Car PC motherboard in Mini ITX form factor
Are you looking for a cute little motherboard to fit into the car PC? You are in the right place.
Here I would like to share few details about the usage of Mini-ITX motherboard in the car pc.
This article may not be concentrating on the architecture of the CPU, chipset etc... But I will explain why Mini-ITX is good for a car pc.
What is Mini ITX motherboard
Basically the Mini-ITX motherboards are based on the FormFactor. The FormFactor of these motherboards are in 170 mm x 170 mm. which is the standard of Mini ITX. That’s the reason these motherboards re called as mini ITX motherboards. Few other FormFactors are Micro ATX, Flex ATX, and PICO ITX
If you have worked in embedded you may not feel that it is very small because the embedded motherboards are also very small in nature. But if you are a PC hardware assembler and mostly working in ATX based boards, you will sure wonder how small these boards are.
Is mini ITX good for Car PC motherboard?
FormFactor
Most of the Car PC motherboard are very compact in nature the first preference is because of the low FormFactor, So that a small case can be used to hold all necessary components to hold.
Power Usage
Remember this is going to be used in a car not in a Home power supply. If you are using like 1000w PSU, while the engine is not running, then the car battery will drain easily. Moreover at the time of writing, up to my knowledge, there are no good PSUs with shut down controllers available for that range.
Silent Motherboard
You can easily find a Mini-ITX motherboard for Car PC motherboard on store without fans. These are known as fan-less motherboards. It reduces sound from pc by eliminating the spinning sound of the fan. The fan in the CPU and chipset is eliminated because of this motherboard. The car pc power supply is also fanless. So the complete setup is fan-less now and moreover the entire setup is very silent.
Reduced list of Components to assemble
Again you can easily find a Mobo with CPU soldered in it. So you can easily connect a Memory, hard disk and power it up. The setup is ready to load Operating system. It is that much simple that most of the functionalities are in built like Audio, Graphics, Network, And finally CPU soldered. It is a perfect fit for a Car PC motherboard. I am currently using a second motherboard and i am happy with both the motherboards interms of size and usage.
Cost Effective
As we discussed in the previous point, calculate for the entire setup. The outcome will be definitely cheaper comparatively with other setups.
Is Car PC motherboard powerful enough?
Based on the requirements the car pc may need. We can expect the mini-itx to handle most of the standard applications with considerable perfomance.