Hey all, Ive thought on and off about a carputer for a few years and am going to finally bite the bullet and get one set up. My main use for the pc will be Mp3/Video/Gps. Also depending on difficulty vital info of the car. I will also like to have the net though wifi on my 3g phone.

Ive been looking round for pre made pcs but havnt really seen anything special. So as most people have im going to build one.
Im thinking about using one of theses MB.
Via MotherBoard
Just wondering if anyone else is running one of theses? And what are they like for a car pc setup. If there not that good any other sujestions would be helpful. I will be using one of the many front ends that are avaliable on mp3cars forum, A farily big hd, Dvd Rom, And wireless keyboard and mouse if needed.

For a screen i should be using a lillyput double din touch screen. Now have a problem in picking the power supply for this. I think for the extra bit of money ill be doing with a opus Dc-Dc converter, just for the peice of mind. I assume that ill need the 150W To Run this pc? I have a fialry high powerd power inverter if thats going to be a better option?

Help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

The VIA Mini-ITX motherboards are pretty well known in the carputer scene. I'm currently using a VIA EN15000G and am quite happy with it. The one you've linked to there looks like it'd probably do the job just fine. How much are you looking at spending on the mobo?

Depending on how many accessories/how much power they require you can probably get away quite comfortably with a 120 watt OPUS PSU. What USB devices do you plan on running and which ones require external power (i.e. not just powered through the USB cable, has to be plugged in somewhere)? These are all things to take into consideration when looking at a PSU. You could use an inverter, but for simplicitys sake most people just get a DC-DC PSU such as the OPUS which has built in start-up/shutdown controllers and a few other nifty things that make life just that little bit easier.

Well main use will be gps,vid,mp3. I currently just running a dvd screen and dvd headunit and found its really a waste of space i dont use it enough just as a dvd player alone. So i guess that the usb devices i would use is 3g wireless setup for the net, probley an external attena for the gps, keyboard and mouse. Ahh as well as an ipod but id run that though firewire or find a sutiable wireless situation.

I found this set up on ebay just befoure, CarPC. Dosnt seem like a to bad of a setup, all is needed is hd and ram. What would the difficulty be of hooking this up to my current speaker set up? Im running only one response amp thats running 1 12" subs at the moment

have a look in your rides/installs at my post. A lot of second hand computer deals still have the HP e-pc as I have used for $150. They run cool and require 19vdc so i have used an additional battery (sealed) and a laptop PSU from jaycar.

cheers..fossil