How to calculate overall voltage of PC components

[Guest]

Hi,I want to calculate the overall voltage of all components(CPU,RAM,Graphics Card,Hard drive,USB devices etc) of my PC when connected at the same time,so I will know if i can upgrade any component without having any problem with my PSU of handling and operating them.

 

[pcgaming98]

You'll want to find the amperage of the 12V rail of your model PSU. For example, if your PSU's 12V rail can output 30 amps, its max continuous output is going to be 360 Watts total. Never mind if you bought it and it says "500 Watt PSU", what the 12V rail outputs matters the most, since your most important components such as your GPU, CPU, RAM, etc are going to be drawing power from this.

 

[timeconsumer]

Probably the easiest way to do this is just to use http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Otherwise, if you want the complex method, you need to google and find out the power consumption of your GPU and CPU. A lot of sites will list total system power consumption on reviews, not component consumption, so be careful there. Then you take the power (in watts) and divide by 12 (the volts) the determine the amount of 12v amps those components are using. That's about 90% of your PCs power consumption there. The other components that pull amps from the 12v rail are fans, water pumps, hard drives, and optical drives. All those combined might pull 2 amps (generous estimate). Look at the available amps on the 12v rail of your PSU to determine if you have enough, leave yourself some overhead (I'd say at least 20%), because you aren't working with exact numbers. The motherboard, ram, and a few other things really only use the 5v rail and 3.3v rail and you almost never have to worry about that.