Old System 

Old System

This system is a Micro-ATX using a Biostar M7NCG mobo, mobile athlon XP 2200+, 512MB RAM, all stuffed into about the smallest case it could possibly fit in; My case of choice is an athenatech that I got from newegg. It's several times bigger than my Epia 800 system but my car has massive trunk space, and I'd gladly sacrifice a bit more of it to make the carPC be an order of magnitude better and easier to use. Essentially, this time I have a system that's right on par with many common desktop PC's, so I can do just about anything I want with software and not have to be limited by the speed. The CPU fan is right under the vent on top, the PSU is to the right of that, and there's that auxiliary fan on the side which is right behind the PSU. With a laptop hard drive, the CPU and power supply are likely to be the only things producing more than a negligible amount of heat, so the ventilation is well-placed.

Laptop drive shock mount

One of the nice things about this case is that the CDROM bays overlap the motherboard a bit, which saves space, however the entire drive cage unit (CDROM bays and the hard drive cage underneath) actually pivot up on spring-loaded levers when released, making it extremely easy to work with. Here you can see the whole thing flipped completely upside down, giving easy access to the HD cage. I mounted the laptop hard drive with chopped-up foam around all the edges, with the top and bottom of the drive left relatively exposed for cooling, although I doubt that will be a big deal as this drive runs very cool. The foam is, of course, there as shock-mounting, to try and minimize the amount of shock and vibration the drive has to deal with. In addition, the case is mounted on its side when in the car, so the drive is also, which is rumored to help as well.