When determining the wattage for a PSU

When determining the wattage for a PSU do you add the needs of each component? So if my graphics card alone needs 500 watts then should I add to that the watts that my other components need (such as my CPU which requires 125 watts)?I’ve been having a lot of issues with this PC that I shouldn’t be, and this is the last thing I can think of. It crashes when I play minecraft of all things. My computer will blame it on the driver for my graphics card for failing to reset after a crash, but I’ve already had the card replaced. My current PSU is only 500 watts, will upgrading to a higher watt PSU fix the issue or do you think something else is going on here?

What gpu/cpu combination?

Those are only recommended values, and are usually FAR above what you really need.

My computer will blame it on the driver for my graphics card for failing to reset after a crash, but I've already had the card replaced

You should actually try updating your graphics drivers, changing the card isn’t changing the drivers o_O.

[quote=“Speljohan, post:2, topic:446046”]What gpu/cpu combination?

Those are only recommended values, and are usually FAR above what you really need.[/quote]

GPU:
850 MHz Core Clock
40 nm Chip
800 x Stream Processors
@ 500 watts (min)

CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz
@ 125 watts

You should actually try updating your graphics drivers, changing the card isn’t changing the drivers o_O.[/quote]

I have been updating my drivers constantly. I changed the card to see if there was something wrong with it, I just recently updated the driver and it still crashes…

The wattage there refers to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

Realistically you can run any non-dual gpu solution on 500W easily.