DescentBB

my parents have a dell, and my step dad wants to use the p4 processor it came with when he builds a new system and i've never seen a 845GE before. can he use an 845PE motherboard?

he wants to spend about $50 and is not looking for anything to game on or anything heavy, just stability. can spend a little more for quality but not looking for something like the ic7 max 3 or anything like that. what he wants is an agp slot in case he wants to upgrade to a nicer card later, at least 3 pci slots, a few usb ports, and ddr ram support. anything else is optional.

400 fsb, 512k cache, 845GE and socket 478 are all the info on his chip that he gave me. can anyone reccomend a board for him to get?

Has he tried just formatting and reinstalling fresh, maybe add some ram and a faster hard drive perhaps?
Don't use the dell disks either, use a plane jane windows cd, so you don't get all the crap dell loads w/windows. And don't use XP if you have less than 512 megs ram - stick with 98SE or 2000 if that is the case.

Doing that for 50 bux isn't likely because in addition to replacing the motherboard, it is highly likely he'll have to replace that dell case too, and thats at least 100 bux for both. Any less and the quality on either part would be crap too. Also - if he has onboard video with that dell, you'll have to get a video card too. Thats the price you pay for buying a proprietary system in the first place, sure its cheaper up front, but upgrading them is more expensive...

i have a geforce 3 64mb that i am giving him for the video, my sb live that i dont use anymore, and he has my old pc2100 512mb stick of mushkin. he's using the dell issued 60gb western digital hard drive, the dell processor which is a p4 1.8ghz, and my 250w antec from my now deceased athlon xp system. the only thing he really needs for what is essentially a "new" system is a motherboard, and thats where i'm stumped. i dont want to have to have him buy a new processor when he already has one thats perfectly good for what he wants to do with it. i also gave him my education version of xp that i got when i was in school, that i never even used. he's set with all but the mobo.

i just dont know what limitations i have with that GE chipset.

Get him the 845PE or the 845GE. The GE just has intergrated Audio and Video

thanks bubba

my HP is a 845GE. it came with a 2.56 GHz P-4, but i replaced that with a 3.06 GHz

You're gonna put a 250watt psu in it? Get at least a 350, I mean come on, there what 20 bux?

Not for a decent 350.

Well a 250 isn't exactly a decent psu either.

I'd stay away from the G chipsets since the built in GF/X uses parts of the main memory as graphics mem -- slow and less main memory. If you got a GF/X card already, go for the 845PE based board -- it's a decent chipset: no dual memory, usually 200MHz FSB, HT support (IIRC). See if you can get him a 2.66GHz P4 w/o HT & 533 FSB -- should be cheap and it's plenty of CPU power for non game apps. Most boards come w/ built-in sound, 10/100baseT, IDE, SIO, PIO, Midi and USB. Note that the 845 AGP port is 4x max. You'd need some memory, a harddisk, GF/X card and a 300W PSU. I's using a bigger version of this board -- served me well

Edit: A decent 350W PSU is more like $50..

that antec 250 would smoke any 350 that didnt cost $50+. for what he's using, its plenty. ran my last system flawlessly too.

i have an antec 350 now and it runs everything great. i have a dvd writer, cdrw, 2 hard drives for storage, 1 scsi card, 1 scsi hard drive, 9800 pro, gig of ram, audigy 2, fans out the wazoo, floppy, and some random blue lighting effects in there and its never even given the slightest hiccup. dont underestimate the antec ps. =)

woops, double post

the reason im giving him my old pieces parts and he's using some of his as well is, what i thought was obvious, that he doesnt want to put any money into a new computer. between the 2 of us we had everything he'd neeed except a motherboard, which is why i'm asking

What CPU ? Eg. P4 Prescotts are real power hogs.. I wrote 300W BTW

capm said 350