Challenging light gaming build for my off grid homestead...

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veiovis

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2011
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My wife and me will move to our off grid homestead in a few months to live there. We have a solar system for power and I can use up to 400 Watt / hour for about 8 hours a day and we will still have lights at night and the freezer working.

What kind of system can I get with this sort of (or even lower) power consumption?

The 400 Watt are for all components of the computer and the monitor(s).

I sometimes do a bit of video editing but nothing fancy. So if Adobe Premiere needs 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes to render that's fine.

I would also love to at least play the upcoming games in a decent resolution (full hd) and have dual monitors... its just great for productivity. Maybe one monitor with a higher resolution of 2560 x 1440 could cut it too. Im willing to compromise here if the computer could get a bit better.

I also thought about a micro atx or mini itx build because besides my current desktop PC I have a 4 year old laptop that is pretty slow. When I travel I usually travel to other countries for several weeks and would love to take my new PC along.

Is there any chance for me to go the PC route? I really would like to avoid getting a laptop. Budget is something under 2000 USD. Opinions and advice would be much appreciated!
 
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veiovis

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2011
12
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0
I think that PSU is already over the top. I have to stay around 400 Watt all in.

Most laptops dont need more than 250 Watt / hour.
 
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cbrunny

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 2007
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This actually sounds like a really cool project. I'm not a hardware expert, but I'd assume you're going to want to save every watt you can. If it were me, I'd set up some more specific criteria:

- No DVD/BD Drive
- Only one SSD, no HDD
- Max 2 sticks of RAM
- Either a modern APU (A10-6800K), or a Haswell CPU with a mid-range discrete graphics card.
- Few fans

I'm guessing your monitors would suck a lot of power too. Perhaps an extended widescreen would work instead? Like this: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...16824005396CVF. Or something else that is 2560 x 1080.

Edit: Not sure of AMD's 9xxx series wattage pull compared with the 7xxx series, but might be worth looking into or perhaps waiting for.
 
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Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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veiovis said:
We have a solar system for power and I can use up to 400 Watt / hour for about 8 hours a day and we will still have lights at night and the freezer working.
Click to expand...

Very interesting project. Though if you have 0.4KWh available per hour, you won't have any problems running even a decent high-end rig. Even my own 3770non-K + HD7870 + 1 SSD and 3 HDDs doesn't pull more then 200-220W at the wall + 40-60W for the monitor.

The first thing to get would be the most efficient PSU you can get your hands on. 80+ Gold or even Platinum would be preferable. Don't go for a too high wattage unit, you'll sacrifice efficiency at low load and most people severely overestimate the power consumption of modern PCs. A 350W-450W unit should be plenty. If you want to shave off every possible watt, then an 4670T or even 4770T (both are 45W chips, there is an even lower power 35W 4765T available, but you're sacrificing a significant amount of performance for the last 10W) an ITX mainboard and a low power discrete GPU, like the HD7790 would properly do well. I would expect that to be around 50W idle and 150W load with a decent PSU.
 
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veiovis

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2011
12
0
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Fantastic so this could really work out. Thanks for the suggestions. I ll flip some more numbers on this.
 
sm625

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
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137
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Sounds like you want something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834231238

ASUS G46VW with a GTX660M

The gpu is basically a HD7730 level. It's not bad. This notebook should pull around 100 watts max under load. Not including the monitor(s). I would not go anywhere near your 400 watt max. Gotta remember solar systems dont produce at their max all the time. The last thing you want is to have to turn the thing off because of clouds.
 
Torn Mind

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
12,078
2,772
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veiovis said:
I think that PSU is already over the top. I have to stay around 400 Watt all in.

Most laptops dont need more than 250 Watt / hour.
Click to expand...

PSUs do not "use" much power apart from the fan, heat due to resistance, and heat as the resuilt of concerting AC-to-DC current. They deliver power through its circuits to the components downstream from it after converting AC current to DC current. Their purpose is quite similar to a simple cord, but concerting AC-to-DC and filtering the signals in the current makes it so the circuit far more complex and hence they are built as they are.

Pretty much, electricity "flows" through the PSU, but the "strength" of this "flow" varies depending on how much the components like the CPU, RAM, video card actually need to perform their tasks.
 
Torn Mind

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
12,078
2,772
136
You won't need to sacrifice much performance-wise with that power budget. I don't think you'd be on the computer 8 hrs a day and even if you were, you wouldn't be fully loading it for all 8 hrs.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/1xp5k

You mentioned Premiere, so I stuffed a 4770K and 16 GB of RAM in there. The case is up to you, ultimately.

The "K" chip with a Z87 board gives you the option to underclock if you need more power. Undervolting is present on all chips if the BIOS supports it(they all should). I did not specify a cooler, so I will tell you to avoid overclocking on the stock cooler as the stock cooler won't be able to handle it.


The Platinum PSU is chosen to reduce "wasted" power that gets released as heat in the PSU due to the conversion of AC current to DC current.

Yes, per valir's suggestion, get an LED monitor. Less power consumption.

Higher resolution monitors place more demand on the graphics card while gaming. So you might have to run the game in window mode and at a lower resolution to get satsifactory frame rates. Or you have to turn the settings down.
 
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veiovis

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2011
12
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vailr: thanks for the suggestions. we can even run an air con daily if we have to with our solar setup. we have 3g internet and major uploads downloads will be done from a village nearby.

tornmind: thanks so much for the lowdown on psus and your suggestion for the pc. this looks exactly what i was looking for.
 
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mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
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www.mfenn.com
Two questions:

W/hour doesn't make sense in terms of units. Watts are already energy/time, so W/hour would be energy/time^2. Do you mean that you can use 400W for 8 hours in a day (i.e. 400 watts * 8 hours)?

Is 400W the whole power budget for the homestead or is it what you have allocated for the PC?
 
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Essence_of_War

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
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I assumed OP meant Watt*Hr, as typically kilowatt-Hrs are a standard electrical utilities unit, and as you aptly point out, energy/time^2 is not :)
 
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