Motherboard dying?

[Gekko71]

Hi guys.

I suspect my work system is dying.

I recently lost access to a couple of USB 2.0 ports (2 x front & 2 x rear) and after opening up my case to clean out the dust and check the USB connections, I now cannot get any signal out of my video card. I removed my graphics card and dropped in my son's Radeon 6570 to see if it was the card, but no dice (tried two separate expansion slots without luck) - so I figure that the board is on the way out.

Can anyone recommend an affordable replacement for an Asus P6T motherboard? I really need to keep the cost down on this one so i was hoping to replace only the motherboard and still use the same ram (DDR3 3x2mb 1333) HDD (2 x WD 1tb hdd) and Graphics card (Geforce GTX295). Given the size of the case and my graphics card, I'm probably going to need to stick with an ATX card.

I would like to be able to throw in an SDD running Windows 7 as well if budget allows (i'm currently on vista 64), so if anyone can recommend a package that can be had for under the $250 mark (preferably **WAY** under!) I'd be very grateful.

Cheers!

[Gekko71]

It just struck me - my old i7 is a 1366 socket. Do they still even *make* boards for that footprint?

[Krom]

Amazon and Newegg still have some 1366 motherboards available, but it looks like $190 is about as low as they go. If I were you I would pitch the PSU while I was at it (better safe than sorry).

[Gekko71]

Didn't think of Amazon Krom, thanks for the tip.

Ditching the PSU as well is a good idea, but it will really take me well over my budget, which is ridiculously tight right now so I'm pretty conflicted (**worst possible time*** for the MB to die! )

Amazon have these going for $105 which looks pretty close (I know it's an intel board, but beggars can't be choosers). They also have an Alienware Area 51 here which looks interesting. I'll be dropping it into a Thermaltake Armour+LCS and installing a water cooling system (straight form my old rig - still works) on the cpu - which makes me lean towards the Alienware board.

Am I (stupidly) missing something obvious here, or should this solve my problem (assuming the PSU is still good and that the CPU water-cooling thermal block can be bought / will transfer over)?.


EDIT: Arrrghh!!. One won't ship overseas, the other doesn't support the i7 920. Bloody intel!!