you can buy a *really* cheep 250watt or even 300watt psu, and relay it to your hard disks and other stuff, so the only current pulled on the 400watt is the mainboard (gfx, pci bus, memory, chipset, cpu).

<font color=blue>I hacked Msft, and all I got was this lousy source code.....</font color=blue>