Configuration "Checker" Program

[colinNCSU]

I am an Engineering Student and I am thinking about what to do for possible senior design projects. I was wondering (for 2 reasons) if there was any type of software that could let you set up your configuration in a GUI and then run a checker on it to make sure all your voltages and capabilities are going to work out and that nothing will stress your system out or damage it in any way?
Maybe with output that gives you risk assessment/warnings by location around the motherboard?
If there is such an idea out there in the cyberworld does anyone know what its called? Or if such a noob mistake saving masterpiece doesn't exist? And do you think if I tried to make one would that be helpful or useless?
Basically would need a big database of components sorted by manufacturer/model number or whatever and a list of all the specs and voltages and any other detailed info needed from an engineering standpoint like capacitence or impedence or whatever. Then once all the things are known about anything that has to do with signal or power flow is known then a simulation can run to determine what could happen to the system in different situations. Not an actual stress test but a simulation of one I guess. Just so people can even make sure that what their ordering on the internet will work. Or which one would be the best for optimization to your specific system. Does that even make sense?

 

[tsnor]

For power: There are power calculators where you enter your components and the checker determines the expected load on the PSU. http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

There is unstructured data out there that gives expected power consumption by component.

You could build a system that validates power supply vs. configuration.

There is also unstructured data that would allow you to build a system that would find conflicts like "your ram is for a laptop, your MB is for a desktop and can't hold this ram" or "that a socket XXX cpu, but a socket yyy motherboard" or "no video on this MB and you don't have a video card in your build" ...

There is also unstructured data that gives usage results for configs. For example, an i7-2600 with no video is not efficient for running Crysis or doing web browsing. In the first case it can't do the job, in the second it's not an optimal config to do the job (tpp much $$$ for benefit).

Not sure if these would lead to a simulation. More a rules based expert system or maybe a database exercise in capturing unstructured data or just a straight piece of application code once you have the data.