Thanks, guys! The advice would be very valid for most carputers. And especially for newbies in the carputer world. But there are a few points:
1. This is my (as far as I can count now) fourth carputer in around 6 years. I put a computer in my car before the world carputer existed. So I'm no newbie to that world, all though I am a newbie to DC-DC PSU's, which is why I have ordered a 300 watt PSU now and am prepared to order another if that doesn't cut it (I'm hoping that an extra PSU powering all peripherals should fix cut it).
2. Rock solid music playback and independent video on three screens would probably demand the fastest Core Duo CPU's, and they are around $ 600 to 800, which wouldn't break the budget, it would nuke it! I have a 2.0 notebook myself, and it's able to play back two movies pretty solid, but when playing three it will have jerky video on all players if anything is done to any of them (like pausing, jumping chapters and so on). And the same thing happens if I add music playback to the mix, then even the music may pause briefly, and that's something I don't accept. Period.
3. Contrary to common beliefs an inverter (if I can't power this beast with two DC-DC PSU's, I will go back to the inverter and try to find some way to stabilize the voltage in on 12 V even with lower voltage from the car battery) doesn't necessarily add noise. I have been running three different inverters, two cheap *** and one mid priced (around $ 150). The cheap stuff did, the good one doesn't. Of course the electrical system of the car and especially grounding points it also matters, older cars (pre 1990) can be a lot more tricky to get right, and cars with an under dimensioned electrical system (like most smaller japanese cars) are difficult too. My Chevy Suburban has a 160 amp generator specially made for demanding audio applications, I don't really think I would be able to make that one fail under any pressure. Even the PSU of the computer can make a difference. If it's on the weak side for the setup, that may cause a buzzing noise. But inverters can be noise free if everything's balanced correctly. Finally the headunit in the car can make a big difference. Pioneers are a lot more difficult to get correctly than Sonys, and Alpines are said to be close to impossible. And the car amps, but that's a lot simpler: If the amp gives you grief, just cut the signal ground and let the ground go via the car. That has helped me with three different amps in two different cars. I have been running noise free in two cars for three years now, until the accident that prompted this upgrade. We are now reduced from a two family car to a one family car, and I want to make that car as cool as possible.
4. The overclocking basically has two reasons: I belive if you can manage to do the OC'ing without upping the VCore (something that seems to be very possible with the combination of mobo and CPU) an overclocked CPU running at 70 % load will both use less power and run cooler than a non OC'ed running at 95 to 100 %. Or is that totally wrong? Anyway, that's not the most important reason. The most important reason is that I want to be able to do as much as possible at the same time, and this overclocked Dual Core equalling a much more expensive CPU should allow me to do other stuff on the front seat monitor (like use GPS software) without disturbing the independant video on the two rear screens.
So again your points would be very valid in most cases, but this is not a normal case. More like a nutcase...
what are you thinking?
