Heartland

Slightly geeky advice please

My PC is a couple of years old Dell Dimension 2400, 2.8 G processor 768 Meg Ram. It does everything I want it to with the exception of graphics/games as it only has PCI slots. No AGP and certainly no PCI-Express. I’ve got an FX5200 in there which lets it run most stuff but it really starts struggling with anything new with any effects turned on at all.
So, given that I’m happy with 90% of it I started considering just replacing the motherboard to give me some better slots for graphics cards. I’m a bit concerned with “just� though. I’m happy enough installing cards, setting up my wireless network etc but have never gone further than that. Is this a step too far? What boards would you recommend?

I really don’t want to just buy a new PC….

I built my own pc from scratch last year when the old one gave up the ghost. I was a bit out of my depth but after a few days had it up and running, after first having to pay someone to look it over. Thinking I'd made a total mess of it, it turned out the place that sold me the parts had sold me the wrong memory cards. With the correct memory cards it worked fine.

So, if you buy a new motherboard you'll also have to get new memory cards, as it's unlikely you'll find a new motherboard that's compatible with your current memory. Also your windows installation probably won't work as all the bios settings will be wrong so you'll probably need to reinstall windows.

Pentium chips come with a variety of different configs so that not all P4 chips plug into all P4 motherboards. Recently they changed things so if you have a PC over a year old you may run into problems.

If your PC is over a year old you probably have a socket 478 setup and you'll need to get a motherboard that takes those chips - if you still can find one. If it is socket 478 then you'll also probably have an AGP graphics card slot on the new board. AGP cards are on their way out so you may not be able to get the latest graphics cards.

If you have a newer PC it could be either socket 478 or 775 and you'll need to be double sure. 775 motherboards generally take PCI express cards as this is a new standard you'll have plenty of choice.

Another thing to consider is that Dell motherboards may not stick to other motherboard standards and you may have problems mounting a new motherboard in a Dell case.

Other than that swapping out a motherboard isn't too tricky, you mainly need to be careful when moving across the CPU. You may need to get some thermal paste to put between the CPU and heatsink when move the chip into the Motherboard.

I didn't say a thing...

Another thing to watch out for is getting all of the twiddly power leads and stuff into the right place. And you really will need to find a place to put that screw that's going to be left over when you're finished.

Joking aside, a motherboard replacement will mean having to toally take apart and put together your PC's innards. It's not too difficult, just very fiddly. If you're happy to have a go, and you've a knack for that knida stuff, I'd still suggest trying it out on something expendable first.

The point about Dell compatibility is a vital one: Dell change their hardware specs about as often as most folks change their underpants, so you might be in serious trouble with that.

I think the fact that it's a Dell is irrelevant. The motherboard (and processor) are the heart of the machine, and if you change those you'd also need new memory cards, possibly a new graphics card (although with the current problem being not enough slots for a graphics card that won't be a problem if there is no graphics card yet). You'll be able to keep your cdrom drives, floppy drives, hard drives, all you need to worry about is getting a motherboard that'll fit your case. With my old pc the case was way to small so I started completely from scratch. All I reused were hard drives and my cd drive.