How much Electricity (AMPS) Does a Computer Use on Average?

Question

Just a fair estimate will do..Hard drives don't work all the time and neither do printers ect......

Answer 1

look on the back and look for the wattage consumption of the power supply. it might say something like 450W or 450 watts or whatever. Take that number, divide by 120 and you have your answer in amps. Example - say your computer has a 500 watt rating. 500/120= 4.16 amps.
Bear in mind this is generally the maximum consumption of the unit, the average will be around 2/3 of that (in the case of our example, 2.77amps)
You will need to do this for each part of the computer - look on the back of the monitor, the printer, etc for those wattages and use the above formaula again.

Answer 2

Computer power supplies are in WATTS, and if you're power supply isn't rated high enough, the hard drives won't work 'all the time'. The hard drives not working all the time could be the sign of failure...soon.

Printer on the other hand with the problems...I suppose that could be power related, unless there isn't enough power for the USB ports or they're faulty too.

Here's a link I found to convert Watts to Amps.

http://www.powerstream.com/Amps-Watts.htm

Assuming I did the math right, if you had a 400Watt PSU, I think that'd be around 3 amps. (I assumed 120V input).

Answer 3

Depends a lot on your monitor type. Big CRT monitors use a hundred or more watts. Normal computer itself uses about 50. LCD monitors use about 25-50 watts.
Figure about 150 watts for an average (1 1/2 amps) If you have lots of hard drives and USB plug-ins, you can double that. A laptop computer can use a lot less, since they are designed to conserve battery power.

Answer 4

Look at the power supply, it should be rated in watts. Divide that # by 120, that will give you amps. (IE 1200 watt {or 1.2kw}-- 1200/120=10amps)