inferno287

First off a bit about myself. Name is Greg, I took Computer engineering technology 1 and 2 in high school. I work on and build PCs as a hobbie. I'm no expert by any means, but I do know some in and outs of computers. I drive a 95 Isuzu Rodeo with a 5 speed manual transmission.

Now for some of my current questions....

I have this motherboard with an AMD K6-2 500afx no ram or any other peripherals. I think the max RAM for this board is 128mb which is a little low to me but again I am thinking desktop not Carpc. Would like to know some recommendations on video cards to use with this board if anyone has some. Plan to add at least 1 USB card.

I plan to buy This monitor once my tax refund returns. It will more than likely be dash mounted. If I mount where my current head unit is it will be too low to be functional due to my shifter.

I have a 40 gig HD that is currently in use by my desktop merely to store music and other smaller files to save room on my 160gig main HD.

So I have a motherboard, HD, OS(assuming this board can handle XP pro), plan to use Roadrunner FE, touch screen in mind. I'm lacking RAM, PSU, video card, sound card, and usb for now. Right now I am just gathering parts and sadly working under a budget of around $400(touch screen will take most of that). I am mainly looking for just music and GPS usage and will route my audio through the AUX in plugs on my main head unit. That is all I can think of for now more questions may come later.

Grrrmachine

Wotcha! You're not the first one to try and fit that car into an Opel/Holden/Vauxhall Frontera - http://carpc.riposte.net/ has a good write-up of an install, although he used a pop-out screen rather than your Xenarc.

I can see the dilemma - you're going to be knuckle-punching the screen every time you change into third. Unfortunately, unless you move the aircon controls to that space and fit your screen where they and the air vents are now, I can't see an alternative solution. Read up on here about screens; where to buy a Xenarc or Lilliput, what the alternatives are, the pros and cons.

As for your system specs, a 500mhz AMD won't be the fastest off the block, but it should cope with winamp and a gps program at the same time. People on this site have been doing it for years, and I started with a 233Mhz laptop running Autoroute and Winamp and although it wasn't responsive, it got me where I needed to go. If your 500Mhz is too weedy, you can upgrade later. - it might struggle with RoadRunner if you use one of the fancier skins. Graphics-wise, any old AGP thing will do, and you can pick up an old Geforce 16Mb for pennies. Lower power means less heat, which means no fan, which is less noise. Those are the usual considerations rather than POWURRGHHHH.