I have been wanting to build a decent Car worthy rig for a while now. I plan on using it for music/movies/navigation/car data. When I bought my car my laptop died soon afterward. I had built the laptop 3 years prior so I managed to salvage a few things.

Turion 64bit ML - 40 2.2ghz
100 Gb 7200 rpm HD 2.5"
Dvd-rw Drive Slimline

After taking an inventory I bought a few things
A briefcase to rip apart and house components
400 watt PSU
PCchips socket 754 motherboard
two adaptors for my 2.5" components
1 gig of ddr 3200 Ram
15" Elo touchscreen

I had to wait a couple months to start because of shipping and the first Motherboard I bought was Doa.

Pics of what I started tonight

The Nvidia 6800xt will be taken out unless I decide to buy a right angle adapter for it




Here is the Screen I bought



The briefcase I get to rip apart



Anyways So far this is what I have done I will post more later any thoughts suggestions are welcome

 

Made some progress from last night

Ripped all the crap out of the briefcase



Here is a pic of the empty briefcase



Made a rough test fit of the components in the case



After much cursing sweating and chipping away I finally got the motherboard plate to fit snug in the case.



Next I will be the making of the mounting brackets for the motherboard, the hard drive, and the dvd drive.

 

That is very cool. Where I was going to so do that, but my friends laughed at me. I can't wait to see the finished product.

 

your stuff is going to die even if you shock mount it.
my friend had a carputer in his impreza the he built him self and in the 2 years he had to rebuild it 3 or 4 times.

 

Laptop parts or Desktop parts? Laptop parts can stand alot more abuse than most desktop parts can.
I am also quite sure the mp3 player Aaroncakes has in his car has been working longer than 2 years.
The only time he replaced anything was when he was rear ended.

 

where are you going to hide the case ?

 

I stuck it behind my drivers seat it fit nicely between the seat and the bins I did actually finish it so I will post more pictures on it later.

 

Keep in mind that your powersupply is 400W MAX and if you don't really add alot of crap too it, it would get above that.

 

well its just running bare bones by no means is it anything but a bare bones system.


Board is now secured in this photo



The only thing I was worried about was the clearance of this hinge, it clears just barely though



The dvd drive was mounted upside down so I only needed one IDE cable The hard drive is underneath.



Here is the final product I had to remove most of the power supply casing in order for the lid to close properly.



There is a hole cut into the side for the cable just big enough for the cable but small enough so the plug doesn't come out.

 

Great project, I have been wanting to build a carputer myself. I want to go a little further and see if I can get it to control some other things. Anyway, one question: why did you decide to build a custom case as to buying a purpose built CPU? What are the benefits, etc...

 

are you going to run a power inverter from 12v to 110v then have the psu run 110v to 12v? basically, my question is would it be possible to pick up a 12v cpu power supply? and then connect to the car's power directly? ive wanted to do something like this ever since i built my first comp.

 

Crap, I meant to say basically is that 400W max powersupply should be fine. Make sure you check on that power supply periodically, I have seen a couple crap ones actually catch on fire.

 

Yes it is possible. I used to work at a company that makes the only drop in double din car pc... Well they used to at least I dont know if anyone else has done it yet. In that application we used the 12v ignition and power from the radio to power and control boots. Was a decent unit but found a lot of flaws with the design... I did like the power control though, power up to windows in about 7 seconds vista sleep and when you cut power it would give you an option to shut down or keep it on, so if you didnt answer it would shut off in 1 minute... so no making sure you shut down or worries of cold resetting, you could actually drive it like a car.

 

great looking project. i would like to build my own, but not quite this literally build it. i was gonna piece it together from already existing carpc stuff.

 

Main reason I built a custom case is I had parts from old machine and it was a budget build.

I have been using a 400watt power inverter which works. They do make Dc-Dc power supplies I found a few on mp3car.com but decided against it Hopefully that will change later.

One of my PSU's in my server rig caugh fire one night needless to say I pay more attention to stuff like dust and heat now.

originally it wasn't what I had in mind but I had the parts ready to go so I went for it.

 

kool, ill have to keep that in mind ty for the info and GL looks like it will be handy

 

sweet.
Im putting my old P4 system in a rear bin and having a 7" touchscreen in the dash running 0sX86 leopard.
Cool build

 

I would love to run OSX, iTunes native, but I need windows for the MoTeC...

 

I can't see any reference to it so gotta ask, have you got any ventilation in the case? Would be worth cutting some holes for air flow.

 

+1

 

There is a hole on the other side of the Psu for a vent and a hole on the top of the case around the cpu cooler for intake. I post some pictures sometime for reference. I cut it out after I took those pictures that's why you don't see any.

 

dual boot

 

Another question; have you thought about maybe going with a solid state drive instead of a conventional disk drive? Solid state drives have a better physical resilience to vibration, shock and extreme temperature fluctuations. The only downside is a higher cost per megabyte of storage.

 

^ Of course a solid state drive would be better, the cost is not what I was looking for.

I was looking for a budget build that would do what I needed to and a laptop drive will stand up fairly well to abuse.

I might later put more money into it but for now it works so why mess with a good thing.

 

Toshiba makes a automotive grade hdd, which is more practical financially. Only problem is last time I spec'd one i think 60 or 80gig was still the largest they made... The specs are impressive for a hdd though. OEM specs are a bitch to meet.