I was wondering how many times I can safely spit the power in my PC? I am running a P4 2.8 Ghz PC with a ASUS P4P800 Mobo. 1 GB of ram, and a ATI AIW 9800 Video card, with a 350 watt Power supply. I believe I have 6 or 7 power lines being used at the moment (2 HDD, 2 CD/DVD-Roms, 1 for the videocard, and 1 for a side panel fan and maybe another to something else that I can't see at the moment) I had to spit a power line to hook up the fan, I was wondering how many more splits I can make, I would like to hook up two more CD/DVD-roms and another HDD or two using a IDE PCI card. Some advice here would be great. Thanks

I’m not savvy enough to know the answer to that question, but I would suggest posting it in the “General Hardware” message area instead. You’d probably get better results that way. -Adam

It depends on what amperage your power supply is putting out on that circuit. If it is putting out 12 v at 2 amps then it would be able to use all the amps that iut is suppling before it started showing a voltage fluxuation. If your devices you are using use 12v and 500 miliamps(.5 amps) then you would be able to split the power 4 times before a fluxuation occurs and so on.as long as the power supply pushes more amps than is being used you should be ok, but keep in mind that when you reach the balancing point you will have a tendancy to under power your devices due to wire resistance which also causes a amperage/voltage drop which can lead to device failure and excessive heat build up. If you are powering six or seven devices from a 350 amp power supply, then I would say that you are starting to push the envelope too far. It would be advisable to upgrade to a higher power supply than take the chance of blowing out your pc by under supplying the power it needs to operate with Hope that helped, rc

See the attached Link to better calculate what rating your power supply should be.