Van Life + Gaming Laptop + Flight Sim = ?

EarthDemon

Full Member
Posts
209
Likes
142
I Live in my PVC Ducato 80% of the time and I run a MacProBook off twin leisure batteries. My fridge is off most of the time because I don't like the noise. I have a router but end up using my mobile most of the time for internet access.

Vehicle is two years old and I do a fair few miles which seems to keep the leisure batteries in good shape. I rarely hook up to the mains as I am always wild camping.

I confess a weakness for flight sims and it seems as if they can now run happily on so called 'gamer laptops'. I have snippets of info gleaned from the net and was hoping someone on here can put me straight. Looks like these laptops will be using around 100 Watts when high demand is being made. I gather that when running on battery alone they operate at significantly lower power than if they were plugged into the mains. Certainly this would affect performance of a flight sim, by how much I could not say.

I gather that the charger for many of these laptops requires 200+ Watts, which I suppose in theory is manageable for an inverter.

There are various videos on YouTube of 'gamers' living in vans who use solar panels And achieve full use of their games for hours on end, but I am guessing these people operate in Texas rather than Alaska. Honestly I Don't think I have much room for solar panels and I spend most of mytime in grim shady locations so I don't suppose it would work for me anyway.

Would getting a third leisure battery help me to run a high consumption gamer laptop? Eg: i7 CPU, RTX 2080 GPU (8Gb), 32Gb Ram, 1Tb SSD, 1080p graphics.

Any other ideas? Thanks.
 
More batteries are good, but remember they do have to be charged, and that counts for all types, have you thought about a very small genny to help.
 
A jenny seems out of the question - I am the sole of discretion and stealth for one and for another not much space to spare. Thanks for the idea though. I'm going to research high capacity leisure batteries and see what gives.
 
I wonder if there is something available that would plug into to all those electric car charging points - wouldn't that be cool...
Electric trany vans are the way for you, hope they dont break down as much as there old ones. 😂 😂 😂
 
Looks like these laptops will be using around 100 Watts when high demand is being made. I gather that when running on battery alone they operate at significantly lower power than if they were plugged into the mains.
It should make no difference at all providing your power supply/dc-dc converter is suitably rated.
Maybe a means of charging the batteries faster and batteries that would handle it?
 
Last edited:
If you can get the software for the Mac I would look and the 13-inch Macbook with the new Apple M1 chip. The M1 chip is revolutionary using up to 60% less power while having the Worlds fastest CPU cores. 8 CPU, 8 GPU on a single chip. Look at the benchmarks below. Also, these are the entry-level machines with the new Macbook Air priced at £999.


Notice that the three top single-core scores are all the M1 chip (1689, 1689, 1678) with the latest 10 core Intel i9 in fourth place (1251).
In multi-core, it does well only been beaten by the hardcore Xeon server CPUs and a few top-spec multi-core macs.

You won't have the grunt of a dedicated gaming graphics card, but the M1 can run World of Warcraft at top graphics settings without issue.

Keep an eye on the gaming reviews for this soon...
 
If you can get the software for the Mac I would look and the 13-inch Macbook with the new Apple M1 chip. The M1 chip is revolutionary using up to 60% less power while having the Worlds fastest CPU cores. 8 CPU, 8 GPU on a single chip. Look at the benchmarks below. Also, these are the entry-level machines with the new Macbook Air priced at £999.


Notice that the three top single-core scores are all the M1 chip (1689, 1689, 1678) with the latest 10 core Intel i9 in fourth place (1251).
In multi-core, it does well only been beaten by the hardcore Xeon server CPUs and a few top-spec multi-core macs.

You won't have the grunt of a dedicated gaming graphics card, but the M1 can run World of Warcraft at top graphics settings without issue.

Keep an eye on the gaming reviews for this soon...

Wow. Massive speed and tiny power consumption. Game-changing stuff. Thanks.
 
Just done my Win10 laptop and got 1084, the same as a 2019 macbook pro (Intel Core i9-9980HK @ 2.4 GHz (8 cores) )

Interesting as mine is an almost 3 year old i7-8550U, 4 cores.....
What does 1084 represent? Is it a 'gaming laptop'?
 
What does 1084 represent? Is it a 'gaming laptop'?

It's a benchmark for how the computer performs a series of tasks. If you click Phil's link, there is an option to install the software to test your PC.

The term gaming laptop really just suggests it's a bit of a better spec than you might otherwise have (need).
 
It's a benchmark for how the computer performs a series of tasks. If you click Phil's link, there is an option to install the software to test your PC.

The term gaming laptop really just suggests it's a bit of a better spec than you might otherwise have (need).
I got 1179 but that's just CPU yes - I don't have a GPU as far as I know....
 
What ah leisure batteries do you have now, and whay type.

Im not a gamer but have agaming laptop just for the speed, with mc2. I have this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084P14D3C
and run it via my invertor as you cant get 12v power leads for it. Seems to run just fine. My invertor is 2000w with 360 ah lead acid though.


Thanks for those vids. I wonder what battery he's got to power all that stuff.... I don't have solar but I do drive quite a bit so maybe I could power a 180W charger via an inverter after all.
 
CPU isn't the only consideration and there does seem to be one problem with the new M1 Mac, at least for photographers.

Regards,
Del
If you've built your own computer you definitely know more then me, however there is some interesting stuff in this article about repurposing RAM and perhaps ultimately abolishing it and just unify SSD and RAM. That said I am not holding my breath for ProBooks to become gaming rigs anytime soon. Probably the 16" M1 ProBook will be capable if you are prepared to throw enough money at it.
 
If you've built your own computer you definitely know more then me, however there is some interesting stuff in this article about repurposing RAM and perhaps ultimately abolishing it and just unify SSD and RAM. That said I am not holding my breath for ProBooks to become gaming rigs anytime soon. Probably the 16" M1 ProBook will be capable if you are prepared to throw enough money at it.
I built my first PC in 1989, 4mb of RAM and 110mb HDD and that was cutting edge technology way back then :ROFLMAO:
Installing DOS from floppy disks took longer to do than the PC build 🤪 and then in 1990 I upgraded to Windows 3.0 what a difference that made 😁

Regards,
Del
 
I built my first PC in 1989, 4mb of RAM and 110mb HDD and that was cutting edge technology way back then :ROFLMAO:
Installing DOS from floppy disks took longer to do than the PC build 🤪 and then in 1990 I upgraded to Windows 3.0 what a difference that made 😁

Regards,
Del
I remember a cool but techy bloke I knew speaking in hallowed terms about 'a gigbbyte of RAM' which would be like us talking about a terabyte of RAM now.
 

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Back
Top