I'd like to purchase a power supply for my system, but I do not know which one is sufficient. Is there a way to calculate how much wattage is needed?
Yes, you can approximately add wattage required by each device in your system and that would give you a good idea of which power supply is relatively enough. For example, hard drive requires about 10W (idle watts), CPU requires anywere between 50W to 100W, etc. The best way to choose a power supply is using what the motherboard's manufacturer suggests.