JayMax03

Has anyone ever installed one in the New Edge Mustangs (99-04)? I thinking about it but I don't know where to put and I'm trying to avoid the trunk. Can some of y'all give me some ideas?

wayne613

Forums of mp3car.com would probably give you some better results. I do recall at least 1 carpc project done on the new edge body.

Your only 3 realistic options are under a seat, the trunk, or a pre-fab double-din dash unit made for a 7" touch-screen. That is unless you're ok with cutting up the dash as I did. This is all with the mini-ITX form factor in mind. That last option of the 3 sounds good, but getting all the shiznat wanted into that usually isn't easy.

Pics of one of the sold units:






There are of course nano-ITX solutions as well, but they're far more handicapped in processing/GPU power.

JayMax03

here is what I had in mind, but I hope I can put it under the seat http://www.ebay.com/itm/200589975417...84.m1423.l2649

wayne613

Yep. That's the usual mini-ITX case used for this. Comes approximately to the dimensions of a medium sized audio amplifier. Should make it under the passenger seat fine.

Their actual full on website is here. Guessing they're doing ebay as well due to how everyone thinks they'll get a better deal there, even if it isn't true.

JayMax03

when you installed your carpc did you install cooling fans as well? my car get really hot during the summer I've already had 2 HUs go bad because of overheating... Pioneer Premier AVIC90BT and the Alpine INA-W900 is currently in a repair shop.

wayne613

Yes, this is the second incarnation of a dash built CarPC for this vehicle, both of which I did cooling fan installs for. I have 2 going. Both are internal to the case, small one mounted vertically against the side next to the SDD to make air flow over/through the case, and another larger one just above the GPU and CPU fans to pull as much out as it can. This has solved the issue for me to date. Still gets quite warm up under there, but gives enough extra movement to actually get some circulation going and keep everything under the 85(C) degree mark(CPU/GPU/CASE, I have a core2duo and an NVIDIA 9300 in there) on the 95(F) degree days.

Summer for one of the lower powered mini-ITX units won't likely be the main issue, Winter will be. The area just doesn't have much ability to circulate air on it's own, and the floor heating tends to turn the area into a crucible after 15mins or so running with the heat on as it has no where to go.

The above combined with the main duct work running right next to everything...Yeah, you will need something if you mount anything aside from the LCD monitor in the dash.

Of course since the body/engineering is slightly altered on the S197's, this may not apply completely to you, and perhaps your own won't be as bad in that section. Or it may be worse.

Unfortunately if plain head-units are overheating with good mounting in there, then my guess would be worse.

You should not have any issues if you mount under the passenger seat, and keep up with cleaning debris, dust, etc from around the case. The case will have a small fan built in, and the lower power ATOM like AMD you plan on will not generate nearly as much heat as my Core2Duo/Nvidia9300.

Trunk, if used to mount the mini-ITX case, can be an issue in summer, but even then with what you plan on I think you'd be fine.

My suggestion is to get a piece of thin wood and mount the case to that, then velcro the back of the wood. This will help keep it slightly raised and the carpet out from around it, as well as helping to keep the crud that tends to accumulate away from it.

You are aware you will still need to get/mount an 4-channel amplifier(front/rear split), yes? As output from a computer's soundcard is line-level.

JayMax03

Now there is an issue I never thought about completely I just had the idea of putting y-cables from the amp to the carpc I'm using subs too... man now there's yoo many ideas in my head

wayne613

Y-RCA to phono(3.5mm stereo) jacks will do it. Same idea as amplified speakers for a PC, adjustable via PC once you get the amp level adjusted to where it should be for the best sound, just wanted to make sure you knew that you would need an amp.

If you do use the front and rear outputs from a sound-card (built-in or not) you will run into issues playing back stereo sound, ie. music; there are some DSP plugins for winamp and such to get around this, but only effective for that specific app. The "fill" sound stop-gaps that many sound-cards provide to simulate stereo output to 4+ channel systems for their windows driver usually suck diseased monkey nuts.

Many will also allow re-mapping of the outputs, but for the usual built-in sound "chip", Realtek, this doesn't save upon reboot. So if you put both the front and rear normal outputs as both front, this would then default back once you restarted the carpc.

Expect the easy part being the hardware setup. Can't beat it once most is setup right with a front-end app, and all you can do with it. But it's a bitch to get everything going the way you'd want the way an out of the box pioneer touch-screen unit would be for instance.

JayMax03

Well maybe it won't be so bad with eight channel audio, but I need something something to adjust lows, mids, and highs. I have an Alpine PXE-H650 audio processor you think that might help?

wayne613

8 channel? Are you referring to subs and speakers, or actual speaker outputs? Component setup?

The usual Realtek on-board audio will give you front, rear, sub or center channel (5.1), no real ability to bandpass effectively. If you get a good add-on one, such as one of the creative USB ones, perhaps, but ya, I'd probably just use the processor from the front outs and then you can do what you wish with it.

I have mine going with the separate front and rears just going to a 4 channel Kenwood amp(so I can get fairly decent surround sound from movies if played), then the sub line outputs from the Kenwood feeding back to the shaker factory amps. You'll be far more fancy-pants than mine.