sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

i ran it with a macmini and a macbook pro.

the only thing that bugged me was that i had to press the on button every time i turned my car on. but i heard there is a way around this, but i was too lazy to hack up my macmini.

with a PC based platform, the powersupply (OPUS) automatically detects if the car is on, and it will start up windows, and when the car is off, it will turn windows off...

also, the best part is, if ur car is off, and windows freezes while it is trying to shutdown (God knows that never happens with windows right? ) the OPUS PSU will engage in a hard shutdown (like when you hold ur I/0 button untill it shuts down)

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

in my eyes there isnt any other way to set up a computer. For me, with my computer background and training, that is just normal protocol.

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

Heres the finished product...minus routing the wiring so it isnt a rats nest. I also replaced the north and southbridge heatsinks with some blue ones

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

very nice setup. I hope you bought a lot of air duster, so you can clear that case.

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

yup its one of the refillable kinds...i think they call them air compressors

Thx

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

have u gotten the screen yet? (im to lazy to check haha)

btw, thats a pretty big case, where do u plan to put it?

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

thats a lot of fans, your cars gonna sound like a jet engine in the back..lol..jk.

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

yeah i got the screen...thx

It will be placed directly behind the drivers seat where the rear seat would usually be. For now, I am just going to secure it in place...but once i get my rear seat delete completed it will have a nice little spot made for it

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

are you going to make your car a show car?

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

thats what I am working on

once i get my rear seat delete and trunk enclosure done for my system I will be starting on a new motor for boost

then the motor I have in it now will be going into an eg hatch which will be my DD

DeX

I'm running an integrated 1 gigahertz CPU on my VIA Epia M10000 motherboard, it does the job fine. Just lags the video on the dash camera when I'm playing music.

Even with those passwords I'd have your data within 3 minutes. Passwords are dependent on software so eliminate the software and you eliminate the passwords.

I think it would affect the boot times quite a bit. When shutting down it's not so much of an issue but it has to write all the RAM to disk. Then when you're booting up and waiting for music, it's got to pull all that information out of the disk and put it back into the RAM which is especially slow if the hard drive is cold.

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

well i went with 2 gigs of ram.

and yes the case is noisy but between a system, stiff suspension, and exhaust I doubt it will bother me

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

he has a fast cpu and hdd to compensate. I have 4gigs on my system now, i didnt see any difference in boot times in my older 2gig system to my newer 4gig system.

DeX

From 2 to 4 it might not matter, 32 bit XP doesn't use much more than 2 gigs anyway when running media. But you don't need more than 256 megs of RAM when running a carputer so jumping from that to 4 gigs, you'll see a noticeable difference in boot times. I run half a gig with no problems, comes out of hibernation in 40 seconds without any boot modifications.

Either way it's his computer and if he has any issues or questions, I can help. I've been running my carputer for 3 years including a drive from western Canada to Atlanta using iGuidance.

StardustLily

More RAM does not increase speed, faster RAM does though a little bit. Speed is bottlenecked by processor speed and cache, FSB speed, RAM speed (not amount), HDD speed, etc. The only thing RAM capacity affects is the amount of things you can do at one time without losing performance. 4GB of RAM is not supported fully in Windows XP when using 32 bit addressing, only about 3.25GB is recognized by the operating system.

Also, I would be VERY surprised if anyone noticed the computer's fan noise over top of any Honda engine. Let's be realistic here, a Honda engine at anywhere above about 2000rpm is going to be FAR louder than any computer ever gets especially with aftermarket exhaust mods (unless of course your computer happens to be louder than your car in which case, you have issues or drive a pure electric car x.x).

My only advice to you is please do NOT under power it... When I say that, I mean don't wuss out on the power supply just because someone else says it will be "good enough." And seek professional advice on the power required to run it, don't just ask a random person, you will be glad you took the extra 2 seconds to ask a professional. I realize that this is for a car and not a desktop workstation, but bear in mind that no matter where you put it, the power required to run the computer remains the same. Computers don't just go "omg I am in a car, I am gonna like, use less power now!" XD When it comes to any kind of modding, especially something like this, you can't accept "good enough." The last time someone accepted "good enough", their whole computer fried. That being said, a 300 watt power supply is going to run what you have more than well assuming you will continue use what you said you bought. Just make sure that no matter what you do with this, don't just use "just enough" power, make sure you have a little headroom too because you are a LOT more likely to fry something by only running "just enough" power. You can always add more power sources to your car to power the computer, but you can only trim down the power required to run that computer so much before you break something. Just make sure if you change anything ever, do your research first because clearly by your first post you didn't do your research fully when you bought the E8400 x.x (no offense intended, just being straightforward).

One more thing, if you use any Intel processor, be sure to leave the C1E and Intel Speedstep enabled in the BIOS, it will clock down the processor when it is not under load and conserve a little bit of power (although not much to be truly noticeable, it's just a good practice).

Moral of the story; do it right and do it well...or do yourself a favour and don't do it at all ^.~

P.S. I forgot to mention the liquid cooling idea; yes it dramatically reduces temps, but in a "carputer"...? No...just no...don't do it...you have NO idea how much room for failure there is in that regard while in a car, plus the maintenance kinda sucks, especially if you do it well. If you REALLY want me to explain this, let me know x.x

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

there is a noticable differenec going from 256 to 512 in winxp..but yeah after that its laws of diminishing returns. With pricing of memory being so cheap, its not worth it for the op to pay to send back the ram and pay to have it shipped to him. With the cost of shipping alone could just buy him another stick of memory.

I have 512 in my system and its fine, but he has 4gigs, it'll be fine as well. There wouldn't be a drastic difference in boot times to justify the cost. Even if it saved 10seconds on his boot time, it still wouldnt be worth the hassle of changing the memory.

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

its 3.43gigs...

StardustLily

Actually it appears to be pagefile size specific...one of my computers says 3.25GB ^.~

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

my carputer is currently a 21w processor....and im planning to liquid cool it =] haah

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

oh, btw sniperscout,

you get around to using those programs i included for you? iguidance4 and centrafuse?

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

my carputer processor uses 15watts of power and i dont plan on using liquid cooling for it. Especially since the heat sink is barely warm after a long period of use in the car.

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

^i hav 2 extra liquid cooling its sitting around doing nothing. thats why.

sniperscout

iTrader: (8)

i have not yet got around to trying those discs out yet.

As far as power is concerned the only things that are going to be running off of the power supply are the cpu, mobo, ram,dvd rom, hd, wireless card, and any usb. All my fans are going to be running off of the car(alternator). I have given special attention to the power consumption of all the components. right now my power supply should be running at maybe 60%. My dvd rom runs solely on the 5v rail and the hd runs mostly on the 5v rail and very little on the 12v.

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

you will be fine running ur fans off the psu. their load is very very light.

the formula is W = A x V (watts = amp x volts)

for example ur HD has a rating of 500mA @ 12v
so thats: .5x12= 6w

so ur hard drive consumes 6w max.

so u add CPU+hdd+dvd rom+mobo+fans...

and if thats under 300w (lets say ur opus is rated at 300w) than u are fine.

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

how you bolting down the case?

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

use velcro. it is ur friend. it should be a tight squeeze back there, so u dont have to worry about it moving back n foward. i didnt even use velcro on mine, and its fine.

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

3m double side tape for me..lol. But my case is a lot smaller then his.

sl33pyriceboi

iTrader: (3)

mine too. but i used velcro because i take me out often. to tweak it n stuff...

TemjinX2

iTrader: (11)

i just take out the hdd if i have huge downloads. I download 60gigs into the hdd for movies and such, but if its small i usually just use a thumb drive.

DeX

More RAM does in fact increase speed since most of the bottlenecking of processing data is swapping the page files in and out of memory. If you have to swap more often because of limited space, this is going to drastically reduce your processing speed. Increase the RAM, reduce swapping frequency and speed up the system.
Also you can get 4 gigs out of 32 bit by running PAE, it's simply not supported natively.

I can't tell if my car is on or off after starting it, it's silent inside the cabin. I can easily hear the computer fan spin up every time.

Holy smokes, don't listen to this. I'm running a 90 watt power supply, these aren't ATX components here. mini-ITX boards and other light components he's using use very minimal amounts of energy, the M2-ATX at 160 watts should be plenty to run everything you have there.

It depends on a lot of things including how much of your RAM is shared with your video card.

You forgot your screen. You should get a molex connector for your screen to power it via your power supply. That way you're giving it regulated 12 volt power instead of unregulated and risking the spikes during cranking. It'll save your screen in the long term.