I ma having a bit of a problem with electricity in my house...?

Question

My house is currently running on a 100 amp circuit. Due to this, when I turn on my PC, the lights on the top 2 floors dim. I will soon be upgrading to an even more powerful computer. How could I go about increasing the amount of power available to the top floor of my house?

P.S. I am on a $500 budget.

Answer 1

You will need to upgrade to a larger breaker box, like 150amps. You will probably need to get an electrician to perform this for you.  

Answer 2

Something seems desperately wrong; an average PC, with monitor, should pull no more than a few amps.  OK, a hot gaming system might max out around 5ish, but that shouldn't be enough to visibly dim the lights.  

Also, on the top 2 floors?  There should be more than one circuit feeding that much area.

The issue shouldn't be the 100 amp service, as you can see a few amps for a PC is a small portion of that.

So what might be wrong?  A loose connection somewhere along the line, anywhere from the breaker box to an outlet.  Or, somebody seriously miswired something, doing something foolish like extending a circuit using lamp cord.  

For something like this, it would be handy to have a voltmeter and/or amp/watt meter to do some decent diagnostics.  Of course, a competent electrician could check this all out, what it may cost to correct would depend on what oddities he finds.

If you do have 2 floors on one circuit, it might be a decent idea to run a new circuit for your computer room, the expense of that depends seriously on how hard it is to drop a line to the box, but I'd venture to guess well under $500.

But really, there would seem to be no need to upgrade your house electric over a PC, unless you are helping house a few racks of Google servers.

Answer 3

It sounds like someone did some electrical work to your place, and somehow joined two circuits. Your PC should not cause such a current drain that lights dim.

It would be easiest to run a new circuit from the panel, with it's own breaker, just for your PC and accessories.

It would be worthwhile to call an electrician and ask him to evaluate why the lights are dimming and if he could correct it, and otherwise run the seperate circuit.

Good luck.

Answer 4

The simplest thing would be to add a breaker to the banel and run a wilre just for your computer.

Answer 5

The PC should not draw more than 4A (~450W) or so, not even close to the limit of a 15A plug. This should not be causing that kind of a drop.

You have a wiring fault somewhere, a possibly dangerous one. Call an electrician.