John asks "I'm building a gaming computer with 12GB of RAM; how much power am I going to need?"

How much power you need generally doesn't come down to your RAM, but your other components. Generally, the biggest power suckers are (in order to consumption):

• Graphics card
• CPU
• Water cooling (if any)
• Hard drive (mechanical)
• Optical drive
• Hard drive (flash)
• Motherboard
• RAM
• Fan cooling

While most components will tell you how much power they suck up, what they don't tell you is how high their power use spikes; for example, my laptop comes with a 90W power adapter, but after monitoring the power levels, I've noticed that the power consumption can actually spike above 90W, and the same holds true for your computer components. Your processor may be a 90W processor, but its power usage can spike.

12GB of RAM, depending on the number of sticks, may only have a minimal effect. As long as you buy a power supply that can deliver an excess amount of power to your current configuration, you should be fine.

Do you have a question you need answered? E-mail me! lordkat@gmail.com

Click here to check out How to Build a Gaming Computer for Under $1000.

Be safe,

Jason