101–110 of 188 posts
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I'm excited for the upcoming all electric Ford Transit! That's got E-RV conversion written all over it!
No it's got local delivery and workman written all over it. Unless you're going to go rv at the local supercenter. Rv parks and campgrounds will limit your pull from the mains and when someone starts pulling serious juice from their campsites they'll start auditing.
Makes sense. Should have happened long ago. All those old voltages date from when +5 from the power supply was used directly by the logic. Facebook's Open Compute rack delivers only +12 to the boards and drives, and that's from 2011. There's a power supply in the base of the rack that takes in three-phase AC or 48 VDC or whatever and puts out +12VDC. All other conversion is on the board. This is just catching up desk…
I believe the Open Compute designs moved to 48 VDC for efficiency.
[1] http://files.opencompute.org/oc/public.php?service=files&t=8...
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> Maybe in 4-5 years, AMD will be the dominant player. But it's still too early to call them this. Highly unlikely. This is AMD's prime time because Intel screwed up, and they've peaked at 15%. I predict Intel to gain the pace in a few years and dominate the market once again.
Perhaps but I'm not so sure we may see things play out in AMD's favor since they are fabless but Intel remains shackled to ever more costly and difficult fabrication. Either way they did hire Jim Keller and I am excited to see what he can do with their resources and technology.
Sure, the costs will be high and there will be some risks of an in-house fabs but it’s Intel. They’re better off with it.
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Do you find that it's more power efficient to run a custom built machine like that? I would think that using a laptop as your daily driver would stretch your battery bank further, since it's designed from the ground up for battery power. I lived off solar power for a while, and that was my thinking. I never did the math to verify it though.
I haven't done any measurements. What I will say is that the machine I used to use in the van lost its video output (the perils of onboard graphics), and I've found it impossible to source a reasonable replacement mobo. As a result, I've switched back to using a laptop (lenovo Y700) in the van. What I notice as a potential improvement is that it effectively lets me store an extra X hours of power for computing, becau…
It's also increasingly common to see single-board SFF desktops that are essentially laptop parts with different I/O. I suspect that those are less heavily tuned, though.
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I'm just waiting for electric vehicles and their technology to invade the van and RV market. It would be really cool to have a solar/battery powered vehicle you can power from DC. A bus-sized RV could easily generate 5kw from current solar panels just on it's roof. Current RVs do have both 110v AC and 12v DC systems, but they're not easily integrated. 12v is too low to power bigger stuff like air conditioners (1500 w…
Electric vehicles are a long way from the sort of mileage that would allow them to effectively replace vans and RVs. We routinely drive 5-800 miles in a day in our van. This isn't going to be possible until battery replacement takes over from battery charging. And yes, our van has 120VAC (1kW) available, but I prefer to use it only for things where's there no alternative (e.g. our toaster, or recharging laptops, sigh…
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I haven't done any measurements. What I will say is that the machine I used to use in the van lost its video output (the perils of onboard graphics), and I've found it impossible to source a reasonable replacement mobo. As a result, I've switched back to using a laptop (lenovo Y700) in the van. What I notice as a potential improvement is that it effectively lets me store an extra X hours of power for computing, becau…
The trends definitely favor a mobile-first approach going forward, if simply because of the additional systems integration work that goes into tuning laptops. Battery life aside, the laws of physics dictate that you're more likely to have a reliable experience with a low-power, low-heat, low-vibration machine than a screamer desktop, and those things are definitely qualities that the manufactuers optimize for in mobi…
at home now i have a 16 core ryzen, which is extremely quiet and very, very much faster than those systems. but i don't think it would be possible to host this on a 12VDC PSU, and even if it was, the mobo form factor is inappropriate for the space i built in the van :(
to be fair, the lenovo Y700 was/is essentially as fast as the 12VDC systems, which is quite impressive.
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Well, no; that'd be a broken design that wouldn't pass UL/CE testing. You'd instead have to use much thicker wires.
And what happens when you connect thick wires to tiny connectors?
I suspect the real reason to use many smaller wires instead of two big ones is cable flexibility. There is no electronic problem with two big ones, unless you repeatedly shoot yourself in the foot. Don't do that.
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I actually leave my monitor off UPS intentionally. While I'm away, I'd rather my workstation survive a brownout or short loss of power and if I'm actively working, it's easy enough to move the monitor's power cable to the UPS to save my work and shut down. My CPU draws ~45W at idle; my monitor draws a whopping 130W — having it on battery materially shortens the off-AC runtime.
Your monitor shouldn't draw 130W at idle. My 34" monitor is ~3W in sleep mode, 34W when on. Even my eight year old 55" TV only draws 90W when on.
"Typical power consumption: 130 W."
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Your monitor shouldn't draw 130W at idle. My 34" monitor is ~3W in sleep mode, 34W when on. Even my eight year old 55" TV only draws 90W when on.
Older high-end monitors with CCFL backlights could easily draw 130W. Dell's 30-inch model from 2008 was rated for typical draw of 163W and a max of 250W (when also powering speakers and USB devices).