Aight well Im new at building computers, I have this emachine that is a few years old, it seems like the motherboard is fried....
The Motherboard was a AU31
I have a AMD Athlon XP Processor, 512mb DDR SDRAM, the hard drive and so on..
What motherboard would be the best to purchase? And have in mind that i would like to upgrade my processor and add RAM in the future, so i would want a decent motherboard...
I was also wondering if do this will i have to buy Windows XP again?? And will linux run on this computer?
thanks please help
Last edited by milkbone2001 : 01-26-2008 at 05:45 AM.
I did the same a few years back, and now im on my ...... 3rd or 4th homebuilt "rig". Anyways.... let me first welcome you to a whole new world of possibilities, lol. Second, let me say that you should provide a little more info about what you have.
Alot of people, like myself, take bits and pieces from the old computer and put them in teh new one. Usually, its the harddrive, or the CD-Roms (DVD, whatever). When you upgrade the motherboard, its usually better to simply dump the old processor with it. You said you have a AMD Athlon XP Processor. not to make you feel silly or anything, but I was looking at Tigerdirect.com (which is where I get the bulk of my computer components), and I can't even find an AMD Athlon XP. If you really want to ONLY upgrade your motherboard (mobo), then you need to find out how many pins your cpu (processor) has. AMD processors have a few selections, most of which are "A", "939", "754", &"AM2". These refer to the pins on the processor itself which need to fit into the CPU socket on the motherboard. Once you find out how many pins your processor has, or for that matter, the socket type of your motherboard (which would be the same info, only found in a different place), then you can narrow down what your options are.
Actually, I just googled AMD Athlon XP Processor, and found out your cpu is an A socket..... sorry about before. Let me just say, it looks like your processor and motherboard are pretty old, which doesn't bode well for getting a large bump up in performance. If you stick with the upgrade of the motherboard only..... I don't think its worth it, or even useful. Tigerdirect is only selling one Socket A processor, and the processor itself is selling for $19.99. If you are dead set on upgrading the motherboard, then you should (mind you, im not an expert here) probably go for a bundle deal. While alot of places sell motherboards, most of them are sold in a bundle which usually includes a motherboard and a processor (cpu), sometimes with RAM too or a power supply. You should go to Tigerdirect.com and look around a little, and see what's out there, what fits in your budget, etc.
To answer your other two questions..... linux will run on most any computer, and no by ONLY replacing the motherboard, or the cpu and Motherboard, or the CPU Motherboard and RAM, you will not have to buy Windows XP again, but you will probably need to reinstall it. Windows XP has a silly pain of a security feature that detects any changes in the hardware of the computer its installed in. When you install XP, it takes a snap shot of your hardware, and once a certain amount of changes take place (such as a new motherboard, new RAM, new video card, etc.) XP makes you....... re-install it...... I think thats what it made me do.... or some sort of authentication process. I only encountered it a few times, but I do remember that I did not need to buy Win XP again. WinXP is installed on your hard drive, so if you keep the hard drive, you keep your XP installation with all the info on it. Anyways, I hope some other ppl come and answer you soon..... i'll talk to you later. peace
-if I said anything wrong, can someone please point it out?
I did the same a few years back, and now im on my ...... 3rd or 4th homebuilt "rig". Anyways.... let me first welcome you to a whole new world of possibilities, lol. Second, let me say that you should provide a little more info about what you have.
Alot of people, like myself, take bits and pieces from the old computer and put them in teh new one. Usually, its the harddrive, or the CD-Roms (DVD, whatever). When you upgrade the motherboard, its usually better to simply dump the old processor with it. You said you have a AMD Athlon XP Processor. not to make you feel silly or anything, but I was looking at Tigerdirect.com (which is where I get the bulk of my computer components), and I can't even find an AMD Athlon XP. If you really want to ONLY upgrade your motherboard (mobo), then you need to find out how many pins your cpu (processor) has. AMD processors have a few selections, most of which are "A", "939", "754", &"AM2". These refer to the pins on the processor itself which need to fit into the CPU socket on the motherboard. Once you find out how many pins your processor has, or for that matter, the socket type of your motherboard (which would be the same info, only found in a different place), then you can narrow down what your options are.
Actually, I just googled AMD Athlon XP Processor, and found out your cpu is an A socket..... sorry about before. Let me just say, it looks like your processor and motherboard are pretty old, which doesn't bode well for getting a large bump up in performance. If you stick with the upgrade of the motherboard only..... I don't think its worth it, or even useful. Tigerdirect is only selling one Socket A processor, and the processor itself is selling for $19.99. If you are dead set on upgrading the motherboard, then you should (mind you, im not an expert here) probably go for a bundle deal. While alot of places sell motherboards, most of them are sold in a bundle which usually includes a motherboard and a processor (cpu), sometimes with RAM too or a power supply. You should go to Tigerdirect.com and look around a little, and see what's out there, what fits in your budget, etc.
To answer your other two questions..... linux will run on most any computer, and no by ONLY replacing the motherboard, or the cpu and Motherboard, or the CPU Motherboard and RAM, you will not have to buy Windows XP again, but you will probably need to reinstall it. Windows XP has a silly pain of a security feature that detects any changes in the hardware of the computer its installed in. When you install XP, it takes a snap shot of your hardware, and once a certain amount of changes take place (such as a new motherboard, new RAM, new video card, etc.) XP makes you....... re-install it...... I think thats what it made me do.... or some sort of authentication process. I only encountered it a few times, but I do remember that I did not need to buy Win XP again. WinXP is installed on your hard drive, so if you keep the hard drive, you keep your XP installation with all the info on it. Anyways, I hope some other ppl come and answer you soon..... i'll talk to you later. peace
-if I said anything wrong, can someone please point it out?
Ok, so I just checked out your first choice for a motherboard, the BioStar one..... ::squints and scratchs head:: Ok.... we're gonna do this together, ok? When you want to upgrade your computer, you have to go through a little list of things to do and check out. The first thing on that list is find out everything you can about the components you have right now. That means, you find out all the info for your CPU (processor), motherboard, RAM, Hard drive(s), optical drives (cd-rom/dvd-rom/ etc.), power supply, video card, modem (if you use one), sound card (if you have one), monitor, case, keyboard, mouse, joystick, um...... just everything. Below im going to make a list of the things you should find out for each individual peice:
CPU:
Company Compatability : The CPU is either AMD or Intel
Speed: This is the largest MHz number, and not to be confused with the FSB (Front Side Bus)
Front Side Bus
Socket : Your current socket type is "A", the socket type of the BioStar is AM2
Cache : Usually measured in KB or MB
Motherboard:
Form : The size and shape of the motherboard. Very mportant.
FSB : Front Side Bus, needs to be equal or higher than the CPU, measured in MHz.
Connections offered : Does the Motherboard provide SATA cable connections and/or IDE connections. SATA is considered better and more efficient, but old Hard drives usually aren't SATA capable. (The BioStar offers both IDE for your old HD and SATA for anything new you might wanna put in)
AGP/PCI(e) support : Older video card use AGP, newer ones use PCI to connect to the motherboard, better ones use PCIe.
Audio : Built in audio comes standard on most motherboards now adays, with 6-8+ channels being normal.
Socket : Does the socket of the Motherboard match with the socket of your CPU? The BioStar does.
Video-
PCI(e)/AGP : Is the card AGP or PCI or PCIe, if its AGP dump it or don't consider buying it.
Wattage : Make sure your video card does not bump you over your power supply's capacity.
SLI/Crossfire : These are two technologies that allow two of the same videocards placed on the same motherboard, to share resources and work together to boost video performance. Most used by high end gamers and 3-D modelling users.
RAM-
Ram comes in many flavors : SDRAM, RDRAM, SIMM RAM, DDR RAM Single Channel, DDR RAM Dual Channel, DDR2 Single Channel, DDR2 Dual Channel, DDR3, ECC, Fully Buffered, etc. The current standard for RAM is the DDR2 Dual Channel, everything I wrote before DDR2 is either obsolete or unable to compliment the abilities of today's motherboards and CPUs. Everything after DDR2 is either too powerful except for the most high ends of the computer using population, or provides special benefits that normal users don't need.
Now when it comes to identifying Ram, one usually sees something close to the following (there is no standard way of naming RAM) : OCZ (name of company or brand) 2048MB (Size of memory) PC6400 (a speed rating, its a little complex) DDR2 (internal config and tech of the memory) 667MHz (the clock rating, or speed of the memory). With RAM, what really matters is the Size, Speed, and Type, so you should concern yourself with only the 2048MB, the 667MHz, and the DDR2 parts of the name. While there are a few other things about RAM that might help you choose one over the other, its too "hardcore" to bother going into. So when you buy RAM, you look at your motherboard, and check to see which is the fastest RAM your motherboard can support and you try to get that memory. The BioStar supports up to 800MHz RAM, which isn't bad at all. So you go through Tigerdirect and find some memory that runs at 800MHz, then you narrow the list down to RAM that is DDR2 dual channel, then you narrow it further by your choice of size (1GB is probably minimum recommended, while 2GB is more standard). When you have your choice, just do a final check that the RAM and the motherboard have the same number of Pins, meaning the BioStar has slots for holding RAM with 240-pins, so make sure your RAM is also 240-pins. Also note how many DIMMs (sticks of RAM) you get in a pack, usually if you see a 1GB of RAM title, it will later say " (2x512MB) " which means you get two sticks of RAM each being half a gig.
Hard Drives -
Now adays, we are in a transition period with harddrives. The standard for Hard Drives is moving from the high hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes (1000 Gigs), especially if you keep alot of videos, dvds, TV shows on your computer. Even business users should start out with about 160 GB. Anyways, enough about that.
Size : Measured in GBs and sometimes TBs (terabytes), the more the merrier.
RPM : Normal HDs consist of a magnetic disk spinning at high speeds, while the low end speed is 5400 RPM and the normal is 7200 RPM, there are HDs that will go faster, and faster is better, though more expensive.
IDE/SATA : IDE is just about dead, while SATA is the new norm. This is the type of wire that connects your HD or CD drive to the Motherboard. Don't get confused when you see "ATA-100", that is still IDE cables, and that rates the speed at which it performs.
Buffer : Very important, the bigger this number is the better. The larger the size of the Buffer the higher the performace of the hard drive. Think of it as the torque of the hard drive.
Transfer Rate : Think of this as the actual speed of the hard drive. This is the speed at which data is transferef from the hard drive to other places in your computer. Mainly used when moving a file from your HD to a flash drive (for instance). USB Flash Drives for instance originally ran at 1.5 MBps at low speed, 12 MBps at full speed, with USB 2.0 they now run at 480 MBps, and USB 3.0 which is coming out next year will be tranffering data at 5 GB per second. So you want a high HD Transfer speed to keep up with the times.
Average Seek : This refers to how long it takes the HD to look through the HD, without accessing anything. The smaller this number the better, with around or below 5 being considered good.
Power Supply -
This is pretty straight forward. You take all of the components (MOBO, HDs, CD ROMS, VID CARDS, Keyboard, etc.) you are going to put in your computer, write down what their wattage requirements are (not voltage, not ohms, not amps, ONLY WATTS). Take those numbers and round them up to the nearest multiple of 25.... so if you have the following wattages [ 14w, 85w, 130w, 42w, 21w ] you would make them [25w, 100w, 150w, 50w, 25w] then add these up... [25+100+150+50+25=350w], add some more watts on top of that number, usually 100w is safest, so you have 450w, and that will allow your computer to run every component you have in your computer, a large number of external components (such as external hard drives, memory readers, cameras,) and some of the internal components people usually forget about like the fans you will have, and future expansion cards you might be using. Now find a power supply you can afford, most are pretty cheap, its when you break 500w that they start to jack up tyhe price. You don't need anything fancy like a power supply with liquid cooling or three fans with LEDs, but get whatever you want.
Im trying to think of anything i'be missed.... if ya have any questions about this stuff, let me know..... now that I know your gonna be posting here, i'll check more often.
Ya know, alot of things tick me off really easily, but really high up on my list of things is when companies dont put clear info about their product on their website. I was just checking out the Biostar again, and I can't find its wattage requirements.
Now to answer some of your questions directly. Intel and AMD CPUs are not compatible. Heatsinks are cheap to aquire, so if your current heatsink doesn't fit on a new motherboard, don't freak out, but then again, don't try to run your computer.
The Biostar has built in video, but its integrated so don't expect it to be running intense graphics well. I would recommend you get a video card along with it.
By Macbook, I assume you mean a macintosh or an apple, so I am 99.999999999999999% positive that you CANNOT swap the memory from one to the other.
While Intel and AMD CPUs cant be switched between one another, there is not that big of a difference between the two. Currently Intel is the industry leader, and will be for the foreseeable future thanks to its recent jump to using multiple cores per CPU. AMD is still seen as more solid, hardy, and sturdy. Intel is currently faster (im pretty sure) but not by much. You can switch to an Intel processor if you want to by buying an intel compatable motherboard, but no intel cpu will work on your current motherboard or the two that you were looking at.
I just finished checking out the second motherboard, the...PCChips A13G+ Motherboard CPU Bundle - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Processor 2.80GHz OEM at TigerDirect.com..... I would go with this one inplace of the Biostar. Higher speed processor, and a better video element. But before you go off and buy it, check it out a little more and compare it to other mobos. Maybe you'll find something even better for the same price. I'll talk to ya later. peace
I need help buying the right motherboard 
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