Newb. Bout to buy my hardware, give it a once over?

**Palmore** · 01-27-2009, 10:52 AM

I'm going to be building my first carputer... pretty excited as I've used MP3Car.com's forums several years back (maybe 7-8 years ago??) and MAN! has the page grown since I last visited!

I've done some reading and feel pretty set on my hardware choices, I just wanted to see if anyone had any feed back on some of the options I'm choosing...

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Intel BOXD945GCLF2 Atom 330 Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo - Retail

Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick USB 2.0 TV Tuner & Capture w/full DVR Functionality - Retail

Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2/2GR - Retail

SUPER TALENT MasterDrive OX FTM16GL25H 2.5" 16GB SATA II Internal solid state disk (SSD) - Retail

Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320GB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

TRENDnet TBW-105UB USB 2.0 Compact Bluetooth Adapter - Retail

Rosewill RNX-G1W USB 2.0 Wireless White Dongle with External 2dBi SMA Antenna - Retail

Dynamix 7" 710 Widescreen Touch Screen Monitor

BU-353 Weather-proof GPS Receiver

(Still have yet to decide on what PSU)

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The items I'm curious about are the Pinnacle USB TV Tuner, I understand HDTV wont work while moving, what about Standard Def. TV? and the FM Tuner? will those work fine in motion?

Would I bet better off buying a PCI TV/FM tuner and taking up the 1 PCI slot on the mobo?

The Western Digi HDD, it's a laptop HDD, low spindle speed (mmm save that power) and it boasts SecurePark and ShockGaurd technology. Anyone use these drives in their setups? it will be my Media drive.

The 16GB SSD drive will host my OS (TinyXP 09, MinLogin and EWF) as well as any other static data such as GPS Maps etc.

Also, I don't anticipate doing much "war driving", although I'd still like my WiFi adapter to have a decent range, hence why I picked the Rosewill Wifi stick, with the 2dBi gain antenna... though it will be behind my dash and likely obstructed from doing anything worthwhile lol.

Any tips or advice on the components chosen?

**Palmore** · 01-29-2009, 04:47 PM

Outside of just looking atthe list, I wouldn't mind some advice if I'm barking up the wrong tree with any of my components.

I've surfed the Review forums and several others here.

Am I on point.. or do any of the decives listed suck for carputer use?

**stratosigma** · 01-29-2009, 05:13 PM

I'm new to this myself, but I think the spec sheet for that mobo states DDR2 533/667 are the only ones supported, so I believe you're going to need to step your ram down a notch or two. The board supports DDR2-667, but clocks it down to 533, from what I've read. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong

**WuNgUn** · 01-29-2009, 05:15 PM

For PSU, I wouldn't skimp...I'd go for the OPUS 320.
Also, why did you decide on the 5400RPM HDD? And SSD?
Personally, I'd use a desktop drive and skip the solid state drive altogether.
I dunno about the touch screen, but everything else looks pretty good...
What are you going to do for audio? I can't say enough good things about the Asus Xonar, but you probably don't have a PCI slot, huh?

**Palmore** · 01-29-2009, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by stratosigma

I'm new to this myself, but I think the spec sheet for that mobo states DDR2 533/667 are the only ones supported, so I believe you're going to need to step your ram down a notch or two. The board supports DDR2-667, but clocks it down to 533, from what I've read. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong

Good call on the RAM, I didn't even pay attention to that... And typically I do lol. I just added "Customers also bought" RAM to my wish list. heh.

Thanks! I'll hit that up again and go for the 533 sticks.

As for the Choice of SSD and also a Laptop drive with Low RPM.

I like the idea of a read only OS (TinyXP09, MinLogin, Locked down with EWF). And a secondary media drive, each independent of another. If I need to reinstall Windows, I don't have to worry about messing with the media drive and vice-versa.

Hopefully since I'll be running EWF and will rarely turn on file writes to the SSD OS drive, I wont have to worry about reinstalling any time lol. (Also this mitigates fragmentation on that drive, read only.).. Also SSD, no spinup time. so its ready a hair faster to load your OS. Kinda like the CF boot setups every one did awhile back, cept now we are no longer limited to the speeds of the CF cards... We can hit SATA 2 speeds with no moving parts =)

As for a 5400RPM drive, it's just reading mp3s, videos (most of that being buffered initially anyway) and the rare nav map. No need for a faster RPM drive that runs hotter and uses more power. ( and a drive that can also take longer to spin up to a higher RPM)
A laptop drive because... well I going under the assumption they are alittle more rigid. I'd have to read the full specs of the WD drive I'm getting to be sure, but I did see the words SecurePark, and ShockGaurd in the description lol

As for the sound, good idea... the board has an AC97 audio chip I believe, 6channel... but crap lol.
I do have an open PCI slot since I'm using ALL USB addons. I have a couple old SB Live Gold cards sitting around that I had to ditch when I took my mediacenter to Vista then Win 7.

The PC was going to go in my IS 300... but then...

Ouch =/ ... I wasn't a fan of yellow any way...

So now it's going in my Audi A6 quattro

Been working on a CentraFuse skin for it

Thanks!