Need motherboard advice

[nancys786]

Hi,

I'm trying to upgrade a Dell Dimension 8200 desktop PC. We want to put more memory in it.

The current motherboard takes a proprietary Dell memory that is crazy expensive. I think it would be cheaper to replace the motherboard and the memory, rather than to add more proprietary memory.

It has a 2.52Ghz Pentium 4 which I'm guessing is socket 478
I think the form factor is ATX
We already bought a nice graphics card for it - so no onboard graphics.

I perhaps foolishly already bought some DDR2 5300 ram for it - 2 1Gb sticks. I can return those if need be and get something different.

How in the world can I find a motherboard that supports the CPU and the memory. Google is not being my friend today.

Are there good sites for reference for stuff like this - I'd sure like a chart of motherboards, what CPUs they take, what kind of memory is supported, whether they take a graphics/sound card or onboard....

Or if you've done this upgrade, and know a motherboard that might work for me - a cheap motherboard for a cheap ram upgrade, name the board.

Thanks a bunch!

[jlreich]

Welcome to the PcGuide forums Nancy! :)

For the record the RDRAM that your system uses is not Dell proprietary, but it is hard to find and very expensive no matter where you get it from.

Speaking of RDRAM, whenever I see someone asking about upgrading a system with RDRAM in it I have a general rule to tell them to not even bother with trying to do anything with this system. You are not an exception to this rule. :(

As you quickly found RDRAM is very expensive, the era RDRAM was being used is many generations ago in computer hardware and any hardware that it is in is way too old to bother with. I have better systems sitting in my basement not being used. ;) And it is generally expensive to try and rebuild a system that old. Often old components are more expensive than modern components that are 100x more powerful.

There is no cheap and decent way to upgrade this system in any form or fashion. You can't fit a standard motherboard into a Dell case, you would need a new case, a new power supply, you current video card would not work, and finding a decent s478 board is not entirely impossible but not practical. In short you will need pretty much everything new.

Best advice is to send the ram you purchased back for a refund and save some cash to get a new desktop. Even a new $300-$400 Dell system will blow away your current system or anything you could possibly do with trying to upgrade it. ;) Heck, even a new 'netbook' would stomp on anything you could do with your current system. :p

[nancys786]

Thanks,

I was starting to come to this conclusion when I was thinking of upgrading the CPU as well....

[123456]

Donate it to church or charity...