[blue-moves]

Hi,
I'm planning to build my own in-vehicle music production workstation in my motorhome so that I can compose, record, edit and mix music while I travel..
So, OK - 2 principle requirements are nonnegotiable..
1) It MUST run on 12volts (natively, no step-ups or downs..!) and
2) It must have super LOW power consumption (at least on idle) as I usually work about 10 hours a day and would like to not stress my leisure batteries.
Can anyone tell me what it is that enables some industrial computer manufacturers to offer PCs (running Intel i7s, for instance) that idle at 5-10 watts when 'normal' domestic PCs (running similar chips) seem to generally idle at 80-200 watts?
Please!!?? This totally mystifies me!
The other thing I hope to find out before I start is: what is it about some computers that enables them to run directly from 12v when most domestic laptops for instance require 19v?
Please only reply if you know what you're talking about and can answer my questions.
Thank you.

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Hi blue-moves and welcome to our forums,

 

That's a mighty interesting series of question(s), I'll try and deal with the first one!

 

Your non negotiable requirement No 1 rules out most computers currently available to the general public.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, we did see one or two computers come into the workshop that ran natively on 12v but that must have been over 25 years ago. Current models, if desktop types, run on 110v to 220v or therabouts and with laptops usually 19v but some use 16v there's nothing available that runs on 12v without using a stepup/down unit or an inverter.

 

You could try building one yourself using perhaps a Raspberry pi  or Arduino components, but Ohms law can be a hard taskmaster!

 

If you do decide to build one yourself then post a schematic as it would be interesting to see what you have come up with.

Regards

paws

[paws]

Hi blue-moves and welcome to our forums,

 

That's a mighty interesting series of question(s), I'll try and deal with the first one!

 

Your non negotiable requirement No 1 rules out most computers currently available to the general public.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, we did see one or two computers come into the workshop that ran natively on 12v but that must have been over 25 years ago. Current models, if desktop types, run on 110v to 220v or therabouts and with laptops usually 19v but some use 16v there's nothing available that runs on 12v without using a stepup/down unit or an inverter.

 

You could try building one yourself using perhaps a Raspberry pi  or Arduino components, but Ohms law can be a hard taskmaster!

 

If you do decide to build one yourself then post a schematic as it would be interesting to see what you have come up with.

Regards

paws