Anyway to tell how much power Hard drives draw?

[Gannon]

I've got 5 hard drives in my system with a 430W power supply, I'm wondering if I'd be stretching it putting a high end video card in this system or not. It's a P4 3.2Ghz /w P4P800-E motherboard, and a raid 5 card.

Is there anyway I can measure/calculate (roughly) how much power these hard drives are drawing so I can make a guesstimate?

 

[mechBgon]

You can simply look it up at the manufacturer's website. If you figure about 10 to 15 watts per drive overall, you're in the ballpark, from what I've seen on specsheets on Seagate's ATA drives, but you can get the details from them and presumably from other manufacturers too.

Bigger picture: is it a quality 430W or sort of generic? And is the 3.2 a Northwood or a Prescott? And how high-end would you get for the video card?

 

[Gannon]

Most likely either a 6600GT or possibly a 6800, but right now the 6800, possibly a GT but it is not looking like its worth the money for the CPU I have and the games I want to use with it. The power supply is a "brand name" its a thermaltake 430W, so I hope its decent because I bought it thinking thermaltake would be halfdecent since they are into the "mod" scene / business.