Desktop computer in a van???

[TrainChaser]

Please keep in mind that electronics and electricity are total mysteries to me.  When faced with stuff like this, my poor little ADD brain just sort of slides into neutral.  The general rule is that if I can't see it, I have a really hard time understanding it... if at all.  Short and simple.

The Question:  Is it possible to have a working desktop computer when you're van dwelling?  I know that laptops require less power, but I also think they have less memory.  I am am an information junkie --  I acquire information over time, condense it down, and save it.  My (brain) memory doesn't hold onto information for long if I'm not currently using it.  And if it involves a complicated concept, I usually need to go back and refresh... repeatedly.  [Do you remember me telling about how I failed to recognize my own mother?  It's that bad.}

I'm not one of those people who needs a lot electronic toys, so this would be the big drag.  I think my main needs would be to charge a phone and some LED lights, otherwise.

If possible, how much solar would I need?  How many batteries?

All thoughts and suggestions welcome!

 

[Reducto]

You hit the problem right there - desktops tend to require more power. When they design laptops they need to save power so they can advertise long battery life, but desktop users generally don't care about this. Laptops are handy in more ways for vandwellers as well - you can bring it with you into a business to use their wifi, and you can run off the battery for a while if your van's battery is getting low.

You're wrong about the lack of memory. I have a 500gig main drive and 2Tb second drive installed where my dvd writer used to be. They make small USB drives up to 5Tb now and you can have as many of those as you like.

As for the mother thing, that sounds like face blindness which is sometimes associated with autism. I have it as well but didn't know until I was well into adulthood.

 

[JesseTrue]

You may want to look into a Chromebook with an external drive for offline storage of PDFs (print web page to PDF is a native feature). They sip power, don't get viruses, and are dirt cheap. If they fit your usage requirements, ownership can be a whole lot easier.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

 

[JesseTrue]

Desktops consume 120+ watts, but are no more powerful than laptops unless you get into gaming/video production and animation. Then you're talking 400+ watts. A laptop or Chromebook can do anything a desktop can. My laptop has 16GB of memory and any can be attached or use as much storage as you care to buy.

PM me if you need to talk. I do IT for a living, so I'm happy to help.

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[minimotos95]

Okay terminology.
With computers "memory" is what the computer runs on(RAM) basically where the active processes are stored.
Storage(HDD or SSD) is where the operating system and all your information/media is.


On a desktop, it's doable but not worth it even with a powerful desktop being much cheaper than a powerful laptop. The power draw to get a desktop more powerful than a high end laptop you are looking at 5-8x the power consumption before you factor in whatever the monitor is going to take.
External hard drives are your friends, I actually like using a 2.5" enclosure that I can just put normal cheap/free laptop hard drives into and plug into the USB port on my laptop. Dual hard drive bays on laptops are great but sadly still are not standard.

 

[BradKW]

I suspect that a laptop is the right answer for you, but a desktop is doable.
I'm into games and multi monitor display and built a high performance PC for mobile use, starting with a Platinum rated, fanless power supply in a mini case. I could go into more detail, but I think laptop is the simple answer for you...

 

[FastEddie313]

I don't really agree that a desktop burns more electricity than a laptop..
For instance, I'm sure my alienware laptop burns more electicity at full tilt than my little brothers dual core desktop at full tilt, it really depends on how you are running it and how hard you are working it..

When cooling is concerned, it is harder to cool a laptop, less efficient heat dissipation, so a laptop has to run its cooling fan harder than a desktop to achieve the same cooling..

It really depends on how hard you are running it too.. If you are talking about idle efficency or load efficency..

For instance, if you want your computer to consume less energy, running a light linux distribution will consume wayy less power than windows 10 when it's just sitting there idling.. System processes are much less intensive, so background power consumption is lower..
Run linux to suck less energy..

It's mostly about what you are going to run on your computer, the higher resolution your monitor is the more energy it will take to produce those graphics..
Watching a video @ 360p is going to take a ton less energy than watching the same video @ 4k resolution..

A bigger computer is more about how hard your computer CAN run at full tilt than what it runs at idle given the same operating system..

Long story short, if you want to consume little energy and don't need beastly processing performance, I'd recommend a HP stream and put linux on it..

I really don't know if a smaller processor will consume less energy at the same load as a bigger processor.. A bigger processor may very well be more efficient at the same load running 10% of its capability than a little processor running 90% on the same load..

I haven't really put much thought into processing efficiency, other than running full tilt such as Bitcoin mining..
I do know that if you run an older graphics card at full tilt mining BTC you will burn more $ in electricity than you make in Bitcoin, compared to the latest and greatest graphics cards, they will actually be profitable as in you make more in BTC than the electricity you consume costs, so at full tilt they are definitely more energy efficient than older ones..
I also do know that the new AMD A10s with integrated graphics are some of the most efficient running full tilt mining some crypto so maybe they are more efficient on other tasks too.. Other, smaller, and especially older processors can't even dream of achieving the same energy efficiency at that task..
They will burn more energy at full tilt than some others but as far as efficiency for actual computing power for the amount of electricity they use they are the best at that..
So newer is more efficient as a general rule..

Then with a laptop you have to think about charging a battery..
Their is no way on gods green earth that charging a battery and then using that energy is going to get you anywhere near the efficiency of just running off that power source directly..
I'm sure you RV gurus know a bit about battery efficiency, and the fact that you have to put say 1kwh into a battery to then later be able to get say .8kwh out of that battery..
No matter how efficient that battery is you are never going to get 100% out of it that you put in, just like your coach batteries..

If you are very concerned about energy efficiency at low/average load then their is much research to be done, but I bet the difference is quite negligible in reality..

Modern tech is more efficient than older, linux is more efficient than windows, batteries charging then discharging is not efficient ever..

Will it really make a practical difference?
If you want to compare an ancient laptop running windows off a battery charge to a modern core I3 or something running linux on direct power, then maybe yes..

My GFs HP stream goes forever on a charge and doesn't even have a cooling fan because it's not capable of eating enough electricity to make too much heat.. Like $225 brand new.. If you can find yourself a relatively beastly A10 and run it with no battery it may be more efficient, definately more efficient than something old like a Pentium 4..


Something to think about for you boondockers with solar..
If you regularly are getting more energy out of your solar than you need to keep charged up for your everyday energy needs, you could burn up that extra electricity mining Bitcoin and make some money off of that free electricity that you otherwise would be wasting, no matter how inefficient your computer is, if you are burning waste energy that's free money..

 

[minimotos95]

Good points, windows does eat resources and thus energy, even a heavier weight distro like Ubuntu is significantly more efficient. One thing I always like look at is the TDP in watts of a processor especially in comparison with benchmarks for the tasks I do, video editing on Kdenlive mostly.
I was eyeballing the new generation AMD A12 mobile processors and if my severely outdated I5 ever dies that's the route I'm going.

[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Then with a laptop you have to think about charging a battery.. [/font]

I did do a test of power consumption at idle, charging the battery, maintaining a full battery and with no battery inserted on my laptop, the battery was only a few months old at the time. results showed that even maintaining a full charge on the battery used a significant amount more, I want to say almost double the power than running the laptop off my battery bank alone. I don't recall any of the exact numbers off hand and even if I did, I did the test with one of those generic meters.

Real world readings from my outdated laptop showed it used less power than my WD black desktop drive claims it uses to search/write. These days with SSDs, HDDs are outdated too but I figured it was worth bringing up

 

[blars]

If you just want to store lots of stuff, external hard drives are the answer. If you don't need everything at once, just connect the ones you want at the time.

My "desktop" is an Intel NUC running directly off my house battery, (Debian jessie Linux) using my 24" 1080p TV as a monitor. I've also got a laptop and some little boards for hardware hacking. (Orange Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 3b)

 

[John61CT]

Laptops/notebooks are made that will store TONS of data, even multiple Hard Drives, and also have LOTS of working memory (RAM), more than you'll ever need.

Crazy to buy anything else, both portability/space, and for energy efficiency.

If you want an external keyboard and mouse, or a bigger screen, all will connect to your notebook, just keep it tucked away, but needs ventilation.

Get a geek to advise you, go shopping or order online, set you up, shouldn't charge you much.

 

[FastEddie313]

I did do a test of power consumption at idle, charging the battery, maintaining a full battery and with no battery inserted on my laptop, the battery was only a few months old at the time. results showed that even maintaining a full charge on the battery used a significant amount more, I want to say almost double the power than running the laptop off my battery bank alone.

Very interesting..
In that case I would NOT recommend an HP stream as you cannot take the battery out of it simply..
I only know enough about this stuff to get myself in trouble

 

[John61CT]

There are tiny but powerful PCs like Intel's NUCs, no battery, like a desktop shrunk down to hang on the wall or behind a screen.

 

[amwbox]

Good points, windows does eat resources and thus energy, even a heavier weight distro like Ubuntu is significantly more efficient. One thing I always like look at is the TDP in watts of a processor

An important thing to bear in mind is that Thermal Design Power is not the same thing as power consumption. This wattage is actually a measure of HEAT, not power. A 100 watt TDP isn't a 100 watt draw. It's merely that for whatever amount the power draw actually is, 100 watts of heat dissapation are required to keep the chip running at that level. Its a maximum of what you COULD consume if you were redlining the processor.

Real world, they are rarely doing any such heavy lifting. Rendering and possibly gaming.

 

[amwbox]

My suggestion for the OP is to look into the MS Surface. Take it with you like a tablet/laptop when you need to...but when you get back to the van, you can simply stick it into a dock, where you have attached your monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc, and use it as though its a desktop. Plus, it's going to be extremely power efficient. 

Desktop will use more power. Maybe a LOT more, depending on the hardware.

 

[SoulRaven]

Well, I plan on finding out.  I've been a computer geek for 35 years.  Now retired.  My Windows laptop died in the AZ desert in the last month.  I don't feel like buying another laptop, without trying out my desktop first.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

I've had this desktop for about a year.  It has 12gb of memory, about 8 TB of storage.  I may have to buy a few more solar panels, and run my Honda.  On the other hand, I don't plan on running it all day long. 

So, we'll see how it does on the road.  I'm cleaning out a storage unit right now, and plan to hit the road again in a week or 2.

I'll be running stress tests on it before I leave Colorado.  I've read many sensible replies prior to this.  I like the idea of a using a laptop with external drives that you connect on demand. 

Regards,

Pat

 

[666JTK666]

this is more than possible . Let me give you some links.

http://www.carnetix.com/power-supplies
the magic device involved in puting a full desktop pc in a car is the powersupply.
great google search phrase "Dc to dc power supply" 

http://www.mp3car.com/forum
on these forums you will find a lot of great info on car pc's there instalation and the various bits you will need to be sucessful in your project.
Of course the brute force method is just to take your desktop as is and plug it into a beefy inverter this will work but it will use your availible battery power wastefully.
also for storage I would suggest building a nas computer to store all your media and that way your laptop or tablet or phone can all access your media from your van/car local network.

 

[hepcat]

I have nearly one year of IT experience about forty times, so my opinion should count, right? <grin>

I pre-date CPM with computers... I remember when the first 5MB hard drives were announced for the Trash-80 model III.

So... I've been a Microsoft guy since DOS 2.11 through all the iterations of Windows from Windows 1.0 through Win 10. I recently needed a laptop with a Firewire 800 port. The only thing I could find is a Mac with a Thunderbolt port and a Firewire adapter. So, for the first time in nearly forty years, I own a MacBook Pro. I've already got an iPhone 6 and an iPad Mini 3.

What I've found on my last 34 days on the road in the van is that the Apple ecosystem is almost perfect with the three devices for living on the road. The iPhone acts as both a phone and mobile hotspot for both the MacBook Pro and iPad mini 3. The iPad is the go-to device for most quick internet use, and the laptop only needs to come out when I need storage for photos, or have some other need that a larger box suffices for. The Apple eco-system is really well integrated with total access to calendar, contacts, phone, text messaging and just about any other activities that involve the Cloud across all three devices. After nearly forty years as an apple critic (with good reason) I have to report that I'm pleased I've made this switch. It's been interesting.

 

[JesseTrue]

Agreed...right tool for the job. The point is laptops (with few exceptions) are the computational equivalent of a desktop with the added benefit of portability. Most can be recharged from a DC source - improving efficiency.

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[Spaceman Spiff]

The Question:  Is it possible to have a working desktop computer when you're van dwelling?
. . .

If possible, how much solar would I need?  How many batteries?

All thoughts and suggestions welcome!

Well, I plan on finding out . . .  

I've had this desktop for about a year.  It has 12gb of memory, about 8 TB of storage.  I may have to buy a few more solar panels, and run my Honda.  On the other hand, I don't plan on running it all day long.

If you already have the computer, get a Kill-A-Watt meter, use your computer normally for a day and see what kind of power is needed.  Do the same and run it as hard as you ever will.  You can guess all you want but this will give you real-world numbers to determine how much power you will have to provide with solar/batteries/generator.

 --Spiff

 

[SoulRaven]

If you already have the computer, get a Kill-A-Watt meter, use your computer normally for a day and see what kind of power is needed.  Do the same and run it as hard as you ever will.  You can guess all you want but this will give you real-world numbers to determine how much power you will have to provide with solar/batteries/generator.

 --Spiff

Exactly.  Have the meter already... I'm sitting here outside of Beulah , CO doing some other work... emptying out my needless storage area, visiting masterplumber, doing some work on the trailer, visiting DMV.   My PC laptop died in the desert near Yuma... My backup, a 11 year old MacBook won't run most SW anymore.  So, if the Desktop pulls too much (which I think it will) I may have to horse-trade some with my friend here.  Trade my "almost-gamer" level PC for his HP desktop .. switching out some drives and such.   I may pull the 2 4TB drives out and put them in external enclosures, and use them "on demand"... they almost entirely hold media files.

I'll measure it in my trailer.  My battery has been getting nothing but charged, for about a week now.   I'll stage the PC off of shore power, measuring it with the Kill-a-Watt.  I suspect I'll need a jimindenver setup to actually use it.  which doesn't make much sense just to run a PC... IMO.

But there are a LOT of movies and personal data on there. 

Later,

Pat