Shakor

My experience in PC building extends as far as putting new graphics cards in a computer I bought from the shop, and installing a replacement DVD drive. Ohh and plugging in some more RAM.

I am getting into building a PC and decided to feel my way through with my old computer that was pretty hot 4 years ago. (see my PC info, PSU and Case new at time of writing) Ultimate goal is a gaming rig.

Anyway, down to business. My next step is the motherboard swap. This means also a CPU swap with a good heat sink/fan. I have pretty much scouted out the parts I want.

However I have never put a different board into a PC before and I was wondering if there was anything I need to know. The physical part I am sure I can manage since I have moved the innards of the old PC into a new case so what goes where I am sure I can handle.

I am more wondering if there is anything I need to know to get it working again afterwards. The hard drives with the factory installed Windows XP won't be changed at this point, just the motherboard and CPU. Should it work right away with nothing to configure, or do I need to fiddle with settings I have most likely never heard of before?

( Here is the board and here is the CPU.)

Also, the current RAM I have is 2 GB of DDR 2700. The board supports DDR2 up to 6400. Will the old ram work for now until I get to replacing it with something new? (Also on the cards, but also more expensive hence my question)

Thanks in advance.

Tyree

Personally, I would look at a better Mobo (Asus-GB).
Here's an Asus that will work nicely; ASUS P5Q Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131299

XFX is owned by ECS/PC Chips (not good quality) and uses Nvidia chipsets. Intel CPU's prefer Intel Chips.
Your XP install will not work with the new Mobo and CPU.
The DDR22700 will work.

Shakor

OK thank, will keep looking at the different boards too.

First question still, when I swap for whatever board I get will there be anything that needs configuring or is it pretty much plug and play?

Tyree

It "should" be plug and play but you haven't posted your other hardware so it's hard to determine.

Shakor

OK thanks again. There is nothing else going on there at the time I will be swapping the board except for the new CPU with it and a Xigmatek Dark Knight heat sink. Will feel my way through anyway and see what happens.

Back to the motherboard though, you got me interested when you said I should not use an Nvidia chipset as Intel CPU's like Intel chipsets. Apart from the obvious notion of matching Intel to Intel, what is the reason for this?

Will the CPU I am looking at not run as efficiently with the Nvidia chip and if so how noticeable is it when playing high end games? Or are there deeper compatibility problems between them?

Also the reason I wanted to go for this board is a site I looked at showed it as being able to run two Nvidia cards in SLI at x16 each instead of others that run one card at x16 and 2 cards at x8 and it seems the others with Intel chips don't do this. But as long as they run two Nvidia cards in SLI without issues then that's a start. :)

wrench97

Nvidia Chipsets for Intel CPU's are just buggy and very finicky about memory sticks.
In the LGA775 socket to run SLI it has to be an Nvidia chipset, but your better off using 1 large card over 2 smaller ones the gain is not all that great usually in the 15-40% range some games actually slow down when played in SLI mode.

Shakor

Cool, thanks. I have been reading up on the differences between SLI and Crossfire in the meantime (learning fast on a crash course) and did see the same comments you made on SLI not being all it is cracked up to be so I am thinking of skipping that whole idea from my build. Guess this means I should rethink the motherboard selection entirely too as now think 'will I need two PCI-E slot anyway?'.

Thanks again guys.

Shakor

OK I have stepped up to the edge and nose dived off into the unknown... ehh, as in I have got my hands on my new hardware and attempted to swap for the old.

Disaster. :p

That little 'something' I thought I might need to know did exist it seems and my fears were realised after swapping the motherboard, complete with new processor and heatsink and RAM. I hooked everything up and went to turn it on and after a fancy new boot screen with the Gigabyte logo it went to the usual Windows XP loading screen. This took way too long though and eventually it loaded to an 800x600 screen res with a warning box asking me to activate windows. Odd as this is the install of Windows I have had for nearly 4 years.

I quickly came to the conclusion that, with it being a retail bought PC by a manufacturer and the XP being OEM along with everything else, that something evil was done to make the OS work only with that motherboard.

I had the option of going on the internet and activating it.. but no internet connection and no mouse and keyboard either (USB) so this I could not figure out. I could phone microsoft but I felt I had hit my technological wall for now and decided, in a further act of inexperience, to swap the board back with the old one for now, complete with old hardware, until I can seek further help.

But this was worse as it tried to load windows, blue screened for a split second before rebooting and trying again and again. Since I work at PC World I knew I could turn to one of the technicians in the shop, and with half an hour to go before they close I quickly headed there and he set me straight on what I had done wrong and why moving the old board back in was a bigger mistake. Namely Windows trying to configure itself for the new board and swapping back before that job was done confused it and maybe killed the hard drive controllers.

He said phoning microsoft might work, or they might laugh at me and say no. Or I could buy a new OS in a box and blank everything and go from there. My final option with involved no money and no microsoft was to remaster the PC from the recovery partition with the old board still in. This worked and it was quick too, well apart from now having lost my progress in some games I play like Fallout 3, and having to put all my software back on again :p

Anyway, live and learn. At least all my data is safe on a network drive that auto-backs up when I change files or add new ones.

Now, onto my next step. I do not want Vista for obvious reasons and I am saving myself for when Windows 7 comes out. But in the meant time I don't want my new hardware sitting around useless.

My plan will be to blank the primary SATA hard drive (one of 2) and get my hands on a copy of XP for now. Put the new hardware into the blank machine, and then start from scratch with the windows disk. Here is the first question I have for now. Should I get an OEM version or a retail version of XP or will it make no difference given what I am doing?

My other question is about blanking a hard drive and removing the partition the current OEM Windows is on, but I will look around on Google for answers to this for now and see how I get on.

wrench97

When changing motherboards you have to do a repair install or a reformat and reinstall of windows. XP right?> http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm