624 Watts!

[glorybound]

I have a power meter on my PC, and so far, it is showing that my maximum draw is 623.9 watts (about the same as a residential refrigerator). I have two 4090s, which I am assuming are the power hogs. I am on a 30-amp service.

Back story: I moved to the mountains, living large in my 30' RV, and all is awesome. I escaped the crime, noise, and extremely ridiculous prices of San Diego. I was paying $4,700 for a two-bedroom unit with about the same square footage as my RV. I was also paying around $ 1,500 for utilities, most of which were for electricity. I am now paying 1/3 of what I used to pay for utilities to park my RV on someone's ranch, which includes full hookups (electric, water, sewer, and trash). Okay, what's the problem, you ask? I turned on the AC to test it before I had to use it, and I blew a breaker every time. I can't run my PC and AC at the same time, and it gets hot in the mountains (115 degrees in the summer is normal).

Before AC is mandatory, what are my options? A newer, more efficient PC, one larger graphics card instead of these two? Abandon the GPU and get a new PC with more and faster cores? I'm even considering a rechargeable, solar-powered AC unit. I can imagine that many places around the world face similar problems.

Oh yeah, out my window!

The houses you see are about two miles from the mountain. If those houses were on the mountain, you wouldn't even see them; massive mountain! Talk about feeling small, like a grain of sand in this world.

[glorybound]

This bad boy is said to power a whole house and charges in 3 hours with solar. Might be my solution!

[fixeighted]

Pffft...mountains, eh?! Such show-offs

[Morbid Angel]

Virtual workstation, where all you need is internet to connect to it probably will solve that problem.

[Buck]

Virtual workstation, where all you need is internet to connect to it probably will solve that problem.

agreed, especially if you have a decent internet connection. That will probably be the least amount of power usage you can get.

[glorybound]

Agreed, especially if you have a decent internet connection. That will probably be the least amount of power usage you can get.

Yeah, the internet is also an issue. The only option I have is satellite, and although it works, it isn't as fast as I'm used to. It isn't bad sometimes, but at other times, it's like dial-up - a flashback to the 90s and a modem. On paper, Starlink Roam appears to be similar to what I have, but it's more expensive; however, I've heard that some people love it.



When I first went solo, I looked into virtual machines, and it was a joke. They wanted $800 a month for three basic consumer machines. I'm familiar with Amazon and Azure, but I have never managed to get them to work for me. This was 15 years ago, so maybe it's worth a new look.

[glorybound]

I just looked into Azure, and the first machine that would fit the bill (a fairly basic machine) would cost over $ 1,000 a month - that, to me, is a joke. I could pull my laptop back out (Alienware x17 R2), the one I used a couple of years ago, without an issue, and run with that. I remember that an hour with denoiser did the job on anything I tossed at it. I could upgrade the X17 to the new M18, but I'm unsure if that would make a significant difference.

Current - 12th Generation Intel^® Core™ i9-12900HK (24 MB cache, 14 cores, up to 5 GHz)
New - 14th Gen Intel® Core™i9 14900HX (24-Core, 36MB L3 Cache, up to 5.8GHz Max Turbo Frequency)

The Intel Core i9-14900HX is newer than Intel Core i9-12900HX also around 26% faster in multi-threaded (CPU Mark) testing, it is around 12% faster in single-thread testing. Both CPUs operates at simliar power levels (TDP). All the CPUs in this comparison belong in the Laptop CPU Class.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...9186vsm1763927

[glorybound]

I filled out the Dell trade-in form, thinking about upgrading, and they offered me $189 for my laptop, which I had purchased for over $4,000 two years ago. This laptop is still being sold on their website for over $3,500, and it is currently listed for $2,500 on eBay, with numerous listings and sales. That kind of crap makes people not want to buy from them at all. I have read about a dozen posts from people who have experienced the same issue, and even worse, when the computer is sent in for inspection, they are given only half of what they were quoted, despite the description being accurate. Dell does not offer trade-ins; this is a service provided by a third-party company.

[suzanne_doherty]

Rather than using something like Azure, could you just move your PCs to a building / office / friends and remote connect to that? Pay some kind of bill for storage, internet and electricity, and then use something like Parsec to connect, which is pretty good on average broadband.

The only downside is lack of access to the physical PC, so if it needs a manual re-boot, you might become unstuck, unless there's a way to do that remotely too?

I remote connect to my powerful PC when working from home, and it's perfect 99% of the time.

[glorybound]

Rather than using something like Azure, could you just move your PCs to a building / office / friends and remote connect to that? Pay some kind of bill for storage, internet and electricity, and then use something like Parsec to connect, which is pretty good on average broadband.

The only downside is lack of access to the physical PC, so if it needs a manual re-boot, you might become unstuck, unless there's a way to do that remotely too?

I remote connect to my powerful PC when working from home, and it's perfect 99% of the time.

That is one of the first thing I thought of. My family is 3000 miles away, but even renting a small storefront locally for a couple of hundred a month might be an option. My new high is 790.6 Watts. 15.8 KWh (39 cents per kWh). The average local Consumption is 750 kWh, so I am a little more than average (but this is just my PC and nothing else). California has the highest electricity costs in the country.

[glorybound]

I think a laptop is my way forward.

• Portable power (Jackery) would cost around $7000, and it takes 8 hours to charge fully, so I'll be down every other day - no good!
• A Virtual Desktop would cost several thousand dollars a month to have something usable, which is not good.
• Moving my PC somewhere and remoting in would double my internet bill, and I would also have two electric bills. Not bad, but I don't have anywhere I can house my PC
• I can rent a space in town for $800 a month, but I'm unsure if that includes electricity and internet. It might be an option, but I would rather not pay the extra rent.

However, I think upgrading my laptop and running with it sounds doable. I could run production renders on my desktop at night. I would use my render node on my desktop and use my license on my laptop.

[dlparisi]

I don't have any experience with the power setup in an RV, but the fact that your breaker trips when you turn on the AC with the PC on as well seems odd. Even at 790 watts (6.5 amps) it's no more than a microwave, toaster or hair dryer. Can you use one of those when the AC is running? What else is using electricity: oven, water heater or pump, lights, etc when it trips? Is your main 30A breaker tripping or just the one for the AC (the PC shouldn't affect that one though). Is it the main breaker in the RV or is there a breaker where the RV plugs in? Breakers do go bad and start to trip early. Good luck finding a solution though.

[robin_lawrie]

you might find that the AC unit has a fairly major power surge when it turns on, this is quite common with heatpumps. if you could deal with that, a 30 amp circuit (110v i assume) is 3.3kw. not knowing the power draw of your AC its hard to say if thats enough, but i cant imagine it draws close to that when running, its only cooling an RV.

do you have the ability to measure the consumption of the AC when running? if its just the inrush surge when the compressor kicks in, causing a momentary peak which trips the breaker, there are solutions:

https://www.ametherm.com/blog/inrush...-motor-inrush/

a friendly electrician should be able to advise and it would be waaaay cheaper than a new laptop or a battery bank

another alternative might be to speak to the ranch owner. you might be able to get the breaker/circuit upgraded? or connect to a second circuit for your pc

[glorybound]

I don't have any experience with the power setup in an RV, but the fact that your breaker trips when you turn on the AC with the PC on as well seems odd. Even at 790 watts (6.5 amps) it's no more than a microwave, toaster or hair dryer. Can you use one of those when the AC is running? What else is using electricity: oven, water heater or pump, lights, etc when it trips? Is your main 30A breaker tripping or just the one for the AC (the PC shouldn't affect that one though). Is it the main breaker in the RV or is there a breaker where the RV plugs in? Breakers do go bad and start to trip early. Good luck finding a solution though.

The main breaker sometimes blows, and the RV breaker trips at other times (both 30 amp). It trips also when running a small heater. The RV has a residential fridge, and other than that, just the router, a TV, and a couple of lights. I only tried the AC once, and it ran for about 15 minutes before tripping the breaker. My PC is like a residential fridge in terms of energy consumption, so it's essentially like running two fridges. From what I read, it is common to trip breakers with things like portable heaters, so the computer tripping it isn't surprising.

So, my understanding is the 30 amp service should run the fridge and AC just fine, but not two fridges and the AC, with my computer being the second fridge.

[glorybound]

you might find that the AC unit has a fairly major power surge when it turns on, this is quite common with heatpumps. if you could deal with that, a 30 amp circuit (110v i assume) is 3.3kw. not knowing the power draw of your AC its hard to say if thats enough, but i cant imagine it draws close to that when running, its only cooling an RV.

do you have the ability to measure the consumption of the AC when running? if its just the inrush surge when the compressor kicks in, causing a momentary peak which trips the breaker, there are solutions:

https://www.ametherm.com/blog/inrush...-motor-inrush/

a friendly electrician should be able to advise and it would be waaaay cheaper than a new laptop or a battery bank

another alternative might be to speak to the ranch owner. you might be able to get the breaker/circuit upgraded? or connect to a second circuit for your pc

The ranch is on solar, so the energy isn't costing them anything. Even if they upgraded to a 50amp, the RV is 30amp, but I guess that can be upgraged as well. I could plug my meter into the shore power and turn on the AC, with the PC off and see what it draws. I am sure I can also crack open the manual to see what the AC BTU is. I'll stop at an RV store this weekend and inquire about my solutions.