Thread: Poll: Has your car pc ever killed your battery?

Nope, other causes for battery replacement include:
corroded terminals, failed alternator/voltage regulator, and poor maintenance of the battery.

Note each of those has occurred on my vehicles but only the corroded terminals was with a PC installed I think they would have happened either way....

Master switch off.... works great. I have however left it on while in the theater for a two hour movie and the Suburban still started. The joys of a system that consumes about 30 watts.

Amazingly enough my car pc has NOT killed my yellow top [my stereo has]

Turned my car off one night came back the next day to find out my PC had failed to shutdown. `uptime` read 18 hours some odd minutes. Still not sure how it survived and why my opus didnt cut power after the set 2 minutes.

But point being: I love me a good yellow top battery and a low[ish] power pc.

For me it was the OBDII reader drank the battery when I went on vacation, even though the car computer stuff was turned off :-(

Gary (-;

Yes..numerous car pcs have killed batteries for many mp3Car employees.

Just had to replace my battery today. lol. Cant say that it was due specifically to the Car PC, but it was only 4 year old.

mine dies semi regularly. the m2-atx is a solid psu but its not completely reliable. at least it always powers the pc ON, thats for sure.

bottom line, there is nothing better then adding a second battery to your car, even if just a small motorcycle battery, just for the computer. run it with a smart isolator and you will never have a dead battery again.

Why are the batteries getting drained? PSU not doing a proper shutdown of the system?

Originally Posted by trader007

mine dies semi regularly. the m2-atx is a solid psu but its not completely reliable. at least it always powers the pc ON, thats for sure.

bottom line, there is nothing better then adding a second battery to your car, even if just a small motorcycle battery, just for the computer. run it with a smart isolator and you will never have a dead battery again.

A main switch is less money than any second battery set up, they are also very reliable.

Originally Posted by TruckinMP3

A main switch is less money than any second battery set up, they are also very reliable.

you wait around for your pc to shutdown and then use a main disconnect to kill all power to the pc? that would be terribly inconvenient.