Page 2 - A DEV concept project.

I was only thinking laptop earlier on, once I thought of the rucksack I realised it wouldn't need to be as compact... and also laptop hardware is quite limited din terms of upgrade-ability...

it would definitely need to be in a shielded / reinforced case though. last thing you want is two halves of a motherboard .

large "tower" heatsinks would be out of the question too, which is when i thought of having it water-cooled.

has anyone else had a look at AMD's DTX Specification ? it's basically like micro-ATX, a little smaller, more compact, but they only allow for two PCI(e) slots... two DIMM's, and limited CPU's, so they're out I guess... (plus it's likely to only be AMD CPU's, which rules out Core2 Quatro's )

I think a full ATX board would be overkill though... I mean who uses 4-7 PCI slots? all you really need is two PCI-e's, maybe a couple of PCI's for "netowkring" (EDIT: I saw this mistake as I clicked "Post" ) etc. and enough slots for memory.

ah, complexity.

Well, it all depends on the intended end-use of the system. If it's just a GP computer for surfing the net and doing paperwork, then a mini-ATX would do the trick nicely. If you want a powerful gaming rig, then a full ATX board will be the way to go.

Hell, a mini-ATX rig can fit into a freakin' soda can... we could computerize that bicycle helmet you wear when you are riding on the short bus! (that was not directed at anyone in particular, it just sounded funny).

... in fact, we could stuff a computer into one of those painfully cute stuffed animal backpack thingys-- a computer-bear!

BAHAHAHAHA....


Anyway ya DTX would probably the most viable option for a semi-portable pc. Especially mini-dtx am2 compatible, 2 dimms like anubis said, and a pci-e slot for the gpu and a pci slot for a sound card with plenty of room for hard drives and what not in the case. Watercooling would be a much bigger pain to move around and would take up a lot more space than a desktop heatsink, you just have to stick with a smaller one, something similar to a stock heatsink.

Has anybody seen an LCD screen that can be "plugged in" to the box? It'd be great if we could just plug in our display to the computer.

ive been thinking about a mod build for some time now, thing is i dont get much influence to get the creative juices flowing, i was looking over at mini-itx last week and most of the projects, as cool as they are, seem a little tired and outdated.

brainstorm is needed indeed

so this has got to be portable with either full size atx or that mini dtx.

does it have to have a built in keyboard and if you need it mouse?

If so I suggest a trackball mouse like what was on some of the early laptops

What im thinking is a slot loading dvd setup in a atx case thats laid on its side or build your own case and have it like a laptop but much better.

or does it have to be as small as possible?

If thats the case how good are u at taking apart lcd casing and building customized cases? Because Im thinking something on the lines of the imacs but without the gay apple logo.

Need more info though

I am still working on this and been playing with the 3D drawing program that Anubis sent me.
Things:
Weatherproof and airport resistant (lol)
Few cords but montor can detach (19-21")
Keyboard and mouse will be wireless so that is not a problem.
I want full power and interchangeability CPU, V-CARD.

Question is there a way to ?bend? the motherboard into a layed down L shape short side pointing down with the PCIE on the side/Thinking of MB upsidedown to the montor when closed.

I think I know what you mean CY... bending it to make an angle-iron sort of shape.

Given the design of most motherboard, I think you'll find it hard to find one with a clear line across it without components in the way. plus bending the PCB would be difficult, would probably require heating to soften it. then of course you have the problem of the multi-layered tracks, stretching the copper around a corner would be tenuous at best...

interchangeable graphics card may also throw a spannar in the works on the portability front. where there is a socket, there is a connector to snap. however, if it didn't have a massive cooler it may be light enough to flex slightly.

water proofing... Peli case? it's the best way. it makes the whole thing self-contained. it'll be very hard to beat that kind of quality and durability.

when you say full power, I take it you mean completely self-contained, plug into the wall as one box and go kind of thing? or are you on about the "power" capabilities of the components? as in full speck modern CPU? if so, I'd definitely go Core based at the moment, maybe you could find a mobile chip to reduce the heat given off.

you could probably run the whole thing from car batteries through an inverter too. but you'd either need a lot of them, or need to keep the engine running to power it for any amound of time.


oh, and recently I saw a tiny (think 3 stacked DVD's, ish...) projector. that could be really useful.

Two Words : Riser Cards

What BBall said, or an SBC and small backplane.

Thanks I now have a whole new line of research and some new Ideas!

i think the main problem with this kind of idea is simply weight and cooling. its really easy to fit all the parts, but not as easy to cool them nor to keep it light. the heavyer the thing is, the less portable it is. And the same goes for performance, the more performant it is, the harder it is to cool.

in any case, the lcd can be solved by using a laptop screen. those are rather small and can be protected rather easily behind a sheet of lexan or similar see through products. mine is 1cm in depth, compared to the humungus 19 inch lcds. 17 inch laptop lcds arent all taht rare either. they also tend to have better higher resolutions than their desktop counterparts. the only "problem" with this is their display interface, LVDS and how to connect it to the motherboard. however, i remember reading a while back that there was one specific motherboard which supported LVDS, i cant recall which one though. the next problem with that is that using a lvds port on the motherboard immediately means integrated graphics, which is not all that powerful for gaming.

with the higher end video cards, you also have a problem. a 8800 series card or a hd2900 series card willl definitely be huge and produce alot of heat.

Same goes for processors, the faster it is, the more juice it sucks and teh more power it outputs...

riser cards do fix the angle problem, however, there is still the problem of keeping the card straight.

some motherboards have integrated wifi, so that is a plus. (im thinking asus p5k wifi editions)

and last but not least, how would one fit a power supply in all that and keep it from breaking the whole system? and how would one rig up the monitor to that? THG had an interesting article for the "solar pc" where some monitors use a 12v dc input, so one could plug taht to a psu's 12v line, and they also used a really small psu that plugged into a 12v source - good for a car dc adapter, the only problem with such a small psu is that it can only produce ~140 watts - not enough to power any sort of dedicated video card with a half decent performance on top of any half decent processor for gaming. and then comes the problem of fitting a psu that can take AC voltage. im guessing that should be possible if one makes a special connector with two inputs and diodes on every single line, but it would be hardly ideal


Once the idea of riser cards was mentionned, one idea came straight to mind: HTPCs. Isnt what we are building a HTPC with a screen? i mean.... if one put a laptop sized lcd on the "roof" of a windows htpc, dont we get what we want? (not mentioning the problems of weight and heat)