100% noise free carpc setup?

jeffmat · 07-29-2005, 12:06 PM

Guys, do you think this is possible? I've read plenty of noise/pop issues with a carpc setup..

Need your input guys because I'm about to start my carpc project and I want to know if a noise free system with a carpc is possible

Thanks!

rsd212 · 07-29-2005, 12:07 PM

Do you mean noise as in speaker crackling, or PC fan noise?

RedGTiVR6 · 07-29-2005, 12:51 PM

other than the fan on the mobo - I'm 100% noise free....ask any of the judges who have listened for induced noise and not found any...

in the 4 shows I've been to I've recieved 0 deductions in points due to noise...

it all depend son how you set it up....go optic if you can

pancit175 · 07-29-2005, 01:42 PM

If you know what you are doing, if you do it right, and if you do a quality install you shouldnt get any bad noise.

accentsound · 07-29-2005, 02:32 PM

Gee. I'm glad that none of the respondents does car PC integration for a living. Or they would sooner or later eat those words.

First thing, there is no such thing as a PC sound system that is free of noise. It does not matter wheter it is in the car or in the house. At some point there is noise induced whether it be clocking noise, DMA access noise from the HD, IRQ clipping when you have too much going on in hardware at once. Among others.

Some of this is going to be really annoying and loud others will be down low and mixed and easily masked.

Properly set up Car PC systems will minimize any noise most of the time but It can not be eliminated completely and all the time.

The way to minimize noise in a car PC system is to use high performance components. IE High speed motherboards, Good temperature control, Fast processors, plenty of ram, fast hard drives, and a quality sound output solution. Digital out is less prone to PC generated noise but it also is not immune.

You can have excellent results but will it be noise free 100% of the time. Well no one who has been in the computer industry for any length of time would ever make that claim.

mushrew0 · 07-29-2005, 03:54 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by accentsound

Gee. I'm glad that none of the respondents does car PC integration for a living. Or they would sooner or later eat those words.

First thing, there is no such thing as a PC sound system that is free of noise. It does not matter wheter it is in the car or in the house. At some point there is noise induced whether it be clocking noise, DMA access noise from the HD, IRQ clipping when you have too much going on in hardware at once. Among others.

Some of this is going to be really annoying and loud others will be down low and mixed and easily masked.

Properly set up Car PC systems will minimize any noise most of the time but It can not be eliminated completely and all the time.

The way to minimize noise in a car PC system is to use high performance components. IE High speed motherboards, Good temperature control, Fast processors, plenty of ram, fast hard drives, and a quality sound output solution. Digital out is less prone to PC generated noise but it also is not immune.

You can have excellent results but will it be noise free 100% of the time. Well no one who has been in the computer industry for any length of time would ever make that claim.

i don't get how a "high-speed" motherboard and ram are going to have ANYTHING to do with noise directly...a fast CPU is going to cause MORE noise because you'll need to cool it more and have you heard a 10,000RPM hard drive vs a 4200RPM laptop drive? Yeah one happens to be a heck of a lot noisier...

stapan · 07-29-2005, 10:04 PM

I was worried about the same thing and I will be competing so I had to come up with a solution... after all you can't be at the usaci finals and your antispyware program says its time to scan while the judge is listening. the key to my setup is going to be an extremely low power consumption CPU (8 watts underclocked pentium m dothan 1.7). this also means very low heat. which means it could theoretically run totally fanless at competitions if needed, just cool off the car nicely with a/c first.

hard drive noise is a problem. can run off of flash memory or RAM, however, that won't work with a setups like mine unfortunately so it'll have to be solved by proper installation and soundproofing. my pc will be in the back area of my suv behind the rear seats under a false floor and so far I have several hundred sq ft of various sound deadening installed and the carputer enclosure will get even more as some of the layers are very vibration and shock damping (I like raamaudio ensolite in particular for that). and if you run a very lean system (no antivirus, antispyware, etc.) it should be ok even running off a hard drive if its setup right esp. with a slow and quiet notebook drive...

it all starts with the proper components from the start and then doing a proper installation. if you're going to be running an athlon64 3200+ you will practically need an air conditioner on it no matter what you do.

TruckinMP3 · 07-29-2005, 10:15 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by accentsound

Gee. I'm glad that none of the respondents does car PC integration for a living. Or they would sooner or later eat those words.

SNIP

Cool another 'expert' is on the scene to tell us all how the world works

Dude, many of us have been in this world for awhile.... we might actually 'know' some things... get a grip.

RedGTiVR6 · 07-30-2005, 08:14 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by stapan

I was worried about the same thing and I will be competing so I had to come up with a solution... after all you can't be at the usaci finals

cool! which class are you competing in and where are you located?

DRWeside · 07-30-2005, 10:27 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by accentsound

Gee. I'm glad that none of the respondents does car PC integration for a living. Or they would sooner or later eat those words.

First thing, there is no such thing as a PC sound system that is free of noise. It does not matter wheter it is in the car or in the house. At some point there is noise induced whether it be clocking noise, DMA access noise from the HD, IRQ clipping when you have too much going on in hardware at once. Among others.

Some of this is going to be really annoying and loud others will be down low and mixed and easily masked.

Properly set up Car PC systems will minimize any noise most of the time but It can not be eliminated completely and all the time.

The way to minimize noise in a car PC system is to use high performance components. IE High speed motherboards, Good temperature control, Fast processors, plenty of ram, fast hard drives, and a quality sound output solution. Digital out is less prone to PC generated noise but it also is not immune.

You can have excellent results but will it be noise free 100% of the time. Well no one who has been in the computer industry for any length of time would ever make that claim.

Are you a Computer Engineering AnaLyst? I'm pretty sure she meant AUDIBLE NOISE in the AUDIO SYSTEM.

RedGTiVR6 · 07-30-2005, 10:41 AM

lol

=]

SouL-FoRTuNe · 07-30-2005, 11:00 AM

I run mine on a 416mhz PocketPC and it's noiseless

accentsound · 07-30-2005, 05:44 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by mushrew0

i don't get how a "high-speed" motherboard and ram are going to have ANYTHING to do with noise directly...a fast CPU is going to cause MORE noise because you'll need to cool it more and have you heard a 10,000RPM hard drive vs a 4200RPM laptop drive? Yeah one happens to be a heck of a lot noisier...

Freedom of resources. Remember a computer has to run a bunch of tasks at one time. WHen available resources are consumed the PC has to start looking for more from somewhere or start serving high priority tasks and putting other off to later.

If you have insufficent RAM to run everything in your open windows. THe PC then starts cacheing memory to the hard disk. If you are playing music from the hard disk at the same time then the PC has to do memory activity to the disk as well as playback. Load it hard enough and you will start getting clipping on the output audio as playing music is a low priority compared to Memory Cacheing. Plent of High speed ram helps eliminate this.

THe Same thing goes for the CPU. Again when there are more porcesses running than the CPU can serve at a time it again puts certain actions on hold while processing others. Again as audio playback is a low priority it is the thing that will suffer. This noise can manifest it's self from a buzzing noise that is intermittant (Not the whine type sound of the alternator) and may repeat in rapid order. Clipping where the music sounds choppy (Dropped Bits)
ot a random Ticking / Clicking sound rapid or infrequent.

One sure sign of resource overload is during DVD playback where the audio is completely out of sync with the video or dropped Frames.

Now if you only use the system for playing back music then you most likely neve have a problem. But run a GPS app, Have a Visuilation running, and playback 192 or better encoded MP3 all at the same time. You had better have a robust setup.

RedGTiVR6 · 07-30-2005, 08:45 PM

in such situations, when running all of those applications at once, while driving, I would imagine induced noise wouldn't be noticeable unless it were absolutely horrific

do7d · 07-31-2005, 10:55 AM

has anyone seen the mini-itx board with onboard audio- 6ch, optical out? if i had it (which i believe is 1[or more]gHz), fanless, built-in video decoding, using a laptop drive, and fed optical to alpine amps- everything installed properly, it should be pretty damn quiet. especially if it's under a false floor, covered with plexi, and dynamat-ed. nothing known is completely silent, but audible is a different beast.