Putting a desktop computer in car

Hey Ben,

When you check the cost of a desktop, yeah it's cheap!  Most electronic stores sell converters for example Crutchfield has one is around 180 bucks. ( Don't skimp on this or you'll fry the power supply.  It works because we did this before on a road trip where my buddy took his computer along to design his web site while I drove). . .  Don't forget that you need one that supplies 15 amps of clean A/C.  Your main concern should be the hard disk.  The head floats on a cushion of air only several microns above the disk and one or repeated bumps ( mega BASS ) could crash the head and there goes your data!

    If you really want to do a professional job, take your desktop power supply out and have a custom unit built, then mount it with some distance from your motherboard and hard drive. Otherwise, your taking low voltage DC converting it to high voltage AC and then back to low (and different) voltage DC. If you plan on integrating this into your stereo, I think (not sure) you might create some kind of noise problem. You might even create problems in the operation of your computer. Relocating the power supply away from the rest of the components should isolate the magnetic fields of those transformers. You should probably also isolate the components from the chassis too.

    Also, you might consider mounting your components in a shock-absorbing platform. Maybe rubber and springs suspending a rack of some kind.  The electronics of a PC are very sensitive to shock and the solder connections will fail eventually after substantial vibration.

  Dave

  CT Mobile Media

I was going to do something similar to this for a friend.  But there are some special considerations you need to make.  As Dave mentioned,  shock mounting components, especially the harddrive is one thing.  Also, if you plan to use the audio out from the sound card into your sound system,  Using an Inverter may throw in a lot of noise as I have seen before.    I recall some company selling a DC-DC Converter which had 12V In and ATX voltages output.   Retrofitting this in place of the computer case's power supply would be a better option than using an invertor in my opinion.

If you decide to go with an inverter,  make sure it has a good clean output (Wave shaped or sine wave output) as the cheaper inverters have more of a square wave output and it's harsh on some electronic equipment,  especially power supplies.