a solar system but not solar one!

[Islam Ghunym]

hello, I am living in areas with unstable power with about 16 hours everyday without power, I know it is a nightmare but to solve this issue I built a power saving PC with GTX 1060 which is the only bad guy in my build then I bought 3 x 100 amps deep cycle gel lead acid batteries from a reliable chinese brand with a german technology, I also bought a 1500W UPS system with a maximum charge to batteries of 50 amps per hour.

 

I used a distribution block to make sure that I am pulling/charging the same amount of power from/to each battery.

 

I have a voltage and current metres in my inverter so I can see the charging/pulling current from/to batteries and the battery state of charging by readind the voltage, I also can see the wall AC power voltage if there is power in the wall.

 

anyway, here is my build:

 

PSU: EVGA Bronze 500W

Motherboard: mATX ASUS H310M-D with power saving features

CPU: Core I3-8100

GPU: GTX 1060 3GB

RAM: 1 stick DDR4-2400 8GB

Monitor: MSI Optix MAG241C

 

I know that 1or 2 stick of ram won't make a real differnce in power pulling so I am planning to buy another stick for dual channel memory, I am also planning to undervolt my GTX 1060 for more power saving, another thing is that I am using all power saving features I have in the motherboard to CPU and GPU, I even set the GPU to maximum power saving from nvidia control panel and disabled all anti-aliasing for better performance, I sometimes use the UHD 630 IGP in some games to draw less power.... all of that without an accepted result for me so here is the results:

 

during idle time if the CPU (about 3% usage) and while the monitor is turned off I measured the current in the battery wires (the ones connected to battery and UPS system and it was about 8-9 A!!! where the hell all this power going, I also measured the current while gaming on UHD 630 and it was about 12-13 A, then I measured it while using the GTX 1060 and it was about 21-22 A or 18 A or 16 A, it depends on the game graphics and whether it's frames are caped or not.

 

I am planning to get the Ryzen 5 2400GE for better IGP and better power value so I have to change the motherboard too

 

now let me back to result:

an 8-9 A means about 100W while idle!

a 12 A means 144W while gaming on IGP!

a 22 A means 265W while gaming on the GPU!

 

however there are no changes in this measures when the monitor is turned on or off even if it was on 144 Hz.

 

I just want to know what is the wrong in my build and where is the power lose and how can I make it less.

 

I really need better value in power to keep my batteries alive lomger since they coasted more than the whole PC.

 

thanks in advance.

 

 

 

[Pyramiden]

How many HDD's? They consume about 10W when running. 

 

And have you considered buying a laptop? They are designed with energy efficiency in mind. I dont know what kind of budget you have and what you yluse your pc for, though. 

[Islam Ghunym]

Just now, Pyramiden said:

How many HDD's? They consume about 10W when running. 

1- seagate barracuda 2 TB

2- 120 GB samsung SSD

[Bananasplit_00]

you turned the monitor off, but what about unplugging it? could be "off" with just the panel being off and the rest still doing its thing i guess? also if you want to save power you should get a better PSU

 

*edit*

i should mention that my rig atm is 135W with chrome, discord and spotify running with an I7 4790K and a 1080

[mcelias123]

If you buy 1060 and have that i3 i think you will have abit of bottleneck not sure, someone correct me if im wrong

[Islam Ghunym]

6 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

you turned the monitor off, but what about unplugging it? could be "off" with just the panel being off and the rest still doing its thing i guess? also if you want to save power you should get a better PSU

 

*edit*

i should mention that my rig atm is 135W with chrome, discord and spotify running with an I7 4790K and a 1080

better than EVGA are you joking... whatever the load was it should at least at 82% power efficiency which does not explain why the PC take more than 144W while CPU maximum power draw is 43W on 100% load to both IGP and CPU and about the monitor I unpluged it from the power completely.

 

5 hours ago, mcelias123 said:

If you buy 1060 and have that i3 i think you will have abit of bottleneck not sure, someone correct me if im wrong

no, I did not face any bottleneck.

the only bottleneck I have is my single channel RAM.

 

the CPU and the GPU are perfectly matched and there is no 100% usage while gaming on any thread whatever the game is.

 

also you should know that gaming on I3-8100 is a bit better than gaming on I5-7400 which may give you an idea about the i3 8th gen.

[WereCatf]

18 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

better than EVGA are you joking

They most likely meant getting a PSU with better rating than bronze. Even an 8% improvement in efficiency would drop power-draw from 144W to about 132W.

21 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

whatever the load was it should at least at 82% power efficiency which does not explain why the PC take more than 144W while CPU maximum power draw is 43W on 100% load to both IGP and CPU and about the monitor I unpluged it from the power completely.

Have you measured how much the inverter itself consumes? You didn't say what model it is, but depending on the model, it might not be particularly efficient and could be wasting quite a lot of power just by itself.

[seon123]

The 500B is absolute garbage, and having an EVGA sticker on the side doesn't make it any better.

At an 80W load, it draws 100W from the wall. That's 20W just from the PSU. 

[Bananasplit_00]

30 minutes ago, Islam Ghunym said:

better than EVGA are you joking... whatever the load was it should at least at 82% power efficiency which does not explain why the PC take more than 144W while CPU maximum power draw is 43W on 100% load to both IGP and CPU and about the monitor I unpluged it from the power completely.

you have a bronze rated PSU. a BAD bronze rated PSU

[aezakmi]

15 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

you have a bronze rated PSU. a BAD bronze rated PSU

Op thinks a PSU is good just because of the brand

 

smhv.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

Op thinks a PSU is good just because of the brand

Well, that is pretty typical thinking; humans are by their nature all sorts of dunderheards and will generally "latch" on to specific brands, locations and people, giving those preferential treatment for no other reason.

[aezakmi]

55 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Well, that is pretty typical thinking; humans are by their nature all sorts of dunderheards and will generally "latch" on to specific brands, locations and people, giving those preferential treatment for no other reason.

Also why spend probably thousands on a power system like that when you could just have bought a gas/fuel generator or a portable one just for the computer or a single room

 

At least that's what I did since for me low voltage is common and most times stuff like a computer can't be turned on, outages can last for weeks so almost everyone has their own generator, mine is diesel powered and outputs 6 kW and 32 amps max which is more than enough for my place but others use LNG cylinders, propane tanks or gasoline depending on how much watts and amps need (for A/C, ovens, etc)

 

I find batteries unreliable since once you've depleted them you're out until you can find a way to recharge, but how can you recharge them if you don't have power? minor inconvenience right there.

[Islam Ghunym]

9 hours ago, WereCatf said:

They most likely meant getting a PSU with better rating than bronze. Even an 8% improvement in efficiency would drop power-draw from 144W to about 132W.

Have you measured how much the inverter itself consumes? You didn't say what model it is, but depending on the model, it might not be particularly efficient and could be wasting quite a lot of power just by itself.

a gold PSU will save a 3-5% from the 18% lose which are 10 watts less not really worth it or even to talk about it, but the inverter himself I have some doubts about it so I am intending to measure wattage consumption on his outpot then calculate the differnce so I agree that it could be the inverter himself

[Islam Ghunym]

7 hours ago, aezakmi said:

Also why spend probably thousands on a power system like that when you could just have bought a gas/fuel generator or a portable one just for the computer or a single room

 

At least that's what I did since for me low voltage is common and most times stuff like a computer can't be turned on, outages can last for weeks so almost everyone has their own generator, mine is diesel powered and outputs 6 kW and 32 amps max which is more than enough for my place but others use LNG cylinders, propane tanks or gasoline depending on how much watts and amps need (for A/C, ovens, etc)

 

I find batteries unreliable since once you've depleted them you're out until you can find a way to recharge, but how can you recharge them if you don't have power? minor inconvenience right there.

pls, I am not fool or a kind of idiot and I know why I chose this kind of power so pls don't give me other solutions like a fuel generator or a laptop, I have my reasons and it doesnt matter if you know it or not because it is not a part of this topic.

[Islam Ghunym]

8 hours ago, WereCatf said:

Well, that is pretty typical thinking; humans are by their nature all sorts of dunderheards and will generally "latch" on to specific brands, locations and people, giving those preferential treatment for no other reason.

if you are playng the role of the clever guy here, why don't you give me something I can learn to get rid of my problem rather than being a philosopher

[WereCatf]

Just now, Islam Ghunym said:

if you are playng the role of the clever guy here, why don't you give me something I can learn to get rid of my problem rather than being a philosopher

Like I already suggested, check the inverter next. Personally, if your intention is to really bring the power-draw down, I would still replace the PSU with a Platinum or a Titanium rated one as well.

[Islam Ghunym]

9 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

you have a bronze rated PSU. a BAD bronze rated PSU

bad bronze can you pls teach me how is the differnce between bronze, gold, titanium and platinum, do you really want me to buy a 95+% efficient PSU with about 500$ for just a couple of more wats saving, pls when you say something try to think more, even the gold PSU... what can it save to me more than 85% efficiency I already have 82% PSU efficiency  so what can your 3% do....

 

if you told me that I should try another PSU with a double rating of my current consumption I may consider your solution since using any 80+ PSU at half rating will give me 90% or more efficiency however not all of this are a type of solutions.

 

my main problem here is that I have a cpu and IGP drawing 43 wats maximum on 100% usage while the whole PC is taking about 150 wats, I would like to know where has these 100 wats gone and the PSU cant be the one who take it.

[Islam Ghunym]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Like I already suggested, check the inverter next. Personally, if your intention is to really bring the power-draw down, I would still replace the PSU with a Platinum or a Titanium rated one as well.

This aint gonna be affordable solution because if we are talking about 80+ PSUs then we should know that we are having a decent amount of power efficiency, I would prefer buying more batteries rather than getting one of these high end PSUs.

 

my current PSU is running with 82-90% efficiency and getting a gold one will give me a better efficiency about 85-92% this depends on load and going for better PSU will save a couple of more watts while I will be paying 500$ for just a PSU so my current bronze PSU is perfect enough so I won't change it but the inverter it could be the bad guy, thx for info

[Bitter]

Have you tried to undervolt the i3 any? I've been able to take 190mv off my Haswell i3 and drop around 20-25W of power from it, which bonus also drops almost 20C off full load temps with the stock cooler. A similar savings would be pretty good for you, equal to a more efficient PSU but costing you nothing. Even dropping 10W off would be helpful.

[Islam Ghunym]

8 hours ago, Bitter said:

Have you tried to undervolt the i3 any? I've been able to take 190mv off my Haswell i3 and drop around 20-25W of power from it, which bonus also drops almost 20C off full load temps with the stock cooler. A similar savings would be pretty good for you, equal to a more efficient PSU but costing you nothing. Even dropping 10W off would be helpful.

yeah but about 15-20 watts gained by using a platinum or titanium PSU does not worth it and I can consider your idea but I would prefer considering higher amounts of wats if we are talking about a 150-250 wats build then we will surely have no real differnce for about 15 wats that's why people buy these PSUs for only high power demanding about 800 watts or more but for a 200 wats build a bronze good branded power supply will be more than enough for the best value.

 

and about the CPU it is drawing from 15 wats to 43 max and this depends on what is running so if it was the only processing unit then the power draw will be from 15-23 watts with power saving features like C6, C7 and even C10 you motherboard support to C10 for deeper power saving, so messing up with CPU voltage for only 10 watts does not worth it too, my main concern is that my CPU is drawing about the third of what my whole PC draw and I am not happy with the 100 watts lose in the inverter, wires, PSU, monitor, motherboard and storage drive, so I am trying to detect where is all this power gone although my monitor is taking about 30 wats, wires lose is next to none, storages about 15 wats and X amount in motherboard so if my calculation is correct:

P = ((Pm + Pc + Ps+ Pg)×120%)× (P/Pi)

P: power (inverter input)

i: inverter outpot

m: motherboard+ ram+ cpu basic fan

c is cpu

s: storgae

g: nvidia GPU

(120%) is 1/PSU efficiency

if we did not consider the power lose in wires which can be ignored.

all factors are measured in different states except 2 unknown so I need to measure one of them to know the other for example during gaming on IGP and at maximum CPU usage:

P= 145W

Pm = X W

Pc = 43W

Ps = 16W

Pg = 7W

Pi = Y W

so as you can see I need to know one of this factors only to detrmine where is the power lose, I think I answered myself

 

 

[Bitter]

You don't mess up anything, just set the offset voltage to negative and turn it down a little at a time and check stability. No harm to hardware, it's just like undervolting your video card. I even can undervolt my low power i5 and take some wattage and heat off it...and it's got a small overclock!