Imagine this situation: you bought a new hard drive or video card, plugged in the device, and turned on your computer. And the computer won't turn on. This can be influenced by several factors, one of which is the lack of power of the power supply unit (PSU). He simply did not pull the new video card and did not allow to turn on the PC, so as not to burn out himself. And the problem is that the power has not been calculated.
Instructions
Step 1
The fact is that modern power supplies have an output power sensor, which will not allow you to turn on the PC if the power supply cannot cope with the load power. But the power supply unit can burn out if the power consumed by the load is much greater than the power for which the power supply unit is designed. To prevent such excesses from happening, calculate the load power and compare it with the power that the PSU can withstand.
Step 2
Power is a physical quantity that characterizes the energy given or received by an object per unit of time. There is power allocated (output) and absorbed (input). Like energy, power can be of different types: mechanical, acoustic, thermal, electrical, electromagnetic, and so on.
Step 3
From the same physics course, we know that the power P (W) for a circuit with a constant current is directly proportional to the voltage value U (V), as well as the current strength I (A) in the circuit section: P = I * U. This formula can be used not only to calculate the power consumed by the device, but also to calculate the output power of the PSU and to calculate the thermal power.
Step 4
Thermal power (heating), which is released on one of the elements of the power circuit, will also be directly proportional to the strength of the current passing through all consumers. I think it is not worth explaining why the total power of all elements of the computer should not exceed the maximum output power of the PSU.
Step 5
I would also like to note that the system consumes power unevenly. The system usually experiences power peaks when turning on the PC or some separate device, turning on the servos, increasing the computing load, and so on. For devices with high power consumption, manufacturers usually indicate peak power values.
Step 6
Thus, so that our power supply does not burn out, we need to at least roughly estimate the values of the maximum power consumption of the load, adding up the power values of all devices currently connected to the power supply unit and compare the result with the maximum power of the power supply unit itself. And the total power of devices is determined by the formula: P = p (1) + p (2) + p (3) +… + p (i).
