I have a Medion MD 8000 the Motherboard is MS-6701 . How do I find a replacement Medion wants 300$. I know I can get one cheaper. Manufacturer: Medion Model: Titanium MD 8000 Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz 533 Mhz Front Side Bus 512KB Secondary Level Cache Motherboard: 3 PCI slots 1 AGP 8x slot 2 DDR RAM slots (max. 2GB) Memory: Samsung 256 MB DDR 333 MHz (in one module) Grafic Card: nVidia GeForce 4 with 128 MB DDR SDRAM 5x USB 2.0 (3 front, 2 rear) 3x FireWire/IEEE1394 (1 front, 2 rear) 1x S-video In (front) S-Video Out (rear) 1x Composite In (front) Composite Out (rear) 1x Gameport (front) 2x Audio In (1 front, 1 rear) 2x Microphone (1 front, 1 rear) 1x Digital Audio In (rear) 1x Digital Audio Out (rear) 1x Ethernet 100 Mbps (rear) 1x 9 pin Serial Port (rear) 1x Parallell Port (rear) 2x VGA (rear)
$300? That's quite a mark up, considering what I'm pretty sure the motherboard is. Given the model (MS-6701) I'm pretty sure it's a MSI (aka Microstar International). What I'm not sure of is if it was available for purchase. I was able to find out it uses an SiS 648 chipset and from the info you gave, I believe it's a micro ATX motherboard, given the expansion slot configuration. Any motherboard with an SiS 648 chipset you'll be able to drop in without a hiccup. The problem that comes in here is that it's an older chipset, and you'll be hard pressed to find an SiS 648 motherboard out there new. You could also get a motherboard with another chipset in there. The one thing you are advised to do is back up your data and then format and re-install Windows when you change motherboards. The reason is that switching the chipset out from under the motherboard is like dropping your average American in the middle of China: the means of communication are foreign. In any case, on the high-end, you *might* pay $100, but there's plenty of mATX motherboards under that.
