9750 gaming in the car

Hey all, I did not see where anyone recomends "Not" to game in the car due to excessive amp draw through cigerette lighter.

Am I safe to play demading 3-d game in the car for about 2 hours (highway)? I would probably get a 400 watt inverter. GF just bought a 06 Infinity and would give me the 3rd degree if I jacked up her car.

 

hope its at night or she has super tinted windows, or else ur probably gonna get a really nasty glare... ur safe, just gonna use a little bit more of her batterey, but she will live.

 

I am curious about this too. I have a Dell 1730 and I have not even tried to game with it on a 12v auto power source. It runs fine when not gaming of course but probably can pull 20+ and maybe even 30+ amps depending on how efficient the power brick and the inverter is.

Really the worst case would be a blown fuse. I have not looked at my fuse size in my truck but I bet it would be between 15-30 amp fuse.

 

Don't try it when the engine is off, or you'll run down the battery pretty quickly.

 

take it from somone with extensive experience in car gaming lol

it wont hurt the car or battery, just make sure the car is running or youll drain it.

I use a radio shack 150 watt power inverter and its more than enuff bro..plus this one has no extra cables and all that..it just plugs right in

I cant post links yet (im below 15 post) but if you go to radioshack and search for 150 watt power inverter you will see it (Model: KV-150)

the first one I had lasted me like 6 months before the fan gave out, I use to use it with my laptop plugged in and a cell phone chrager.. then I bought it again and now I only use it with my laptop and it has lasted me over 10 months and counting..

Its small and like I said no extra cables..so very portable..but the less you move, unplug/plug the better the fan will be cuz I have seen it get a little loud..

anyways hope that helps

 

The 9750 has a 120 watt power brick to my recollection. This means that the output current is around 20V and 6 amperes.
The input is probably 120Vc at 2.5 amps or so
the system will definitely not suck 20-30 amps. Probably around 2.5-3 amps from the wall.
You should get at least a 400 watt power inverter to run your laptop.
Vector makes great power inverters. They can be bought at Northern Tool, for decent prices.

K-TRON

 

A 100 watt continuous cigarette adapter will do fine. A laptop will be hardly any current draw on a car. I Have a 800 watt continuous subwoofer amplifier in my car, and it handles it fine on all stock electronics.

 

I think you are confused. We are talking current form the 12V auto port, not the at a wall jack, there will be roughly 10x the current needed at 12v than at a wall outlet at 120v.

Let's use best case scenario with no losses just for discussion. 120w power brick would roughly pull 1A at 120v (just for easy math). Take 12v then that same brick will pull 10A(one tenth the voltage means 10x the current). It's not quite as clean as that because you have to factor in the losses of both the power brick and the dc to ac inverter, plus a car outlet while running should be above 12v (14v or so in my experience). Just a wild guess it would be more like 15A with maybe around 80% efficiency on both the inverter and the ac adapter. At 70% it would be about 20A, 60% it would be 28A. I can’t speak for the 9750 but the 1730 adapter gets scorching hot (heat indicates lots of lost energy).

Now consider I have a Dell 1730 with a 220w brick, that would be almost double the current plus with the efficiency of the inverter and the power brick would easily be in the 20’s and possibly up to the 30’s. Again say 80% efficiency for both inverter and the ac adapter would roughly take 29A at 12v. I have never measured it hence my concern for blowing fuses.

If the efficiency is higher than 80% then there would be less current required. If they have less efficiency, it would be more.

 

he needs a power inverter to power the main adaptor, so the amperage output of the power adaptor doesnt even matter.

a good 400 watt inverter will be fine for what he needs to do.

 

you just need to make sure the inverter is rated for more power than the power brick.

 

If you have a large power hungry laptop you will not want to use a power inverter on the cigarette lighter. I ran my dad's zd8000 (125w power brick on a 300w continuous inverter) in my dad's 2002 Chevrolet Tahoe and within 5 minutes it had shorted out the wiring to the cigarette lighter. It didn't blow the fuse for the cigarette lighter, in case you were wondering. In the case of my dad's truck, he is going to get a nice big 800w inverter and some thick 6 gauge wire and run it directly from the power distribution box (has 50A of accessory power available) and through the engine firewall to under the driver's seat.

And BTW, I tested my X205-SLI (180w power brick) on a 300w continuous power inverter hooked up to a 30A 12V Astron linear power supply with a 30A DC Ampere meter in the circuit and under max graphical load and it took just shy of 20A, enough to kill any cigarette lighter.

-J.B.

 

ive played cod4 and dvds on my m5790 in a honda civic si and a ford explorer using a power inverter for 2 to 4 hours of non stop playing without anything happining. but the only thing that sucks is the huge amount of glare and playing games with a touch pad is hard. its hard to find room for a mouse.

 

The specs on the back of the AW 9750 brick (model:0415B19180) read:
input: 100-240V-,50-60Hz 2.9A
output: 19V-9.5A

You would think the 440w inverters are made for long demanding trips, and why make something that would potentially damage the vehicle its going in. I wonder why Jstn did not blow a fuse in the Tahoe.

.....the brick gets super hot while plugged into the wall

 

Maybe what I said wasn't very clear, my fault on that. What DOES matter is what the car outlet is wired for. The topic creator was questioning the current draw from the stock cigarette lighter. Many may be wired for less power than the inverters can output, meaning you can either blow a fuse (hopefully) or even worse cause melted wiring (which really should not happen unless someone replaced the stock fuse with a larger one). I've seen 600w and 800w 12v inverters with a cigarette lighter end on them, that is ridiculous! There is no "normal" car anywhere with a 12v outlet wired for 50-60A (not from the factory at least).

Also I did a little research and it looks like it is common for these inverters to be greater than 90% efficient. Very max that a car 12v 30A outlet could supply, with the car running, would be around 14.4v x 30A x 90% eff = 388 watts on the output of the inverter. So I agree with those that mentioned you should be fine unless the 12v outlet is fused less than 15A which is very doubtful on a newer car.

My laptop on the other hand I am still unsure about, I will measure the current draw when I get a chance. I need to check what mine is fused at too

 

I will pick up a 400w from home depot ($35.00) and give that a shot, provided the cig. outlet is 30amp I think it should be ok.

Thanks guys!

 

I picked up 400w from Lowes, and it works fine on my girlfriends Dell 15" (generic company notebook). But as soon as I plugged in mine, it blew the 8amp fuse in the cig lighter plug(inverter). It says anything over 100watts, the inverter must be wired directly to the batt.

 

If you can try to take it back. You can buy bigger ones that can keep the lighter plug on them.

 

i like computers