PC gaming on a boat?

[JakeFruitcake]

Firstly, I just want to admit that, yes I know I’m too old to play computer games, yes I should grow up, yes I’m going to get square eyes - I get it. 

 

Some people read, someone go for walks, some people watch movies. I do all those things but occasionally I also like to play computer games ? 

 

Now that’s covered, I wondered if anyone has experience of PC gnawing on a narrowboat? Specifically, I’m talking about power consumption. 

I want to build a high-spec gaming PC which obviously would be pretty power hungry. 

 

Is this realistically possible without running the engine the whole time? I’d rather not have to pump out fumes and waste money on fuel just to play games if I don’t have to. 

 

If it’s not possible I guess I’ll just have to stick to my choose-your-own-adventure books! ?

 

Thanks! 

[mrsmelly]

Hi Jake

 

Most people who own boats are adults so I doubt anyone will be able to help you? Try hopscotch or similar, all you need then is some chalk and to moor near hard or concrete type ground surface. ?

[rusty69]

A lot will depend on your boats setup and other equipment,and how you use your boat.

 

Anything is possible.As always, your best bet is to undertake a power audit(if you haven't already) Calculate the power consumption of your gaming pc, monitor against time you are likely to spend on it.

 

Added to the other appliances you have ,this will give you a fair idea whether you can achieve your goal with your current setup, or whether you need to introduce more charging/generating or less usage!

 

 

4 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Hi Jake

 

Most people who own boats are adults so I doubt anyone will be able to help you? Try hopscotch or similar, all you need then is some chalk and to moor near hard or concrete type ground surface. ?

Hey, speak for yourself smelly.Adult Ppffft.

 

Only this morning I downloaded a free chess program from the play store.

[JakeFruitcake]

What’s it like being a grown up, ‘Mr Smelly’? 

 

Is it a requirement to be sanctimonious and predictable toward people asking for some friendly advice before you can achieve the title of “adult”? 

 

 

[artleknock]

Why dont you get a gaming laptop?

Something like this:- https://ao.com/product/gm501gmei007t-asus-laptop-black-59750-251.aspx

[JakeFruitcake]

2 minutes ago, artleknock said:

Why dont you get a gaming laptop?

Something like this:- https://ao.com/product/gm501gmei007t-asus-laptop-black-59750-251.aspx

Yeah I’m thinking this might be a workable option with it having a battery and lower power consumption. 

 

The only issue is, money wise, your bang-for-buck is much better on a pc. But I admit that I’m probably going to have to spend a bit more to have home comforts. 

[mrsmelly]

2 minutes ago, JakeFruitcake said:

What’s it like being a grown up, ‘Mr Smelly’? 

 

Is it a requirement to be sanctimonious and predictable toward people asking for some friendly advice before you can achieve the title of “adult”? 

 

 

oooooh you have got that wrong. I am not a Grown Up and never want to be. I have met loads of em and most are very boring. Stop using big words as your big word has thirteen letters and the biggest I know " Wheelbarrow " only has eleven!! You want to try hopscotch its proper fun and NO leccy needed ?

[JakeFruitcake]

7 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

A lot will depend on your boats setup and other equipment,and how you use your boat.

 

Anything is possible.As always, your best bet is to undertake a power audit(if you haven't already) Calculate the power consumption of your gaming pc, monitor against time you are likely to spend on it.

 

Added to the other appliances you have ,this will give you a fair idea whether you can achieve your goal with your current setup, or whether you need to introduce more charging/generating or less usage!

 

 

Hey, speak for yourself smelly.Adult Ppffft.

 

Only this morning I downloaded a free chess program from the play store.

Yeah I think I’ll have to just look into the details you suggest. I was just hoping that someone would have an easy answer ?

[artleknock]

1 minute ago, JakeFruitcake said:

Yeah I’m thinking this might be a workable option with it having a battery and lower power consumption. 

 

The only issue is, money wise, your bang-for-buck is much better on a pc. But I admit that I’m probably going to have to spend a bit more to have home comforts. 

I thought that everone who owned a narrow boat had money to burn. BOAT

[rusty69]

4 minutes ago, JakeFruitcake said:

Yeah I think I’ll have to just look into the details you suggest. I was just hoping that someone would have an easy answer ?

Nope. No one will supply you with an easy answer,unless that answer includes a mains shore supply. Sorry.

 

Too many variable!

Edited October 21, 2018 by rusty69

[JakeFruitcake]

9 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

oooooh you have got that wrong. I am not a Grown Up and never want to be. I have met loads of em and most are very boring. Stop using big words as your big word has thirteen letters and the biggest I know " Wheelbarrow " only has eleven!! You want to try hopscotch its proper fun and NO leccy needed ?

Haha! Well if this doesn’t work out I think I’ll be forced to rely on old fashioned entertainment ?

[WotEver]

10 minutes ago, JakeFruitcake said:

I was just hoping that someone would have an easy answer

We don’t have the results of your power audit so we can’t possibly know. Even the term ‘gaming pc’ covers a huge range of variables. 

[bizzard]

The crew of the Torrey Canyon were all below, busy playing 5 Stones when the ship hit the 7 Stones reef.

[Jess--]

for light gaming have a look at the minisforums systems, they are 12v and pretty low power (about 2A at full load) but will struggle with graphics

 

for heavy gaming power consumption will be the killer, as a rough guide knock a zero off the wattage to get the amps needed from a battery to run it (allowing for inverter losses etc) so a 600w power supply could need up to 60A from a battery

 

then when you allow for not taking a battery bank below 50% you can work out that given the average battery bank of 3 110 AH batteries you could run your 600w computer (and nothing else) for 2.75 hours  but would then need to run your engine for many hours to recharge the batteries.

 

another thing to bear in mind is that online gaming isn't going to work too well, if you are out and about on the canal you will probably be relying on 3g/4g data which will give you lag / dropped connections etc.

[RichM]

1 hour ago, JakeFruitcake said:

Firstly, I just want to admit that, yes I know I’m too old to play computer games, yes I should grow up, yes I’m going to get square eyes - I get it. 

 

Some people read, someone go for walks, some people watch movies. I do all those things but occasionally I also like to play computer games ? 

 

Now that’s covered, I wondered if anyone has experience of PC gnawing on a narrowboat? Specifically, I’m talking about power consumption. 

I want to build a high-spec gaming PC which obviously would be pretty power hungry. 

 

Is this realistically possible without running the engine the whole time? I’d rather not have to pump out fumes and waste money on fuel just to play games if I don’t have to. 

 

If it’s not possible I guess I’ll just have to stick to my choose-your-own-adventure books! ?

 

Thanks! 

Not sure I'd personally recommend using a PC on a boat unless you have permanent access to shoreline power + ample space.  

That said, I also like to play PC games occasionally. The games I play are mostly RTS based (Real Time Strategy - Multiplayer) However, I use a mid-range 130W Dell gaming laptop for this purpose which cost me about £800 though I did double the memory. It draws much less power than your typical gaming PC and as such in my view is a reasonable compromise. I can run it via my inverter but to play games and get any kind of reasonable FPS, I have to set the laptop to High Performance mode which will drain my 4x 110 amp battery bank quite quickly if I do not run the engine to retain charge.  That said, it's more than doable and I'm sure a solar panel setup would help offset the battery drain during warmer months.

Of course the other benefit of a gaming laptop is space saving. - I can fold it up, stow it away out of sight and as such it barely takes up any space. If I have a power blip, no big issue. It will run on battery power though Lithium Ion batteries in my view still don't meet modern day requirements. Some people even run their laptops via their 12v supply meaning they don't need to use an inverter, even better. 

 

Sure, a top end gaming laptop is not going to outperform a top end gaming PC though you may find a modern gaming laptop to be more than suitable for your needs. 

 

Also, I use 4G LTE and I use 2 separate mobile networks for resiliency. (EE & Three) Sure, the latency is higher than a fixed xDSL or cable circuit but in contrast the download/upload speeds are significantly more than what I previously achieved using a FTTC DSL connection back on land. In short, I have no problems with this. Plus, I don't need to mess about with any fancy antennas either, I simply stick a top-end MIMO MiFI router in one of my portholes and it works a treat. 
 

RichM

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, JakeFruitcake said:

I wondered if anyone has experience of PC gnawing on a narrowboat?

Yes - sometimes when I'm frustrated about the lack of Internet via a mobile phone.

[aracer]

6 hours ago, RichM said:

Some people even run their laptops via their 12v supply meaning they don't need to use an inverter, even better. 

Given the ready availability of car chargers for laptops that's a no brainer for cruising - personally I've hardly used my inverter, using 12V chargers and adapters instead, though I don't have a tv yet and that might change things (ideally I'd get a 12V tv, but given I'm mostly on shore power I'm not sure it's worth the bother). OK so I'm an electronic engineer so stuff like this is fairly simple for me, but it ought to be possible to run most things from 12V - even a high end PC power is theoretically possible as the outputs from that are 12V, 5V and -5V, but you'd be needing some thick cables to carry 50A through your boat and the wiring losses might be even worse than the losses from converting to 240V and back again!

 

Personally I'll be having an Xbox for my gaming fix - rather lower power requirements than a high end PC (though I'd need to be running an inverter when not on shore power whatever tv I get - it would be certainly possible to power that directly from 12V as that's what the PSU outputs, but I doubt I can be bothered)

[MtB]

Just start your engine when gaming. Sorted. Or if you like gaming in the middle of the night, get a cocooned diesel genny installed but you'll need deep pockets. Think in terms of £15k all in.

 

I'd have thought latency is the bigger problem. There is no answer to mobile latency as far as I now, which is not much.  

 

 

 

[magictime]

21 hours ago, JakeFruitcake said:

I want to build a high-spec gaming PC which obviously would be pretty power hungry. 

...

If it’s not possible I guess I’ll just have to stick to my choose-your-own-adventure books!

 

Talk about one extreme to another! We bought a Nintendo Switch before we moved aboard - uses about 11W of power, I think, and can be recharged while running the engine. I guess other game consoles, or laptops with the settings turned down, will be somewhere in between that and a 'high-spec gaming PC'. Giving up on gaming completely because you can't (easily) have all-singing, all-dancing, high frame rate, high resolution graphics and whatnot seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But then we're VERY casual gamers so I guess I'm not going to 'get it' in terms of why high-spec matters so much. Oh and we never play online; just thought Zelda might kill a few winter afternoons!

[Johny London]

Play when you are running your engine to recharge the batteries - there is always surplus power.

Play when the sun is shining if you have decent solar.

Try and get hold of a Whispergen.

[Peter X]

Play board games. No power needed, except for lighting. No equipment to buy, just the game itself. Much more sociable than computer games, and more interesting than those books. OK on a canal but not if you moor somewhere that the boat would rock a lot.

The downside on a boat is that most of the good games need a good sized table, so if you are not on a widebeam you need an imaginative carpenter, and if you're on a pair of coal boats forget it. This is why I only play board games when on dry land.

 

Seriously, if you're a liveaboard, a good compromise might be to go seasonal; in a marina on a shoreline in winter, out cruising in summer and spending the hotter afternoons sitting in the shade playing games on solar power.

[magictime]

18 minutes ago, Peter X said:

Play board games.

Ah yes - pretty much the whole space under one of our dinette seats is full of board games! And some of them do have solo variants, if the OP is living/gaming alone.

[mrsmelly]

26 minutes ago, Peter X said:

Play board games. No power needed, except for lighting. No equipment to buy, just the game itself. Much more sociable than computer games, and more interesting than those books. OK on a canal but not if you moor somewhere that the boat would rock a lot.

The downside on a boat is that most of the good games need a good sized table, so if you are not on a widebeam you need an imaginative carpenter, and if you're on a pair of coal boats forget it. This is why I only play board games when on dry land.

 

Seriously, if you're a liveaboard, a good compromise might be to go seasonal; in a marina on a shoreline in winter, out cruising in summer and spending the hotter afternoons sitting in the shade playing games on solar power.

This summer one afternoon we moored just before Brentford near the main road and as nearly every day it was a fab sunny one. A young bloke assumingly on his lunch break appeared and he was carrying what looked like a briefcase. he sat on the grass with a sarnie and opened the briefcase which opened out flat revealing a solar panel  I suppose twice the size of a laptop in area. he also in the box had a tablet. he plugged the tablet into the briefcase and I asked him how it worked and apparently in the sun the solar more or less ran the tablet. It was a purpose built unit that all fitted together. pretty good bit of kit.

[Ssscrudddy]

Built this in 2015.

 

CPU i5 4690k

MOBO Z97E

GPU GTX970 oc'd

RAM 8GB

2 spinny hard drives

2 monitors.

 

When gaming this thing (everything) will pull about 25A at nominal 12V.

 

So fine during the summer with plenty of solar (I think my 660W can produce 48A), fine with the engine running, fine on shore power.

Not so fine just on batteries.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Ssscrudddy

[Guest]

I have a 3ish year old Asus gaming laptop which runs most things pretty smoothly. Obviously tweaking graphics settings helps in certain situations to keep things ticking along nicely, and a lot of things aren't really that noticeable once you're actually concentrating on playing rather than obsessing over the effects, but then I'm only a very casual, ocassional gamer.

 

Cost me about £800 at the time, so I'm sure you could pick up something similar for a lot less now. I think it draws about 5-6A at through the inverter when it's having a workout.