I'm going to buy a new PC with a Pentium III Coppermine processor in it.

Thing is one of my mates is selling a PC with an AMD Athlon chipset and processor in it.

I know you can switch the motherboards around and simply plug everything else in place (i.e HD, Ram, Video Cards, DVD Drive etc). Is this a good idea though in practical terms??? i`m just worried that if I get some PC shop/company to do this, something might go wrong, which will mean a lot of money down the drain ???

Please help.

Derek Whyte

Well, it might very well work to just switch motherboards out, as long as you have the documentation for them that show where the little power wires plug into place. The only problem that might arise is if the boards conflict with each other... because the original board will leave it's devices in your windows device manager as being installed, and then when you put in new board it will add that board to the device manager as well. If none of that stuff conflicts, and I have seen it work were it doesn't conflict, then you should be ok. If it does conflict, then you might have to wipe your drive clean and install windows again, but in that instance, everytyhing else should still work.

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Joe Redd
MCP

As Redd stated, it will probably work, provided the motherboard and CPU are compatible with each other. When swapping motherboards it's always best to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows. As referred to above, quite often the motherboard will not be compatible with the set of drivers already installed for the other board, and you'll have more problems than you can stick a shake at.

I highly recommend a format/reinstall if you swap motherboards, unless you go to the exact same board, say if one crashes and you simply get a duplicate replacement.

If you have a shop do it, check around, find out which ones in your area have good reputations. You can also do it yourself, it's not that difficult as long as you're careful, and we're always here to help out. I can easily post exact instructions, although it would take a half hour and be a very long post. I've talked my sister through it on the phone long distance, from a pile of parts to a working Win 98 system. I think I might have a link on my site with instructions too...just updated it tonight and added a dozen links or so, one was a build your own PC link.

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