After much struggle I am back at my parents house. I am trying very hard to NOT be here, though my other plans are on hold for now. I have reasons I need to stay in the state right now, so I’m not going anywhere.
However, Michigan is still cold, and while I could put a heater in the van, I don’t want to risk a fire. I even have an oil radiator that I could rig up, but I just… Nah. I recently got an R9 290, and somehow the god damn thing wasn’t used for mining and works perfectly! The store I got it from was having mercy on the workers I think, but as soon as I heard any mention of it I asked to see it and me and my partner bought it. I think they were kinda disappointed, I personally don’t care.
I even met a guy buying PSU’s for his mining rig. Hell yes I am snatching this thing up before its burned on some stupid money bullshit.
In combo with an R7 250X, and an H100iV2 cooling either an E5-1620 that I can overclock, or an E5-2690v2 that just runs sorta hot. So, why not take the advantage of having my computer set up in my van? Yall have seen the house, I cannot be in here. And I am currently out of work, working on a job, but doing some other stuff thats a bit important right now. So, for the moment, if this thing can heat my van, hey cool there was a point to buying an XB Evo after all XDDD
I’ll post pictures in a while when I have things cleaned up better and things roughly set up. Possibly show setup, but its pretty simple overall. Then again, someone may not know things exist so… Eh, I’ll see how much effort I want to put in today.
hope it all works out for you, Im currently heating my WFH office with my Tesla A100 and Titan V for mining while idle at night and its been pretty nice heating up the room and cheaper too than running the electric heating for the office as there is no actual radiators in here yet
Best of luck on that novel project
I guess you’ll be hardwiring directly to the car battery? Or giving it, its own source?
Ohh YESS- the 290 is a proper-AF Space Heater!?
Had a 290, that made my 390x come off just underwhelming [regarding thermals]
It literally dumped on my i7 a +7c penalty, which is running an NHC14 + 140 Vardar
HAD to find picture of one… The backplate was supplementally functional as a skillet
The 290 is in Slot 1, NVMe in slot 4, a sound card in the PCI slot because yeet, and the 250X in the last slot because it has DDR3 vram. Its literally in an open air crate.
28GB ECC ram, H100i, its beautiful imo but I’m a dingus
In case of powering up the space heater tho-
Will it have connection, directly with the van battery?
Or will it have its own [independent] power source?
I have a tail thats just a power strip with a really long cable with another 3 plug extension cable attached to it. I am working on a generator of some sort. RN I only have access to a little honda suitcase generator and a 200W inverter. I want a bigger inverter, but again, either a generator thats big enough, or another system.
I want to convert my van to E85. If I can keep price down, I have a huge gas tank. Thats a generator to start, and I have 2 batteries, one being an AGM deep cycle battery, that I could use to power it on the move with like a 2-3kW inverter, and boom I’m good.
I plan to have a little switch for flipping between systems somehow, and maybe having solar later. Haven’t thought that far yet, I’m worried about other things rn.
I’d refrain from E85 conversion. Between conversion costs, poorer energy yield [in turn, costing more to run engine over time] and is a far greater polluter [oxygenated radicals BUMP, in the mix of exhaust]… IF it was a diesel engine, you would’ve had easier time/cost, in supporting an alternative [bio-diesel] fuel
Something like this, for a [mobile] solar grid? [the premise that is]
While this experiment is fun and all, and I have sone to post, I actually never ended up using the 290 and in fact returned it. I chose instead to play with my dell dimension xps gen5, which atm is showing other issues that either I need to repair, or, I need to look at modding the case for something else.
2 sata ports on the board work, which tells me theres a hidden bad cap or two ( not spottable by eye, common in old dells ), or, cold solder joints. I could use it and it would be fine, however even all of the 4gb ram isn’t read. I could use the ram for something else, or save for a better board.
Actually if anything, this experiment made me ask a few things.
1: what do I honestly need out of a computer
2: what can I power off of my van
3: what will be space efficient.
Obviously if I leave machines at a place and remote in with a laptop on a hotspot I can almost use anything, but then theres a delay. Nah.
I need to see what is out right now for low to mid spec gaming laptops and maybe look at the M1 machines, if the games I want to play would even run that is. I don’t game a whole crazy bunch, but if I do play something I want to play anything in my library and be capable of running it. Probably a 1060 based laptop would be fine like the one I used to have, but I need to think on it a whil. My thinkpad with its gpu dock might be enough, though I only have a gt730 thats useable now.
