will pcchips 748 mobo work as a car pc?

hud · 03-10-2004, 03:38 PM

ok, i'm foaming at the mouth at the thought of getting a pc up&running in my car. but i'm on a budget (a "wife&kids" budget, if you know what I mean

)

anyway, i've got a pc chips 748 motherboard lying around doing nothing, and so in order to keep costs down, i'm wondering if/how this will work as a basis for a car pc. it's got onboard video/sound/lan/etc, and it's currently got a slot-1 celeron (400 MHz?) CPU in it. The board's got both a slot-1 and a socket-370 on it, so I was thinking of upgrading to a P3 FCPGA CPU. The board's got both AT and ATX power connections on it, so I can use an ATX power supply (good thing), and the board's form factor is baby-AT.

So, I guess my biggest question is, how do I know how much of a power supply it will need? Is there any easy way to figure this out? (I'm a software developer, so I'm not stupid, but I'm not a genius when it comes to electricity and stuff like that)

I guess the second question is, assuming I upgrade this to a P3 CPU, I imagine it'll be decent enough to handle XP and MP3 & GPS software, right?

Thanks for any help.

hud · 03-10-2004, 08:06 PM

any help?

god_of_cpu · 03-10-2004, 08:55 PM

An OPUS 150 watt will definitly cover you, the 90 watt will probably work. Heres a wattage calculator:
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

A P3 will work for MP3s fine, it will run the GPS, but may be a bit slow, although nothing you can't live with if your on a real tight budget your biggest problem may be boot time and starting up the GPS software.

In the future, you might want to

the forums first, both these questions were already answered in some form or another on here many times.

Quote: Originally Posted by hud

ok, i'm foaming at the mouth at the thought of getting a pc up&running in my car. but i'm on a budget (a "wife&kids" budget, if you know what I mean

)

anyway, i've got a pc chips 748 motherboard lying around doing nothing, and so in order to keep costs down, i'm wondering if/how this will work as a basis for a car pc. it's got onboard video/sound/lan/etc, and it's currently got a slot-1 celeron (400 MHz?) CPU in it. The board's got both a slot-1 and a socket-370 on it, so I was thinking of upgrading to a P3 FCPGA CPU. The board's got both AT and ATX power connections on it, so I can use an ATX power supply (good thing), and the board's form factor is baby-AT.

So, I guess my biggest question is, how do I know how much of a power supply it will need? Is there any easy way to figure this out? (I'm a software developer, so I'm not stupid, but I'm not a genius when it comes to electricity and stuff like that)

I guess the second question is, assuming I upgrade this to a P3 CPU, I imagine it'll be decent enough to handle XP and MP3 & GPS software, right?

Thanks for any help.