Not enough voltage for desktop gaming computer

One thing not mentioned....
A desktop hard drive simply does not have the shock resistance built into laptop drives. If you have an ssd fine, but a hdd will die very quickly in a truck.

That and it's simply power. Get your apu fixed so it's reliable and you'll likely have no worries. Also might wanna think of getting a uninterruptible power supply so it will clean up the power going to the computer.

 

Just go to truck stop and buy 2,000 Watts Inverter or 3,000 Watts I heard the yellow power one are good I never had one. That a lots of power to pull from truck batteries and you also would need to hard wire that to the batteries. If you have APU and it a tripac they also make Inverter. You can only get like 150 Watts from the cheap 12v plug in inverters.

Since you have high end gaming computer this could also be part of the the problem. You would want a PURE SINE WAVE inverter they make a better more even power. It clean power like at home. I had and Apple laptop that was going bad I thought. Took it home plugged into regular home power and been work for last 3 years at home. The cheap inverter they sell are not Pure Sine Wave. Those are more money so look into getting one of them. Plus make sure it has enough Watts with some room to spare.

 

From my understanding if you pulled 3,000 Watts you could only do that for maybe 10 minutes because you drawing more power then the APU can make. The batteries would drop to maybe 11.5 or 10v and the inverter would cut off because it has a low voltage cut off of something like 10.5vor 11.5v. I think that depends on who makes the inverter. Some can be changed to different numbers for the cut off. If you had 10 batteries maybe you could draw 3,000 Watts for 30 minute. I'm not sure what the number would be. I'm just saying even 3,000 Watts can't be done none stop. I'm not sure how long it can be done.

My company truck has 1,500 Watts Inverter I hooked a electric heater that was 1,500 watt I think. It could go like 20 minutes before the inverter would cut off because the truck batteries got low. That with the engine off. You would have to idle truck probably to play games and draw 1,500-3,000 Watts for any amount of time. Well if you got APU just keep it running or it should kick in when batteries get low.

 

I would think a 1,500 watt inverter should power it with the truck or APU running. It's a little trick with the APU because it probably does not have the bigger alternator as truck. Tripac APU has 1,500 Watts Inverter as option so I would think it can power one that size continues.

 

almost 3 full pages before anyone said " PURE SINE WAVE"...

 

It was mentioned earlier, and is certainly a preferred avenue, but they are very costly for the better quality models. But I also still recommend a 4 battery setup, and/or a supplemental APU or ability to idle to keep the supplied DC voltage from dropping below 12v. AC output supply with only 11 v DC input starts to become questionable

There are thousands of trucks running DirecTv and Dish Network receivers and DVR's on regular modified sine wave inverters with no problems. These aren't exactly "bullet-proof' electronics.

 

If your running a desktop computer that is using about 1,000 watts don't you also have TV ? If it's a bigger size that could be more Watts and both together could be to much for a 1,500 Watts. I ran my Apple laptop for 4 years with any trouble in truck. I'm not sure of you need a pure sine wave inverter Google it and see that it says

 

I have 2 cheap 1,500 road pro invertors in my truck
1 for the fridge and micro only
1 for everything tv, ps3, ps4, gps, cell charger, flashlight charger.........

my laptop will only charge on invertor #1 but WILL NOT charger and invertor #2 and they are both the same brand and model of modified sine wave inverter
I've had printers that wouldn't work on cheap invertors also

 

And I think someone mentioned this earlier and I will second the point. What all else is running on the inverter? Some are running TV's, fridges, satellite receivers, etc. These add up to create the normal base load on the inverter.