One of my friends recently purchased a graphics card, and then found out that the PCI-E slot on his PC didn't work. He now wants to purchase a new motherboard that will work with all of his current parts. I chose the motherboard for him on newegg, although I don't know much of a difference between a good motherboard and a bad one. He wants on for under $100. I will post the link to the motherboard, but I also wondered if all motherboards would be compatible with all cases. It is a standard ATX case, and thats the type of motherboard I searched for, so I think it should fit, but I wanted to get a second opinion before he purchased something that wouldn't work. I'm not sure what kind of ram his computer takes, but he just bought a new PSU and the graphics card, and the system has a Pentium 4 Processor, along with a 100 GB SATA HDD. The computer was built and not pre made. Thanks
What graphics card and PSU is he using? We don't want any more carnage. As for the motherboard, if his CPU is socket 755, I'd recommend this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059
The GPU is a 7600 GS, he is just going to be playing WoW, and only had onboard video. Here is the PSU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153028 Thanks for the quick reply. Edit: I'm not sure exactly what CPU socket it is, but I am going to his house later to make sure everything will work before he orders it, if I run CPU-Z on his computer won't it tell me the type of ram and CPU socket?
That PSU will do fine. As for CPUZ, it'll tell you the type of RAM, but I don't think it'll tell you the socket (Unless it tells you what motherboard he currently has, in which case you can find out).
Google the motherboard model. If CPUZ can't tell you, you can just look inside the PC, it'll be printed on the board.
Not particularly, the only complicated part of the procedure is moving the CPU and Heatsink. In order to do that you will probably need replacement thermal compound and a means of removing the existing compound. Unfortunately you can't leave the existing stuff on there if you remove the stock heatsink, even temporarily, which you'll need to do when changing motherboards.
some isopropyl alcohol and qtips. you want to clean it till you can see the surface clearly again. but be careful when cleaning the cpu. highly suggested to use arctic silver 5 as the new thermal compound. i personally use antec formula 5, and it works the same as AS5, but with less break in period. AS5 has a 200 hours thermal break in period, so you can't leave the computer on until afterwards, or else the break in period will be longer.
You say "you can't". When I put Arctic silver on my PC's heatsink for the first time, I carried on using it as normal and forgot about it. My temperatures were absolutely fine straight away. The temperature drop after break-in with AS5 isn't that big. Chances are if you had heat problems before it broke in, you still would afterwards.
I'm glad you posted that, I don't think the person I'm installing this for would have wanted to wait 200 hours. Although he does seem to have a problem with overheating. I think P4s run hot anyway though, don't they? But his ran at about 70C when playing WoW, and then we air dusted the heatsink and it actually dropped about 10C.
That's particularly hot, even quite hot for a P4, but at 60C is more reasonable. Dusting out the PC really does help! What you have to bear in mind of course is that the power of the heatsink still plays a major part in the temperatures you get. Standard stock heatsinks will always run on the warm side.
I installed the motherboard and everything runs fine in the BIOS, but when it attempts to load windows a blue screen flashes and then it reboots. I dont know if I need to reformat and reinstall windows or not. But as of now I have not.
So would that probably be the reason for the blue screen while loading windows? I mean, everything else works perfectly and in the BIOS his temperatures are alot better than they were. But yes, as of now I'm trying to find an external harddrive to put all of his stuff on. Thanks for all the help.
Yes, that's correct. The chipset is wrong and so you will not be able to boot windows unless it is installed using that chipset.
I finally got everything set back up, and got the computer back to my friend. The only problem I had was as soon as we turned it on and opened internet explorer, the whole thing would freeze and we had to restart it. My solution was to go have another friend download firefox on his computer, put it on a flash drive, and then install it from there on his computer. Sure enough, it worked fine after that. Thanks for all the help, I feel much more experienced now, and I think I will definatelly build my next comptuer.
