Upgrading Motherboard

S

spawnslayer

Geek Trainee
Ok so right now i have a motherboard at 2.3 GHZ that came with my emachines computer. im upgrading and i am looking for at least 3.0 GHZ. my limit though is $200 or over. I would also like it to be able to support a PCI graphics card. im looking to build a whole new computer so if u have any advice on things to buy thad be nice to. oh and aniother question...if i get a new motherboard and computer case can i use my other hardware in my old computer such as the ram, hard drives etc. in it? thanks
 
Hello Spawnslayer and welcome to the forums,

Ok so right now i have a motherboard at 2.3 GHZ that came with my emachines computer. im upgrading and i am looking for at least 3.0 GHZ.
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It's a bad idea to go for pure mhz these days. For example, an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ running at 1.8ghz can trash an AMD Sempron 3500+ running at 2.0ghz.

If you're looking for an Intel PC I don't know much about them other than the most popular 3ghz range CPU is the P4 Prescott at 3.2ghz. Someone else on the forum would know more about Intel based systems than me so I'll leave it to them to answer which mobo and CPU you should get for $200
I would also like it to be able to support a PCI graphics card.
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Do you mean PCI-Express? Standard PCI graphics cards are somewhat obsolete nowadays. That architecture was surpassed by AGP and then AGP was surpassed by PCI-E. PCI-E mobo's are becoming more common. If by chance you specifically need a PCI slot for a normal PCI graphics card then it's hard to find a mobo without a PCI slot because many components still use PCI :)

oh and aniother question...if i get a new motherboard and computer case can i use my other hardware in my old computer such as the ram, hard drives etc. in it? thanks
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This would depend on the components. Hard drives are somewhat generic and most mobo's these days support both SATA and IDE. You'll need to back up your data before you use the hard drive with a new mobo though because the drivers won't be correct on your HDD which can cause all sorts of problems. So backup data and reformat the drive completely.

RAM - There's different types. DDR333 PC2700, DDR400 PC3200, DDR2 533... List goes on... Check your new mobo manual to find out which RAM it supports and try and find out what your current RAM is then you'll know whether or not it's compatible.

CD/DVD drives are fine for use in another machine. But since OEM's like Emachines include all their drivers on a hidden recovery partition/recovery CD/Branded XP CD, you may need to hunt out the drivers for your CD/DVD drives on the manufacturers website because they wont be automatically installed this time round. They might run off the Windows generic drivers but sometimes to get full use out of them they need their own drivers.

Hope this helps,

Mike
 
if your upgrading an emachine it's most likly that you'll also need to upgrade the PSU, check out B's sticky for a good PSU,

BTW: if you buy a system case with a built in PSU generally the PSU's that come with cases are not good, wattage of the PSU doesnt mean much, for example a decent Antec 350W PSU will give more power than some crappy 500W PSU's

BTW: a decent PSU should outlive a few upgrades, saving money on a crappy PSU realy is false economy
 
spawnslayer said:
my limit though is $200 or over. I would also like it to be able to support a PCI graphics card.....if i get a new motherboard and computer case can i use my other hardware in my old computer such as the ram, hard drives etc. in it? thanks
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Can I ask where you are from!? Your flag says UK and you say you want to spend dollars! :) I take it your budget is 200?

What emachine do you have? Its possible you wont be able to use a 3ghz cpu even though you have a 2.3ghz now.

As for using your old hardware.... my guess is that you have a Northwood P4. You will have DDR ram if this is the case. Its only worth upgrading if you are going to use a new setup with DDR2 so you might find your ram will be useless but like NeloForster said you wont have any trouble with the harddrive... other than the reinstall of windows you will have to do.

Donkey is bang on about the PSU. My only gripe with emachines are the poor power supplies... and im quite open minded when it comes to cheap psus! Certainly more than most :)


As is, your post is quite open so let us know what emachine you have and we'll go from there.
 
First of all i am From America but i guess i forgot to change the flag when i signed up here. i have a T3092 emachines computer.3000+ AMD athlon processor. I have 1.5 gigs DDR ram. a geforce 6800 agp video card, not sure if i already said that before. thanks for the help.
 
A 3ghz AMD CPU would have to be overclocked matey. They run at lower clock speeds but get an awful lot of work done per hz.

My reccommendation is an Athlon 64 3700+ because it has a 1mb cache, good performance increase over your current CPU, a great overclocker (If you get into that kind of thing) and is also very cheap. It will work on your current motherboard too. Check to see if your mobo is S939 or AM2 though, don't want to get the processor for the wrong socket...

Hope that helps,

Mike
 
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