from the wonderful person said:
I know I have a cheap powersupply, but how can I find out how many watts my
powersupply has without taking the computer apart. Is there a free program
somewhere that will let me do this or does XP provide this somewhere?
No way of telling - there is no 'data' connection from the PSU. Read the
label on the back of the PC (if you can see it) .. if it's not there
it'll be on the side of the PSU, which means taking the sides off the PC
case to be able to read it. Once you have a model number,
www.google.com
will probably find you the answers.
fwiw, 'Watts' is a nearly meaningless metric anyway - it's how many
Watts that come out on the supply lines that your PC =needs= (typically
5v and 3.3v, although more modern motherboards use the 12V supply for
generating the CPU power supply) rather than 'total watts', which
matters.
A PSU which can put out 400w, of which 300w is on the -12V line, is only
useful (PC-wise) as a doorstop.
And there's no point having 600watts if the +5V supply wanders about by
+/-25%, goes awol every second, or has 25V spikes on it. 8>.
