Replacing only Motherboard

[drdan]

I purchased a computer on ebay and I'm reasonably happy. It came with XP, Excel, Front Page, PowerPoint, Word, Prassi and quite a bit of other software. I put in a better power supply as a precaution and the computer repair guy says that everyhting in it is the cheapest possible stuff. This system does seem kind of "clunky" and not as smooth as some. I've also noticed that though it is a Athlon 1600+ it is a little slower than my other system which is a 1.2GHz Athlon. Both have 384MB of PC133 sdram. I now have a Maxtor external drive and would like to take advantage of the USB 2.0 speed. When I priced the better USB 2.0 PCI cards I noticed that a whole new motherboard with better overall quality that is already set up for USB 2.0 would only be $40-50 more than a card.

This systen currently has a Biostar motherboard (can't remember which one). Is it likely to be a problem getting the processor changed to the new motherboard and will the new board be likely to work with the rest of my system? How much potential headache am I letting myself in for? The system is running all right now but I think it should be better and am concerned about hardware failure. Should I opt for a better hard drive first. When trying to write with Ghost 2003 I kept getting a message that there was a bad sector. Norton disk doctor however does not detect it.

I guess I'm asking whether I should mess with a system that's working for now? If I should where is the best place to start putting in better parts, both for future reliabilty and performance increase?

[Budfred]

I would urge you to post more detail about the parts that you already have so that we can tell you if they seem to be decent or not, particularly the motherboard. It sounds like the hard drive may actually be the problem, rather than the motherboard. If you see a noticeable difference between this and your 1.2 Ghz system, that is substantial, they should be essentially the same.

You might want to download and run the tests from the hard drive maker to see if it is the cause of the slowdown and if it is fixable.

Budfred

[drdan]

Yes, I know the info is skimpy. I am wondering in general about replacing motherboards though. Here is what I could get off the auction page. This guy was getting rid of all his PC stuff to go to a Mac. It's not very detailed info.

Item Description Qty
24x CD Burner Atapi
CP-AM-XP1600C AMD ATHLON XP 1600 1.4GHZ 266FSB
CS-MIDP4BK ATX 300W MID-TOWER BLACK/GREY
KB-HB-BKCOMBO BLACK/GREY PS2 KB+MICE+SP COMBO
FX-IN-56PCI 56K INTEL CHIPSET PCI W/VOICE
FD-SY1.44BK 1.44MB BLACK FLOPPY DRIVE
CD-SY52XBK SONY 52X BLACK CD-ROM DRIVE
HD-40G5400 40GB ATA-100 IDE (5400) HDD
ME-SD133-256MB 256MB PC-133 SDRAM MEMORY
FN-K7SOCA AMD SOCKET A FAN
SYS-CONFIG SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
MB-HB-BIM7VKQ BIOSTAR M7VKQ SKT-A SDRAM w/V/S/L

[Budfred]

It looks like a mediocre motherboard and it certainly wouldn't hurt to upgrade to a nicer one with USB 2, but I suspect the hard drive is the main bottleneck. At 5400 RPM it is slow compared to most today, but then that doesn't always matter. After you test it, you may want to also run a good defrag from Safe Mode to make sure that isn't what is slowing things down. Of course if it turns out to be dying, that would be moot.

Hang on and others will have ideas.

Budfred

[Whyzman]

No new idea...I agree with Budfred to run the Maxtor Diagnostic Utility toute suite! ;)

[Jhorner1]

If I read your posts correctly your video is on the motherboard. If you buy a motherboard that has AGP graphics, you will also need a video card. You could add a PCI Video card to your present motherboard and get a boost in performance, (though not as much as a new motherboard and AGP video card would give you), for about $60. A new motherboard and AGP video will cost $150-$300+.

[Budfred]

A new motherboard and AGP video could cost $150-300, but can also be had for as little as about $80. I bought a ECS K7S5A and Nvidia AGP card for about $80 total. It doesn't have the USB 2 built in, so it wouldn't do what you want, but there are decent boards out there that do for a lot less than $150.

Budfred