Help me build an SC rig under 400W!

[Grimbli]

You read that right, 400Watts. I'm a truck driver and am away from home most of the week, but I'd love to jump on aND do a bit of stuff if I'm sitting around. However, my company is a bunch of bastards and won't let us use higher than 400W inverters.

My idea would be to use a battery backup power block so the computer runs off that and connect it to a 400W Pure Wave Sine inverter. Hopefully I can run the battery strip backup without burning the inverter, but they'll take some testing.

What I have now as far as components in mind is:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4570S (65 watts) 2.9 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte LGA 1150 GA-Z87N-WIFI
And maybe an SSD to help with speeds as I hear they're less of an energy draw than HDD.

I do have an MSI GTX780 ti, but it's draw is around 120W idle and 375W under full draw so maybe not. It'd also be bottlenecked by the system I think. I might be able to sell it to fund the comp.

Any help would be appreciated. And if anyone knows anything about inverters please chime in!

EDIT: Needs to account for Monitor and K&M as well.

 

[Krystal LeChuck]

I'd wait for the new AMD cards. They've demonstrated running 4k VR content on passive cooling setups so that means very very very low power consumption.

Also don't forget to account for monitor and peripherals draw.

By the end of it you might be better off with a gaming laptop.

 

[KingNerd]

Alright so let me give you a heads up.

I built a computer with the most powerful APU graphics on the market, which is what would be required for a 400W gaming rig. I built it so that I could put it inside an original Nintendo, it's small, light weight and looks awesome as heck.

The key is getting a CPU/GPU combo (which is called APU), and the best right now is this AMD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113403 which is a quad core cpu/8 core gpu beast! I am running the 7850k which was the best at the time but this is the upgraded version, only by a small percent though nothing major.

I used it to run Crysis 3, I played some of the new tomb raider, it handles skyrim and the newest borderlands without any lag on max settings. I successfully played fallout 4 at 40-50 fps but had it on medium.

I installed Star Citizen and could absolutely NOT get past 15 frames per second...by the end of the month had taken all of that shit out of my Nintendo and stuffed it in a full size tower with a $600 video card and a 750w PSU so that I could play that fucking game properly.

Star Citizen is not optimized at the moment and only runs properly on true gaming rigs which revolve solely around the power of the video card, so if your GPU isn't A-MAZING then you're up shit creek. And that's going to take more than 400 watts of power. The minimum requirement on most cards is going to be 550w but the recommended is going to be 750w.

So as my recent experience has led me to believe, I don't think you're going to build a 400w gaming rig that plays Star Citizen any time soon :(

That being said I own and operate a computer shop and would absolutely love to custom build you a fully bad ass gaming rig that you could install in your truck, which we can get you a NES sized PC that rocks face at under 400W but it's still not going to run SC worth a crap. AND I wouldn't trust your inverter to pull the full 400 without having issues, plus I don't recommend plugging in a battery backup or a big strip to it, your pc is going to eat 90% of that right away.

 

[Rainshine]

Honestly, if your mobile a lot, a mobile rig might be the way to go. I know a lot of people scoff at laptops for serious gaming, but they're getting very good. I think a solid MSI gaming laptop might be the way to go, they're expensive, yes, but you can get parity with a mid-range desktop. If you got space in the back of your tractor, throw in a monitor/keyboard setup and play off that.

 

[Grimbli]

I'd wait for the new AMD cards. They've demonstrated running 4k VR content on passive cooling setups so that means very very very low power consumption.

Also don't forget to account for monitor and peripherals draw.

By the end of it you might be better off with a gaming laptop.

Forgot to edit in the peripherals, those are important heh. I thought about a gaming laptop but the cheap ones usually overheat and a decent one runs around $1k. Plus with a mini tower I could take it to a friend's. (Or out to LA for CitizenCon!)

 

[Grimbli]

Alright so let me give you a heads up.

I built a computer with the most powerful APU graphics on the market, which is what would be required for a 400W gaming rig. I built it so that I could put it inside an original Nintendo, it's small, light weight and looks awesome as heck.

The key is getting a CPU/GPU combo (which is called APU), and the best right now is this AMD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113403 which is a quad core cpu/8 core gpu beast! I am running the 7850k which was the best at the time but this is the upgraded version, only by a small percent though nothing major.

I used it to run Crysis 3, I played some of the new tomb raider, it handles skyrim and the newest borderlands without any lag on max settings. I successfully played fallout 4 at 40-50 fps but had it on medium.

I installed Star Citizen and could absolutely NOT get past 15 frames per second...by the end of the month had taken all of that shit out of my Nintendo and stuffed it in a full size tower with a $600 video card and a 750w PSU so that I could play that fucking game properly.

Star Citizen is not optimized at the moment and only runs properly on true gaming rigs which revolve solely around the power of the video card, so if your GPU isn't A-MAZING then you're up shit creek. And that's going to take more than 400 watts of power. The minimum requirement on most cards is going to be 550w but the recommended is going to be 750w.

So as my recent experience has led me to believe, I don't think you're going to build a 400w gaming rig that plays Star Citizen any time soon :(

That being said I own and operate a computer shop and would absolutely love to custom build you a fully bad ass gaming rig that you could install in your truck, which we can get you a NES sized PC that rocks face at under 400W but it's still not going to run SC worth a crap. AND I wouldn't trust your inverter to pull the full 400 without having issues, plus I don't recommend plugging in a battery backup or a big strip to it, your pc is going to eat 90% of that right away.

Excellent rundown! I knew people here would know their shit. I need to clarify, I'm not looking to run SC right now, I want to run it on release when it matters. What I'm looking for now is to run some of my current games such as Fallout 4, Civ 5, Ark, etc.

I'd be fine if I were able to run Ark on low settings with decent framerate. If you don't know, playing on a server means your timers are always running and if I can't log on during the week then all my dinosaurs would starve as you can't get stacks high enough to last that long.

I'd eventually want to log onto SC so I could do a few trades or maybe experiment on board an Endeavor for a few hours every now and then.

 

[KingNerd]

Excellent rundown! I knew people here would know their shit. I need to clarify, I'm not looking to run SC right now, I want to run it on release when it matters. What I'm looking for now is to run some of my current games such as Fallout 4, Civ 5, Ark, etc.

I'd be fine if I were able to run Ark on low settings with decent framerate. If you don't know, playing on a server means your timers are always running and if I can't log on during the week then all my dinosaurs would starve as you can't get stacks high enough to last that long.

I'd eventually want to log onto SC so I could do a few trades or maybe experiment on board an Endeavor for a few hours every now and then.

How about let me build you a bad ass custom PC then :) Or go with the gaming laptop as people described above. I own and operate a computer shop so we can do the build professionally but you honestly would be looking at $1k or a little more either way. If you're talking mobile, low power, good gaming, you can't get it cheap. But I do 2 year warranty on all my new hardware :)

 

[Grimm_Reaper]

I believe your major power draw would be from the GPU. If you could swap that out for a mobile version of it since they are built for low energy consumption, that should take care of most of your watt consumption. Maybe also going with a mobile laptop cpu would also help. A desktop rig should be able to dissipate heat well if you decide on a laptop you can again get heat sinks and other coolers which will still draw less power than a regular gaming desktop.

 

[FireEmblem6]

If you are wanting it for when Star Citizen comes out, you may be better off holding out until the game is closer to release. By then, you will find cheaper parts and better gear that can help you reach your goal. It is up to you, this is just my recommendation :)

 

[glockjs]

i'll repeat what most have said with the wait and see. but if you need something now gtx 950 is in you realm. prob most powerful for low W

 

[Jhonon1]

There are DC-DC power supplies, which means you could hook stuff up to your trucks alternator perhaps without serious inverter inefficiencies and, what got me looking at them, possibly even just a couple of big truck batteries.
You might be looking at laptop level battery life on the high end rigs, but i think it's entirely possible to take them mobile.

Lotta $$$ any way you slice it though :/

 

[Grimbli]

I think I'm going to check and see if my current notebook can load into Ark, I know it'll do SC with crap framerate and everything turned off. If it can then I'll just wait closer to release to figure something else. Maybe by then I'll not be on the road as much.

 

[GrammarGestapo]

In this particular, very specific case, I might agree with krystal. Normally, I'm a crusader against mobile heresy, but a laptop really seems like it would suit your needs.

 

[Toysrme]

I've known several truck drivers build rigs for SC & other hard games, but not at 400w. Most of them budget for the best invertor they can closer to 1500w.

 

[ArmoredCarbon]

I second the gaming laptop idea.
I've got a gaming laptop with a 2.5Ghz i7-4710 MQ and a GTX 970M (slightly overclocked) and I can play the Witcher 3 on ultra at 50-60 fps. So far star citizen runs fine on my end. Only 230 Watts.

 

[BUTUZ]

Yeh I'd go gaming laptop too. Will come in under your 400w limit and you can get a cigarette lighter charger for it and run it off that to save having the inverter (which is inefficient and throws away at least 10% of it's power.)

 

[mromutt]

I actually have a portable rig I use to play SC away from home. It runs on a 500 watt PSU but thats because thats the part I had on hand, it should run on 400 or less. Its a g3258 with 8gb of ram, a 760 sc from evga and a nice pny ssd all in an itx formfactor. It actually plays the game really well, lol and for some reason smoother than my gaming rig. Oh and not to forget it runs rather cool for being in an itx box with stock cpu cooler (gpu has the acx cooler on it). If I were to build this from the ground up (not mostly parts I had) I would stay with the cpu and upgrade the gpu to a 960 scc (really good on power and runs SC fine). If money is not the issue here though a gaming laptop of what you want, the bulky ones though of course as they will allow for better cooling and lower price over the ultra thin things they keep pumping out. But all that said you can get a few car batteries (marine or truck deep cycle) and charge them off the main system then add a higher end inverter with a really solid 400 watt constant (peak 800 watt). This would allow you to use a 400 watt inverter but actually draw more as you wont be needing over 400 watts often :) its a loophole for using the gpu you have listed

 

[AstroSam]

My home PC runs as silent rig with a 400 watt PSU, an undervolted AMD 8350, 16GB of 1333 RAM and an OC'd 960GTX (inno3D iChill). The bottleneck are the 2 GB RAM of the GPU. Therefore, SC currently runs with 25-35 fps (high/mid). 970ti with 4GB could be perfect, but I'm currently waiting for the next generation GPU and will update the HW at the time SQ42 will be released.
That said @Grimbli I agree to before mentioned suggestion to invest into a gaming laptop --> http://www.laptopmag.com/gaming-laptops

 

[Halleluyeah]

i'd wait for the next generation cards i heard they have low TDP and they're to be announced in 3 days

 

[mromutt]

i'd wait for the next generation cards i heard they have low TDP and they're to be announced in 3 days

From what I have seen/heard the new cards should not be lower power but instead do more with the same power envelope.

EDIT: The last two gens have seen huge leaps in lower power draw and currently making things like this possible :)