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Low Power CPU

Puppetmaster

Puppetmaster

Puppetmaster

Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2005
Posts
6,514
Location
Near Brighton
I am planning to build a Mini ITX car pc in the summer. I'm wondering what cpu to put in it.

Atom has crossed my mind, although in not sure if it will be powerful enough. In terms of spec it will be:

2 - 4 GB RAM
120GB SSD
Onboard Graphics
Windows 7 Pro
7" Touchscreen
Mini USB Wireless
USB GPS Recevier
USB Radio Receiver
Bluetooth (Maybe)

Don't need anything graphics wise, basic onboard is fine. It will basically be running some sort of software with everything integrated (likely centrafuse) that will control Music, Radio, Sat Nav etc.

Any suggestions? I was thinking maybe 1155 Mini ITX board with an i3-2100T or maybe a Pentium Dual Core.
 
Even the Intel G530 would do.....quite suprised how well they perform.
£30 this week too !
 
Hi there,

The Ivy Bridge CPUs will be out at the end of this month and they will offer even better performance (both cpu and onboard GPU) than current sandy bridge i3 and pentium CPUs while using less power (55W vs 65W for standard dual core models). Therefore, if you are building it in the summer, then it will be one of these currently unreleased CPUs I would go with. Also, special even lower power models are likely to be released as well.

Couple than with a H61 Mini-ITX board and 4GB of RAM you will have a nice performing, low power usage and relatively cheap PC.

Also, will you be needing the features of Win 7 pro (or do you already have a copy to hand)? As for your uses I would have thought the cheaper win 7 Home premium edition would be sufficient.
 
The Pentium G8xx series consume about the same amount of power as Atom at idle and slightly more under load, but of course they're about 4 times faster and you are unlikely to be fully loading it. I'd rather have the power spare if and when needed than be limited with an Atom.

Plus you can pick one of up along with an H61 motherboard for about the same price as an Atom.
 
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Regarding the windows 7 Pro, I can get one from work so it saves me spending money on the OS.

How much power at relative load do you think the above pc would use? The psu's designed for car pc's come in either 150W or 250W I believe. I was probably going to go for the 250W just to be safe.
 
At full load, this review suggests that the system power draw of a sandy bridge i3/pentium system (cpu/motherboard/RAM) is between 70 and 80 watts (before the PSU). I would imagine this will be around 10W less with an Ivy bridge i3 or Pentium.

Is the car PSU needed to drive the touchscreen, or is that powered separately?

If it is separate then you should be fine with a 150W car PSU.
 
Puppetmaster said:
Regarding the windows 7 Pro, I can get one from work so it saves me spending money on the OS.

How much power at relative load do you think the above pc would use? The psu's designed for car pc's come in either 150W or 250W I believe. I was probably going to go for the 250W just to be safe.
Click to expand...

I ran my old rig, q8200 [email protected], a 1GB geforce gfx, 6gb ram etc for gaming and stuff on a 250w psu, so i think you'd be fine with a 150..
 
I am planning on powering the touchscreen from the PC psu, as it handles voltage fluctuations from the battery when starting the car, using electric windows etc. Also means its only on when ignition is on.

I need to find out what power that draws but i don't think it is very much. On an american car pc forum, they have an atom powered itx pc with the touchscreen as well running off the 150w i think so shouldn't be an issue
 
On further inspection the 800x480 res 7-8in touch screens generally used in these car PC systems only draw ~10W of power. So with an Ivy Bridge i3/pentium CPU, Mini-ITX board, 4GB RAM and the screen I don't see drawing much more than 100W total from a PSU, so a 150W PSU should be fine.

May I ask how you will be hooking up the sound, will it be a digital connection to the car's onboard sound or do you need to use an analogue connection? If it is analogue, would you consider using a discrete sound card for better sound quality?
 
cmndr_andi said:
On further inspection the 800x480 res 7-8in touch screens generally used in these car PC systems only draw ~10W of power. So with an Ivy Bridge i3/pentium CPU, Mini-ITX board, 4GB RAM and the screen I don't see drawing much more than 100W total from a PSU, so a 150W PSU should be fine.

May I ask how you will be hooking up the sound, will it be a digital connection to the car's onboard sound or do you need to use an analogue connection? If it is analogue, would you consider using a discrete sound card for better sound quality?
Click to expand...

The plan was to go from onboard using 3.5mm to RCA into a regular car amp and then from there into the 4 speakers. I was thinking about using 5.1 sound outputs, but on my pc atleast i only get sound from my front speakers when playing music.

I have seen someone that used front speakers + line out reconfigured as front speakers, using 3.5mm to rca into the amp that seemed to work well.

At first it will likely just be 4 speakers + 2 tweeters at the front. I guess I may add a sub at a later date, although not too sure where to put that.
 
Ah, if you are going down that road (using a sound system with an analogue input) then you may want to consider adding a sound card to your system (depending on the quality of your car speakers) as the onboard sound cards on these mini-ITX boards (and all motherboards tbh) isn't great if you are a bit of an audiophile.

Personally, I would suggest something like the Xonar DX as it is a really nice quality sound card for playing music, it is low-profile and it uses a PCIE port - which most of these H61 mini-ITX boards come with (they don't usually have a PCI port). Here is a review.
 
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