Dead MOBO, replace or upgrade?

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:17 pm

Wow, I've been neglecting my own thread.

Thanks everybody for your input. I'll just say right off the bat that I've finally decided to go with option A and replace the MOBO, along with the PSU since that's what caused the problem. So, with the reasearch I've done, and considering my current hardware constraints, it comes down to this MOBO and this PSU. Other than brands, chipset, and a slightly higher wattage, they're virtually identical. I'm not familiar with the onboard video chipset, but I'd like to atleast upgrade to a video card anyway. It was kind of a bummer that I couldn't find any Socket-A's that don't come with onboard video. But even it it is AGP, I can probably find something cheap, and it'll still be better than the onboard. But that's for another research session. Any suggestions are welcome of course.

Lyrs wrote:If only the Mobo is broken, then I recommend you replace only it. Test your RAM for problems and upgrade and/or add to them; there's never too much RAM.

I was able to get an IT buddy to look it over, but he couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I was hoping he would at least be able to test the CPU, but no luck. He did say that it's very unlikely that anything other than the MOBO got fried, so that supports my assumption.

Lyrs wrote:I would rather save the money for something truly revolutionary, such as AMD's 4x4 capable Mobo's.

I saw those, just about blew my mind. Super sweet technology. Even if I could afford something like that, I could never justify all that computing power. Not that I wouldn't buy it anyway, just for bragging rights.

Willen wrote:Generally speaking, there is almost no difference between an equivalent standard ATA/100 (IDE) drive and a SATA one in terms of performance.

That pretty much nails it shut for me, in this situation anyway. Utilizing all my current drives will save me a lot of money.

Willen wrote:...In fact, no Socket-A mobos have on-board SATA either...

Well, actually, I did find this one and a handfull of others of the ATX variety (I don't think I mentioned the obvious earlier, but mine's micro-ATX). But they are all only the 1.5Gb/s SATA instead of the 3Gb/s, and they only have two ports. I thought about going with this one instead just in case I did want to pick up an SATA drive. But I'd rather go all out with the 3Gb/s when it comes to it, so at this point, why even bother with the 1.5, right?

Now, I did consider the possiblities of a sort of half-upgrade involving this AMD board or this Intel board. This would allow me to utilize my IDE drives while having SATA available for upgrading along the way. I could also utilize a PCI-E video card, and upgrade the CPU and RAM. This seemed like a pretty good Option C to me. But I decided that instead of doing this half-assed upgrade, I'll save my money and do a complete rebuild on my other box with something along these lines. Plus, I've got this mutual aggreement with my wife, and it's her turn for a computer upgrade.

So thanks again for the input. Can't wait to upgrade my other machine with all this new technology.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 9:22 pm

I didnt know you were shopping for a micro ATX mobo.

for the PSU though you should get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817170010
550w for $20 ,only 3x molex 4 pin though

this is the intel mobo I got with crossfire and with dual x1900xtx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813135218

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 1:30 am

Joe88 wrote:I didnt know you were shopping for a micro ATX mobo.

for the PSU though you should get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817170010
550w for $20 ,only 3x molex 4 pin though

this is the intel mobo I got with crossfire and with dual x1900xtx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813135218

Sorry about the misunderstanding, one little detail I forgot to mention. The Micro-ATX is for my eMachines, which got fried. The ATX I mentioned is a potential idea for my other machine, a giant tower that has been dubbed Cthulhu.

That looks like a good power supply, but my replacement mobo needs a 20-pin power connecter instead of the newer standard 24-pin. Plus, with two HDD's, two CD drives and a floppy, 550 watts is way more than I'd ever need in this little machine.

I was looking at a very similer board as a potential for when I have the money to upgrade Cthulhu. Do you like your board? What's that big, goofy looking green thing for anyway?

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 2:43 am

oh, that board is a dual core
so if you have a intel core duo or core 2 duo when it comes out you can use it.
My friend was looking for something like this. Thanx.
That goofy green thing is a fan lol.
Its where the printer port would go but most are USB anyway now.
also is there an IDE ATA input missing from that board

I though it had 2

I like it. Its a nice board. btw my board even though it says 4GB its actually only 2GB or 512MB per slot. New egg misslabled it. So you might wanna make sure first. Mine said it right in the customer reviews but theres only 2 reviews for that one. So check there web site.
I used it with the cedar mill core CPU 3.6ghz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116006
that processor runs very cool because of 65 nm instead of the 90 nm that most processors use.

This is the ram I bought for it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231050
if you wanna use that one

and I shoved everything in this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811144177
I know it looks kinda cheap but it looks aswome.

with neon lights and such

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 2:44 am

sorry for double post

this is a nice board also http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128002

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 3:49 am

Joe88 wrote:oh, that board is a dual core
so if you have a intel core duo or core 2 duo when it comes out you can use it.
My friend was looking for something like this. Thanx.
That goofy green thing is a fan lol.
Its where the printer port would go but most are USB anyway now.
also is there an IDE ATA input missing from that board I though it had 2

Yeah, dual core is what I'm aiming for with this build, even though its still down the road a ways. I thought that green thing was a fan, but was kinda hard to tell in the pictures. That board only supports a single ATA cable, but that's 2 IDE devices. That's what I want cause I'll be switching everything over to SATA then. I don't know a great deal about processors so I don't know why this CPU is so relatively cheap, but that's the one I was looking at for that board. I know a lot will change though by the time I'm actually able to build this one.

Joe88 wrote:I like it. Its a nice board. btw my board even though it says 4GB its actually only 2GB or 512MB per slot. New egg misslabled it. So you might wanna make sure first. Mine said it right in the customer reviews but theres only 2 reviews for that one.

I noticed that for this board too. Says max capacity is 8GB with 4 slots, but the DDR2 667 only seems to come in 1GB sticks at the most. I figured it was either just a mistake, or the 2GB chips at that speed just haven't become available yet. Same deal with this AMD board I mentioned earlier, only it uses DDR2 800 instead. Somebody's gonna get nailed for false advertising somwhere along the line.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 3:23 pm

Intels CPU's are priced way below AMD CPU's.
Manily because intel wants to stop people from buying AMD's and buy theres instead. So they made a deal with dell and now all dell machincs use intel cores. And the XPS series uses intel core duo. The new model 700 series XPS will use the intel core 2 duo.
Because of this deal intel was able to lower there prices so you get a great deal now. Use intels espiaclly if you mutitask and such (multiple vid encoding)
You can grab a 3.80ghz intel CPU for only $600 now.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 3:19 am

Joe88 wrote:Manily because intel wants to stop people from buying AMD's and buy theres instead.

Just shows you how scared they are...

I've got nothing against Intel, but I'm still on the AMD side of the fence mainly because they run cooler and more efficiently. I know Intel has the edge on clock speed and price right now, but these things tend to come in waves. And good competition means better products for the end users.

However, I can't avoid mentioning that when an AMD at 2.2Ghz can consistently meet or beat a 3.2Ghz Pentium, I get goosebumps. I can't back these up with personal experience or testing, nor do I wish to argue either point, but I think there's definitely something to be said for that. I was pretty impressed anyway, even if it is an old benchmark.

Joe88 · Post by **Joe88** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:25 pm

I think thats a total lie about AMD CPU's running cooler then intel because almost all AMD's run at 90 nm where as intel is pretty much intergreating the new 65 nm into their processors which makes it run a lot lower temp (around 18 degres with no work load with the stock heatsink and fan)
Also intel has there HT CPU's also.

Ive always had an intel so maybe thats why I perfer it.

Since my first intel i386 37mhz

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:14 am

actually, I have proof of AMD running cooler than Intel
my rig, running a 2.0GHZ amd 64-x2 3800+ runs at 29C idle 38C Load

whereas my brother's rig running a 2.6GHZ P4 runs at about 50C idle

*both systems are using stock air cooling running windows XP, his runs home, I run pro, 1GB pc-3200 ram.

My motherboard is socket 939 and his is 478 (still used AGP on that one)
but his case is cluttered with cables, whereas mine are nicely routed out of the way (huzzah for flexforce cables) so that might account for some of the diffrenece