First, let me start by saying that I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately. Life has taken a busy turn on me. Juggling school, work, chores, religion, personal projects, exercise, etc. is a very challenging thing. I'll stop before I start rambling.

Now, for the problem...or potential problem. I just got a hard drive from a friend and would like to make it my 3rd hard drive in my PC. Before I do, I'm worried about overloading my PSU. I have a 250 watt PSU, and here's what I have installed:

• CD burner (only use for reading now)
• DVD burner
• Nvidia graphics card (128 MB and has an onboard fan)
• AMD 1.6 GHz processor (Turion I think. It's about 4 years old)
• 2 sticks of RAM totaling 384 MB. I think both are PC2700 speeds.
• 2 Hard drives (both 40 GB. One Western Digital and the other Maxtor)

If I add a third hard drive, will my computer be able to handle it with a 250 watt PSU? Would I notice a reduction in performance at all? Or will it be fine, though I will shorten the lifespan of my PSU?

Thanks in advance my friends.

what is the GPU and graphics card interface? From what you say, yes it will probably bring the PSU close to the max limit. I would get a 350 watt PSU to be on teh safe side. you can get them for cheap nowadays at sites like newegg.com, which also has fast shipping via UPS or Fedex

Your 250 watts will probably run everything ok as long as youre not pushing to many devices to the max at one time. Its gonna depend on how hard you work it, because all the devices will draw more current the harder theyre pushed. Id say youre loading it pretty heavy though. Try this psu calculator, and see what u come up with. There are others, this is just one ive used a few times.
Power Supply Calculator — Journey Systems™ Custom PCs, Servers, Laptops, Workstations, Gaming PCs, Quality Custom Computers with 3 Year Warranty
I believe in overkill when it comes to power supplies though. More capacity usually doesnt cost a whole lot more money. Get the biggest one your budget allows, then you add hardware without worrying.

Many places will promote massive power supplies when the average PC will never use more than 600 W. I have a 600 W just because some of the things that I do with this computer (video editing) requires more power. Plus with a high end video card, multiple hard drives and case fans, it does take in a little more than the average dell will.

EDIT: I just took that Wattage test and mine came back at 360 W.

Thanks guys. That's a very useful tool Uncleed, thanks for your post. After taking the test, apparently if all my hardware is sucking up the most wattage it can, my powersupply would not be sufficient (312 watts would be used).

And then upon further reflection, most power supplies come with 4 peripheral connections, which would allow me to connect my CD and DVD drives, and 2 hard drives. It wouldn't allow for a 3rd one. I didn't look long enough to find one that allows for more connections, because I've decided to just get an external harddrive enclosure. Taking everything into consideration (the space in my computer, heat buildup, PSU) I figured that would be the best choice.

Thanks again.

marked as answered then.