Paul,

Well, according to my book, a motherboard can easily draw 4 to 15 amps or
more of +5V to run. Floppy drives can draw about 1.5A. And you also have to
consider the buses.

My two cents,

Tim Hamel

In a message dated 12/1/99 12:43:15 PM Pacific Standard Time,
paulb@MIDCOAST.COM.AU writes:

> Which may well be the case.  It intrigues me however that PC "shells"
>  (case plus power supply) are persistently advertised such as "230W power
>  supply" when I cannot see the likelihood of these ever requiring to
>  supply over 100W at absolute maximum.  And I would hate to think my
>  permanently-running computers dissipated much more than 50W each,
>  excluding monitors which I turn off.
>
>    Can anyone fault the following guesstimates:
>  Motherboard: 10W
>  CPU:         30W?
>  RAM:          2W
>  Video:        4W
>  Sound:        3W idle
>  HDD:         10W
>  FDD:          4W idle
>  CD:           6W more for a Writer of course
>  Keyboard:     2W
>  Fans:         4W
>
>  Total:       75W  OK, that's more than 50W :-(
>  --
>    Cheers,
>          Paul B.
>
>