Post
by Chief Blur Buster » 02 Feb 2023, 04:05
There are good/bad systems. Quality inverters is key.
Kinda overkill, IMHO. Cheaper to just "try out" offgrid with just a simple power station instead, at least as a test.
Costs only $1K-ish for a lithium battery capable of powering an RTX 4090 rig for a few-ish hours. Recharge your power station (e.g. Jackery 1000 Power Station or similar cheap clone) off your existing power outlets, then offgrid your computer in a corner or room far away from high power devices (e.g. dryer machines, heaters, air conditioners).
if you do this, find a way to avoid any metal wires touching your PC from elsewhere, e.g. replace Ethernet with fiber optic (use a media converters). Completely standalone-powered computer that way. You can even try to run your Internet router off a completely separate power station (to avoid any shared metal between the router and the computer). You can even temporarily cut your house power, while doing this, as part of your interference-troubleshooting journey.
And don't forget some interference is over-the-air, some intense interference fields in poorly-regulated countries, is enough to cause packet loss on USB cables (=mouse lag/mouse jitter even when offline) so test out wireless gaming keyboard / wireless gaming mice to prevent the antenna-factor of your USB cables.
And again, no guarantees. You'll probably still have problems even if you do this, although some have solved their interference-derived latency problems via power station offgriding technique.
Be careful not to be pulled down the tinfoil hat rabbit hole. This sort of stuff is normally never necessary in Canada, where the electricity quality is usually fairly good, and not too many "ultra-nearby" inteference sources like thousands of nearby half-centry-old electric motors in old appliances in a dense apartment tower sitting 5 meters from high voltage power transmission lines (etc, etc) creating an interference regime that most manufacturers never beta test for.
Troubleshooting is a lot of wasted time, sometimes if you have the money, just easiest to quickly test the offgrid with a mass-market power station. The same power station (kilowatt-class lunchbox lithium battery with a handle) is useful when you go camping or when there's blackout, so it's not just for your computer.
Jackery 250 for router - about $300
Jackery 1000 for gaming rig - about $1K
Optical/Ethernet media converters, and optical fiber for between router and gaming rig - about $50-100 for a pair plus the fiber (OC3)
Don't use Ethernet cable, that's metal that may pull interference from power outlets or over-the-air
Wireless gaming accessories - optional
Then you can test-game on your RTX card with your main circuit breaker turned off, eliminating all external electricity inteference, in a much cheaper test than solar. It's expensive, but a much cheaper test than solar. If it works, then certainly try solar later (but pony up for a good ultra-low-noise inverter, the very clean type they use for commercial data centres). Remember, interference can come from other sources being powered in the house (e.g. some crappy generic LED bulbs / crappy smarthome bulbs inject terrible interference into the electricity wires, as a mudane example). So you might see a situation where flipping the main breaker off is required. Then you already know offgriding may not be the solution, but that the power station helped you diagnose that it was coming from somewhere in the house -- whether it's an old appliance or some pretty crappy device injecting interference into the system.
And if it doesn't work, you've got great equipment that you can use for camping or an outdoor home theater, or such, etc.
Sorry about opening a rabbit hole, but it's a smaller rabbit hole than solar.