Two computers, a TV and a lamp. Overloading the circuit?

I have a basement apartment, in which two rooms on a single circuit contain two computers (one LCD monitor and one CRT monitor), a television, a few lamps and sometimes an XBox. Is it possible that I overloaded the circuit with that much power? The lamps were flickering weird and a day or two later, the power in the room simply went out (and overloaded my crappy surge protector and blew up my old computer.)

Is the wiring in here just crappy? My landlord says I have too much plugged in, but computers don't use THAT much power. Is he just lying so he doesn't have to hire an electrician? Should I really have to reset the breaker every week or so?

Two computers, a TV and a lamp. Overloading the circuit?product key

Well, the answer is you COULD be overloading the circuit. Is it a single breaker which supplies all of these things? In the breaker box where you reset the breaker, the breaker should have a number on it. Typically, it will be 15, for 15 amps, or maybe 20. My house has 15 amp circuits. It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with built-in garage, called a "split-level" home. Each bedroom has a single 15 amp breaker. 15 amps, loosely calculated means about 1500 watts of load is the max. A while back, I had a visitor living with me who plugged in a coffee pot in the bedroom, which drew 1500 watts all by itself. He also had a computer and a TV and then there are the lamps and overhead lighting. And, it tripped the breaker. (I have magnetic breakers instead of thermal so it immediately tripped on overload instead of taking some time for the thermal breaker to heat enough to trip.) So, add up what you have loading the circuit. You may very well have an overload situation. A typical CRT monitor draws 100-150 wats, same for most computers, so 2 computers and 2 monitors will draw about 400-600 watts give or take. I am estimating here. Add a couple 100 watt light bulbs, add another 150-200 watts for the tv and you can see the watts add up quickly. The breaker is there to protect the wiring from an overload situation. The higher the current, the more self heating in the wires due to internal resistence of the wire, hence the 15 amp circuit breaker rather than some other value. Enough current and the wire gets hot enough to melt insulation and possibly cause a fire. So, the breaker trips before that self heating can cause any damage in the event an item develops a fault and draws large amounts of current.