I'm buying a new motherboard, processor, and video card for my PC. It's a POS Compaq, and I'm looking to upgrade to something that can at least pretend to keep up with today's graphics. I've already got my motherboard picked out (though this is not set in stone, if someone has a better idea I'd be glad to hear it), an eVGA 133-K8-NF41 939 socket, seen/reviewed here http://www.gamergod.com/article.php?article_id=3161 . I can't really afford a dual-core so I'll probably end up getting an Athlon 64, a pretty decent video card, and at least a gig of memory.

The card has IDE connections so all my old peripherals should work, I'm just trying to transplant the heart of the computer and hang on to all my drives and whatnot. This would be my first venture into piecing my own PC together, so I don't know too much about it. My ultimate goal is to run games like Doom III and HL2 very smoothly, and maybe give Oblivion a shot.

My question is this...will these replacements basically be plug-and-play? In other words, I plan on keeping my old chassis, hard drives, CD- drives, floppy, USB, etc. and I want to know if I will have any complications once I swap everything out for the new stuff. Will the new BIOS conflict with my already-installed OS? Like I said, I know next to nothing about this, which is why I'm here, so go light on the flames (and/or if you could point me to any good sources of information, I'd appreciate that as well)

[Edited on April 15, 2006 at 2:39 PM. Reason : .]

4/15/2006 2:37:42 PM

best to replace case and power supply as well... not sure how 3rd party mobo's will work with OEM cases, and pretty sure your power supply won't be able to handle the upgraded power requirements by the cpu/video

and get someone to help you with the CPU install and how to properly seat a cpu

these should be fine...

Quote :

"hard drives, CD- drives, floppy, USB"

[Edited on April 15, 2006 at 2:41 PM. Reason : .]

4/15/2006 2:40:19 PM

Ah yeah, I hadn't even considered the power supply. What about things like airflow? If I go ahead and get a new case, should I get more powerful fan too?

But my main question is whether, assuming I have the case and power to support it, the thing will boot up and run correctly if I simply swap the motherboard (and video card and memory) out for the new stuff. I'm sure I'd end up reformatting anyway, but that's not the issue at the moment.

Also, that site says this at the bottom:

Quote :

"Secondly, if you’ve been living a little on the web, you might’ve already known that EVGA is giving away a free SLI edition motherboard with every purchase of EVGA 7800GT. A must get from GAMERGOD."

Seems like a pretty sweet deal, what do you think?

[Edited on April 15, 2006 at 2:52 PM. Reason : .]

4/15/2006 2:47:43 PM

^ Sounds like a good deal, but I've never had any experiences with an eVGA mobo

4/15/2006 3:43:23 PM

bttt

4/15/2006 9:05:10 PM

it should be plug and play yes. unless you have some weird hardware conflict or something is dead it (or you plug stuff in wrong heh) should boot up normally.

4/15/2006 9:21:01 PM

The hardware changes should go smoothly. I'm assuming you are using Windows XP. Only thing to remember is that if you are not planning on re-installing Windows XP on the new setup you will need to at least "repair" your Windows XP installation to generate a new HAL, among other things.

http://www.buildorbuy.org/hal.html

When your system boots up for the first time after you install your new motherboard, make sure that your Windows XP CD is in the tray and enter your BIOS settings and make sure that you've got it set to boot from CD first. Once booted from CD, Select to setup Windows (don't select "repair" using the Recovery Console). If it asks if you want to delete any partitions, don't. It should prompt you asking if you want to repair an existing Windows XP installation. That's the one you want to do.

Here's a site I've used before... http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

4/15/2006 10:20:39 PM

that true? i dont recall having to do that last time. then again i might have had to format my drive anyway so what do i know.

4/15/2006 11:44:49 PM

depending on which architecture you're changing from and which you're changing to, it will freak out and possibly not boot at all unless you do that

but, for example, in the best case scenario, changing from most Via chipsets to most other Via chipset (or nForce to nForce) usually doesn't present anything of a problem, because of their unified driver architectures

whereas, worst case, booting an installation originally hosted on a uniproc Via on a 760MPX would cause the system to shoot flames out of the power supply while BSODing and generating random monkies that shit all over your computer room and write their names in fecal monkey gibberish

[Edited on April 16, 2006 at 12:16 AM. Reason : *]

4/16/2006 12:16:17 AM

what's your budget

4/16/2006 12:28:46 AM

^^^^Ah, excellent, thanks for the info. I knew deep down it probably wouldn't be as straighforward as simply swapping out hardware.

^^This would be, I believe, a major change; going from a standard Compaq mainboard (478 sock. Celeron) to a third party eVGA 939...

^when all's said and done I'd like to spend less than 700ish on the board, chip, vid. card, and memory. I know that may not be too realistic if I want the performance I have in mind but that's what I want to shoot for, and it may not even be possible if I have to get a new power supply, case, fans, etc.

[Edited on April 16, 2006 at 12:47 AM. Reason : this, of course, being seperate from my bike budget ]

4/16/2006 12:34:38 AM

MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING GUSSETED SCREWS, OR IF YOU CANT FIND THEM YOU CAN USE CAULK IN A PINCH.

DONT USE TOO MUCH, BECAUSE IT IS CONDUCTIVE, BUT THE CAULT IN SMALL AMOUNTS WILL HELP THE CASE SENSOR CONFIRM THAT A MOTHERBOARD IS INDEED PRESENT AND OPERATING WITHIN THE NORMAL PARAMETERS

4/17/2006 10:56:15 AM