Overloading the 12 volt

[Darrenct]

My PSU is rated for 20 amps of current on the 12V. If I am putting right around 20 amps worth of current on my 12 Volt can this cause my system to become unstable? About how many amps are drawn from things like HDD, CD-ROMs, and the Mobo?

[simple]

Well, on hard drives you can get watts and that's almost just as good... P=IV (watts=current*voltage) current in amps.

[Darrenct]

That would work fine except the Hard Drive is wired in to two power cuircuits, how do I know how much of the rated wattage is on the 12 V?

I was really trying to find out how much of those 20 Amps would typically be used by a system like mine. That way, I know how much power I have left to use for my mods.

[Hoot]

The only way you will overtax that +12V is if you foolishly tried to run a peltier off of it. I seriously doubt you would have enogh drive bays to fill up with burners and enough 120mm fans to even come close to overtaxing it. Believe me, the last thing on your mind should be overtaxing your 12V with just drives and fans.

Hoot

[Darrenct]

Actually... I was going to run a couple of 35 Watt pelts off of it. One for my chipset, and one for my GPU. Each draws 4 Amps... Is this a bad idea, I don't exactly want to buy(or install) another PSU just to power my little pelts.

[Bender]

If your only running a few it should be no problem at all. 3 35 watt pelts is only 12 amps which isn't to bad. I run an 80 watt 8 amp pelt off a 250 watt psu and the 12v is only 8 amps. I don't reccomend using 8 amps on an 8 amp psu but it woks fine. I just got a 300 watt so I can have one didicated for peltier cooling. My 300 watt is just enough to power a 122 watt pelt.