Building the Ultimate Gaming Minivan

The ultimate gaming minivan for a trip was built despite numerous challenges and setbacks.

### Building the Ultimate Gaming Minivan for a Family Road Trip
* 🚗  The "**ultimate gaming minivan**" project was initiated to create a gaming setup inside a van for a **family road trip**.
* 🎮  The original setup involved laptops from MSI, but they were repossessed, so the team had to **retrofit a new display and computer for gaming**.
* 💻  The setup included a computer with **mid-range specs**, an in-car display from **Extron**, and a wireless router for **4G internet connectivity**.
* 🔌  The computer was powered by an **EcoFlow unit**, and the team used **type-C cables** for improved cable management.
* 👩‍👧‍👦  Three displays were mounted in the van, and the team had to figure out how to **connect them to the computer**.
* 🛠️  The installation process involved **cutting holes in the van's interior**, **mounting the displays and computer**, and **managing the cables**.
* 🕹️  Despite some challenges and mistakes during the installation, the end result was a **functional and flexible gaming setup** that allowed the family to **play games together** during the road trip.
* 🎮  A sponsor for the video was War Thunder, a multiplayer combat game featuring **realistic details of over 2,000 vehicles** from different eras of warfare.

I have a small problem. Do you guys remember the ultimate gaming minivan? Well, ever since MSI repossessed the laptops that we used to build it, it's more of an ultimate minivan. I also have a big problem. I promised my kids that over the long weekend, they would have a gaming minivan for our trip to Great Wolf Lodge. The long weekend's tomorrow, and there's so much more wrong with it than just the missing computers. The screens fell off, the cables broke, we don't have any way for the middle child (poor middle child) to even see the screens we had in there. There's no time to lose. Sponsor segue: War Thunder. You got to admit it would be pretty cool to fly a jet or drive a tank. Well, War Thunder's gameplay is about as close as you can get from the comfort of your own home. Sounds cool, play free at the link below. In the event of a crash, the last thing we would want is a giant monitor mount designed by Alex. Hey, for the kids to come flying into. So, we ended up

sourcing this retrofitted in-car display that we're going to put here so that uh that one doesn't end up with a syndrome wait but Dad will we still be able to play games together absolutely you'll be able to play games together in fact you will only be able to play games together instead of having three separate computers we're going to have one computer and it's all going to be wired up to this so you guys will pick what game you're going to play together and you will all play but you'll have your own screens to look at if I want to play by myself if you want to play by yourself then you have to convince the girls that you're the only one who's allowed to use it for a bit second computer a twers computer and a one-person computer you guys are the choosiest little Beggars no you get one computer for now second computer Alex you're not helping this feels like a hostage negotiation anyway this display is from

a company called Extron. It's TN, but it's one of the better TN's that I've seen. So we're going to say it's good enough as long as we can get it mounted in kind of a reasonable spot. So what's a good kind of location for you? Like, are you thinking kind of there, right there? Why do I even ask children things? The good location's right here. Oh, so it's dictated by where the plate to mount it to is under here. Yeah. It's getting attached to the B pillar that goes up and across and stuff. Got it. So before we do this one thing, attaching this requires cutting a hole in the liner up here. What are we waiting for? Who wants to do it? Me, please, please, me. Oh, I think we got a volunteer. Unfortunately, unlike the DJI units that we put in Emily's camper van, this EcoFlow unit uses some proprietary adapter for its AC input. So I don't have it. Um, I guess, is there any reason that we couldn't work on this out in the

driveway. No, that seems fine. Okay, let's get the solar panels going. Do you have sunscreen? Uh, theoretically, the second I pull out into the sun here, my input's going to... Hey, look at that. Okay, we're charging, boys. Now that we've got power worked out, you guys wanted to help with this today, right? Yeah, so we need to get you guys assignments. Who wants to help build and install the computer? Me. Okay, get out of here. Who wants to help install the screen? Me. Okay, see you later. Who wants to be my big helper, my moral support animal? Me. Wonderful. Now for the fun one. Who wants my daughter's help? I'll take it. All right, so Justin, you're on getting the computer installed in the back, and Alex, you get my son, and let's get the screen started. All right, heck yeah. As for us, we're going to work on cable management. You remember those cables that broke off on the old screens? Those were poopy cables. They were bad. So we're going to use type-C instead, but using type-C out.

of a desktop is a little bit more challenging than you might think because while these monitors support DisplayPort over USB Type-C, they use DisplayPort Alt Mode. Which means that if you just output from a regular graphics card, he's not working. And so that's why we went with a 20 series card because it supports VR length through this Type-C connector here. Perfect native output, just Type-C to Type-C Cable. Of course, that only handles one of our displays, and two of them are still going to use these Type-C inputs. So we chose a motherboard with a Type-C output, cloning the display across your dedicated GPU and your integrated GPU can have a slight performance penalty. But realistically, they're going to be playing what, like Castle Crashers, Ultimate Chicken Horse? It should be okay. As for the final display, it does have full-size HDMI, which is fantastic. Not so fantastic, it also has power because no USB Type-C. So we have to figure out how to run that through here somehow. I guess these come off. I don't know.

sorry what those come off yeah oh to to put power through it yeah um okay and are they going to go back on these will go back on great what happens up here we will see no okay darling so you see where we've got these cables from last time yeah these are all poo poo so what we're going to do instead is we're going to run these cables down the same spots okay okay can you handle that yeah so we got to take all of this off and then so you got to find those down there and pull them out oh you know what it be really smart though hold on hold on if we were really smart you know what we would do is we would tape the new cable to the old cable and then when we pull it out we're going to feed our new cable right in think you can do that are you that smart yeah okay let's get you some tape and D doop good enough ah okay now go find the bottom of this one and start yanking on

it nice perfect now you just got to take that tape off. Good job. Or wait, you know what, no, we can use it to keep pulling. Let's go all the way to the back and see if we can find it. Here, this is the one we want. So, you got to pull this here, and I'm going to help feed it through, okay? Oh, woah, hold on. Wait, did we get it the end yet? Oh, that is not quite long enough. Hey, Alex, yeah, are these cables intended to be long enough to reach up to the headrests? Uh, which ones? Uh, the type C's, I think. So, Justin says he doesn't have longer type C's for the front seats. My solution to that, oh no, was to have this just kind of exist somewhere in the middle. Oh, oh, so you can go from traditional display port to display port alt mode, but what you need is an active adapter. And this is one of the little VR Port boxes that comes with Vario, Vario high-end, really nice professional VR headsets. It's a little less clean than the direct

USBC run that we had intended. And it means there was no reason to use a 20 series Nvidia card anymore. But hey, at least it means we're not up the creek without a paddle, right kids? What since we're going to be playing around where some side curtain airbags are, we're just not going to take any risks. So battery is getting disconnected right here. And then we don't have to worry about uh those airbags exploding in our faces. You're welcome. Fortunately, the built-in cables just barely reach where our front cable gets to and just barely reach the back of the computer. So what we need to do now is get this cable managed so that it doesn't move. All right, do you want to break your parents' van? Yeah, most of car interior work is just pulling on things and hoping that the little plastic clips on the inside don't break. So uh, do you want to just pull on this as hard as you can and it'll probably come off? Yeah, there we go. Come, there we go. Oh, that escalated quickly. Yeah, he

pulled it off. Oh, okay, all right, we've got our two boxes. Now we just need to decide where the optimal place is to mount them so that we can reach them with our cables from the front. Let's go figure out where those cables are going to land. Why can't we just drill a big square over here? Oh, we will, but we need to get the water up and in so it's nice and tidy. Are you guys thinking like we can just fish it through? Yeah, oh, well, that'll be fine then, right? Yeah, oh, well, why were you freaking me out about the fabric at the top? Because we just need to take it out a little bit here, and its headliners just never go back in the same. Oh, I see. Yeah, okay, why don't we run another one of these cables? Okay, okay, you got it. Yeah, keep going, keep going. Okay, that's good. Okay, let's see how much slack we've got. Got once again. We have just barely enough room. We're going to mount this.

don't know here or something, and then these are just going to make their way around to the back of the PC, perfect, just like we planned. What are those? These are the brackets that hold it down so that way when you guys are driving and hitting bumps and stuff like that, the computer doesn't go flying around. So these here are 3D printed brackets. They are printed at 100% fill in ptg, so it should be nice and strong, shouldn't go anywhere while she's installing the computer. Let's talk about the specs. We went with something pretty mid-range. It's a Ryzen 5 5600, so this is last gen Ryzen, 16 gigs of T-Force memory, a P5 SSD, and okay, the motherboard's a little high-end. It's an X570 board from Asus, but that's just 'cause we had that kicking around. The reality of it is we don't want anything that's going to draw a ton of power or kick out a ton of heat because once we have the

top cover on here. It's a pretty confined space. That was one of the justifications for laptops last time. This is a cool addition though. This was actually created by a viewer. It's from Mark Z from cosmic goo.com. And it's a little IR receiver that can be used with pretty much any programmable IR remote to turn a PC on and off. So we're going to be giving it a try. Wait, IR. How's that going to be that useful inside the trunk of a car? Well, we're going to have to have it running outside the car. Um, it does come with some pretty long wires as it is, but we might have to go a little bit longer and maybe stick it to the roof or something on the inside of the car, not the outside. I see. Okay. I do wonder if at that point it might have been easier for us to just press the button, but okay, sure. You know what, we're shouting out Mark Z. And if the solution's a little weird, then blame Mark Z. This is the mounting plate for

the middle Monitor, and it is sharp as heck. You will actually cut yourself if you touch it the wrong way. So, uh, deburring tool. Linus's kid gets to learn how to use one. He, he didn't give consent. One thing you might think would be smart would be wearing gloves while doing this. That's a really bad idea. If you touch your hand against it, maybe you have a bit of a bad hour. You have to put on a Band-Aid. If a glove gets caught in it and gets pulled off, you're, you're having a bad month or so. Why is that there? That is there so that we can take this little adapter box and stick it there so it won't go anywhere. What's this? This is a wireless router. What does it do? Well, it does a couple of things. In our application, it's going to take the 4G Puck that we have, and it's going to distribute networking to everything. What's the 4G Puck? That's going to give us internet when we're in

the car we had wanted to put Starlink on the roof of the car. What Starlink is, um, like satellite internet that you can have anywhere. But they didn't have the new, like, really small one that they have now back when we built this, so we didn't get Starlink. Oh, so we're just going to use a 4G puck. What does that do? That does, oh, it apparently is a button. I have, I have no idea. Maybe we're breaking it. Good gravy, this is the chunkiest puck I think I've ever seen. We're not going to need that MSI thing in there anymore. We could just run a little switch off of this thing. Okay, perfect. Never mind, uh, that's going to go. So we can take that out. If I'm honest, I don't know how I feel about having a kid just put an Ula knife through the roof of a car. Um, that's okay, but that's what Line is said to do. So how you feel? Yeah, I just like poke it. Yeah, there we go.

nice, oh, there we go, heck yeah, I did it. We can see the B-pillar right there, we are golden. I scratched this part, that's fine, no one's going to see it. Oh, wow, what a mostly even hole you've cut. It's okay, it's going to get much bigger, that was just to see what's on the go. Mr. Justin, I may have a task that you're uniquely qualified for. This doesn't use Keyhole mounts like our magnetic Cable Management would like for it to use, but it does have these little slide-in feet things. I see how hard would it be to make them out for that, it's not okay. I'll get on her. May I has mhm let's do it. Okay, okay, I'll just hold on to this 104. Perfect, this looks great, but is there a reason we used double-sided tape rather than the slides? Uh, yes, because if I went with the right thickness of material that would allow it to slide, the little feet stick out and then you got a big bump and right AC it would be.

so flimsy anyway. All right, let's screw it in. I'm going to put this kind of right here 'cause I'm thinking the closer I can get these antennas to at least a window, rather than the metal chassis of the vehicle, the better. So I'm kind of feeling this vibe. They are antennas, okay, keep going a little more, little more. Okay, yeah, that's good, good job. All right, awesome. This is my favorite technique for getting stuff through confined little areas. You just zip tie a zip tie to the end of it and then add some Tesa tape so it gets through kind of easily. It'll probably work just fine. All right, I'm going to try and fish this through. Can you try and grab it in there when it starts showing up, assuming it does? Heck yeah, there we go. Pretty big moment. Now I've got the power adapter for our second VR box, so I'm just going to go ahead and get this plugged in, which means all we've got to do is flip.

the switch on our computer. Oh, sure. You have an IR emitter on your phone. Red Magic 9 has one. Brand new phone still has it. Wow. Okay. And what I just press the power button. Yep. T. That is awesome. Computer's powered up, which means you two girls can go plug those monitors into the front and let's see if we get a signal to them. Go for it. As cool as our programmable IR button is, though, I think that what I'm leaning toward is just extending these two wires that are coming off of the power button on the computer and just putting it power button in the front. I, uh, I don't have a blaster on my phone and I don't have any obvious way to hit this unless we like install an array of mirrors to, yeah, Zelda. Zelda dungeon. It, um, okay. Cool. So can we do that? Yeah, yeah, quick and easy problem. Okay, perfect. It turned on. Yay. Wait, do you guys see an output from the computer? It said it says 12%. 12%. Oh no.

yeah yeah yeah, but there's a Windows background, that's all we care about. It just turned off. Yeah, it's at 0%. Oh, okay, power this on. Okay, it's powered on. Republic of Gamers, yeah, I know. Hey, look at that, we've got both of them now. Excellent. We definitely should have done all of the cutting before throwing the cables through. That was an oversight. Look how bad of a job you did last time. Perfect, then his writing. It's going to look so good. It's Perfecter than his drawing. He sticking out. We just rip it. There we go, yay. Hey, all right, put the blade away. There's holes in the slots that I wanted for there to be not holes. So we can observation getting griefed by children. How are we feeling about right there? Do we have any way of telling if it wait, Alex, that's not centered, you know that, right, Alex? We can move it over a bit. Okay, right there. Okay, you want to hold it. I'm going to try. Okay, going to do one R. Oh, this is going to be so tough.

Oh, I thought you said it was great and super fantastic, Alex. Alex, you're saying that it's not right now. I mean, I'm not saying anything. Do you want to do the Hors Len? Oh yeah, perfect. Where do I drill it? You are determining right now whether this will be centered or not, and you can't even put your glasses on upside right. This is the right way, a little bit more. All right, we didn't go through roof, that's great. Time to pick where you want it. Oh, okay, well let's go find a spot. I'm going to regret it if it isn't somewhere where the kids can reach it. Yep, okay, let's just put it up here on the floor, okay, Phil. So whatever you do, don't fart, Alex. Oh, I really wish I had one. So it's very important that this goes in straight. Here, I'll do the one that's, I'll do this one so that if we still have this one, it's finer. Yeah, uh, three was already kind of the minimum. My son, what could go wrong? We've got a

12-year-old tapping uh the tap could break. Why is it called? He could strip it, rhetorical question. He could go in sideways, rhetorical question. I think he might have done it. He didn't do it. He did do it. Oh, okay, sure, great. He did it, of course. Something went wrong. Power button test. Is it off, Justin? It is off. Okay, then it works. All right, it's just going to hang here. Shouldn't we use a screwdriver for that? Uh, yes. Oh, what did Alex? Oh, it's both of you now. The safety glasses on wrong, unbelievable. Okay, here we go. So the HDMI input is just on the side, yeah. Why? So if I don't misunderstand this, then all this crap just sits up there, yep. Okay, no one's going to see it, yeah, we'll just kind of stuff it in here. I feel like that's the gold ones. This is going to be really hard to line up. Gold ones, I believe in you, Alex. Is it long enough? I think it's long enough. It's just going to be hard to hit. Wait, did we

nail it say let go no no not even oh wow know we were super close might be right there oh that's under promising yeah I'm I'm Letting Go it's not coming down I think we got it. I think we got it. how's that looking I mean good enough it's as good as it's going to be because it's into a plate that's in a fixed position well but we can like lightly move the plate oh I see check this out big moment guys peels coming off who professional buddy only took two tries all right not bad not bad that looks sick you can't even tell there's a big ugly HDMI cable sticking out of the side that is legitimately kind of cool though because it means that at a moment's notice you could just plug anything you want into it yeah kind of Handy kind of cool like if someone's sitting there with a a switch OLED or something and they want to just share their screen connect another controller for a second player boom you just keep playing on

your handheld and there you go. Get the whole van playing like six kids all playing smash BRS. You totally could. All right, let's put the car back together. Yeah, I should test if that internet Puck works. I'm going to do that. Okay, we got internet. Let's check googly Chrome. Uh, sure. Web Store. Hey, nice. Okay, we've got internet and one display progress. Yay. Andrew, what do you think are the odds this just works? Uh, 80. 80. Oh, come on, man. Doing a quick test run with them just twisted together. Here we go. Is that screen going to turn on? Let's find out. And ah. Uh-oh. That is not powered. Oh, there's a remote. I mean, the light's not on though. Oh, the light's not on. Uh-huh. Uh, hold on. Maybe I did it wrong. No, you did that right. Uh-oh. Alex, did you tie the accessory into the voltage? Okay, time for some probation volts. That's bad. That is really bad. Okay, if I support this. Yeah, I got it. Do you

want to have see if you can grab the cable harness stuff. Yeah, do you think we just didn't get the wires on properly? That's my vote. I'm voting for that. Justin says power supply. I say wires. You got any guesses? I can see the problem already. What accessory wire isn't wired into the positive? There's no wire going to the positive. Oh, what's this ACC? Yeah, so you need both ACC and accessory H. Oh, okay. Well, that's good. Yeah, that was a relatively quick fix. Oh, Von, come around the other side. What do you think of the center monitor? Yeah, she just told me. What do you mean she just told you? Look at her drawing, her puzzle drawing. Yeah, I didn't know that you guys were putting one in, but well, we are. Yeah. Oh, wait, you're upset about the hole in the roof? Oh, well, you'll never see it 'cause this will be there. Last time when you guys worked on the car, I was driving and the car just stopped working.

no more power. Yeah, very dangerous. Yes. Are we going to have the same issue? No. Oh no. Are you sure? Oh yeah. Okay. That wasn't me. Also, that was someone, a BMW Enthusiast. In all honesty, if you weren't trying to make a video and have your three kids help you, you could probably do an install of one of these in a couple hours, I'd say, maybe an hour, really. Okay. But I'm buffering, Alex. Yeah. I came up with how long I thought it would take, and then I doubled it. Yeah, two hours. I mean, you've read the YouTube comments. I, no offense, some of you are could probably do it in an hour just fine, but a lot more probably think they could do it in an hour. Yeah. Oh yeah. Hey, look at that. It has no apps. Uh, that's okay. We can fix that. Wow, that image quality is not great. Sorry, middle child. She has the bigger screen though. That's what you get for being the middle, but it's farther away. Also, I don't think it's bigger. It's

smaller, if anything. Okay, let's put the third screen on, shall we? Yeah, all right. Oh, here's the remains of that micro HDMI cable. There it goes, like everything else in this car. Hey, hey, hey, come on, we're doing great here. Can you not triplicate a display? Is that not a thing? Okay, so, uh, how are you supposed to do this again? Uh, you click set up multiple displays, yeah, and then you right-click on the display you want to duplicate, and then select clone with, and then choose the displays you want to duplicate. Uh-huh. That was unnecessarily complicated, agreed, but yes, we got it. Heck yeah. All right, you guys want to try a game? Yeah, yeah. All right, let's do it. Alex, do you want to help me guide this bad boy in for the last dish? Time for a wildish. Look at that, it looks all proper professional, sort of. Yeah, wow, this whole setup is actually drawing less power than this late afternoon sun is inputting. We're around 170 watts output, and we're at around 200 watts input for.

all the trials and tribulations, the end result is actually, oh yeah, really good. I mean, it looks sick, it legitimately does, and it has way more flexibility than we're even taking advantage of now. Second computer, okay, we do have the ability now that we have those little adapter boxes to display port alt mode in the back to put up to three computers in without any difficulties. But hey, they can play games together, it wouldn't kill them, they're siblings, right? You guys love each other, right? I won, and I love telling you about our sponsor War Thunder. Now you too can blow a tank to smithereens in a video game. War Thunder features immersive player versus player combat with an emphasis on the realistic details of over 2,000 vehicles, to the point where every single war machine is modeled after its real-world counterpart. Pilot some of the most famous tanks, planes, and ships from multiple eras of warfare, and if the gameplay seems too intimidating, War Thunder has game modes to make starting as a newcomer a lot smoother. There's

built-in tools like the damage x-ray view that will let you see how and where you damaged enemy vehicles to help you strategize after each round. War Thunder is available on PC, Mac, PlayStation, and Xbox, and you can start playing for free right now alongside over 70 million other players. Just click our link below and you can get started right now. If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the one where we Decked Out Emily from the editing Department's camper van. Freaking shirro, okay, look at his wheels. Have you seen his new Wheels yet? He needs the stickers, he needs, he needs the donut for them ew. Or you can check out shad's AMD ultimate Tech upgrade tasteful.

I have 5 hours to fix the gaming mini van

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

Repurposing the Ultimate Gaming Minivan for Family Fun

The gaming minivan, once equipped with laptops, is being repurposed with a single computer and retrofitted in-car display.

The family is working on installing the new display from Extron and reorganizing the gaming setup for the kids to play together.

The repurposing process involves cutting a hole for the display, using a proprietary AC adapter, and implementing type-C cables for improved functionality.

Challenges of Setting Up a Desktop with Multiple Monitors

Setting up multiple monitors with different input types can be challenging, especially when dealing with DisplayPort Alt Mode and Type-C connectors.

Using a 20 series graphics card and a motherboard with Type-C output can help with the display setup, but may result in a slight performance penalty.

Managing power and cables for different types of connectors requires careful planning and sometimes creative solutions.

Decide on the optimal mounting position for the boxes to ensure easy cable reach from the front.

Use 3D printed brackets to secure the computer and prevent movement during driving.

The car computer features mid-range specs to avoid high power consumption and heat generation in the confined space, with an added IR receiver for remote on and off functionality.

Linus's child learns to use a deburring tool unsupervised, which could lead to injuries.

The DIY project involves using a wireless router to distribute 4G internet in the car, as an alternative to Starlink.

The installation process includes cutting a hole in the car roof and improvising a mounting solution for the antenna.

Strategic placement of antennas is important for a better signal.

Using a zip tie and Tesa tape can help in fishing wires through confined areas.

The process of setting up the power adapter for the VR box and dealing with computer power issues is discussed.

Confusion During Installation of Hors Len

The individuals are struggling with the installation process and facing challenges with the positioning.

They are concerned about the visibility and accessibility of the installation for children.

The process involves some trial and error, but they ultimately succeed in concealing the HDMI cable for a clean look.

Troubleshooting the Car Display Installation

The car display installation experienced a power issue due to a missing accessory wire.

The team quickly identified the problem and made a relatively quick fix.

The installation process, while documented in a video, is estimated to take longer than expected, despite some viewers potentially being able to complete it in a shorter time.

Struggling with setting up multiple displays, the team eventually succeeds but finds it unnecessarily complicated.

They then proceed to enjoy gaming together.

The video includes a sponsored segment for War Thunder, highlighting its realistic combat features and availability on multiple platforms.

The team also mentions other videos on decking out a camper van and an AMD tech upgrade.