Advice on Motherboards

[Ian B Walker]

The time is comming in the not to distant future where I will need to upgrade my system. At the moment I have the following components fitted inside my case.

4 x Hard disks
1 x DVD Writer
1 x DVD Player
1 x Floppy Drive
1 x IDE splitter (PCI)
1 x Wireless card (PCI)
1 x Sound Card (PCI)
1 x Lan Card (PCI)
1 x dual Monitor Graphics card (AGP)

My system boasts a 1 Ghz Chip (whoopee)

Ok I need a new Motherboard, CPU and memory (512 min) that will fit all these and having looked at various sites I am totally confused. I dont think I need Raid or SATA. What would the Forum reccomend taking into consideration funds are very tight.

 

[Alfie]

The time is comming in the not to distant future where I will need to upgrade my system. At the moment I have the following components fitted inside my case.

4 x Hard disks
1 x DVD Writer
1 x DVD Player
1 x Floppy Drive
1 x IDE splitter (PCI)
1 x Wireless card (PCI)
1 x Sound Card (PCI)
1 x Lan Card (PCI)
1 x dual Monitor Graphics card (AGP)

My system boasts a 1 Ghz Chip (whoopee)

Ok I need a new Motherboard, CPU and memory (512 min) that will fit all these and having looked at various sites I am totally confused. I dont think I need Raid or SATA. What would the Forum reccomend taking into consideration funds are very tight.

I would go for a supermicro motherboard populated with kingston memory and as fast an intel CPU as I could afford.

I have thousands (literally) of supermicro motherboards in use day in day out. They are extremely reliable. IBM memory is made by Kingston and rebranded/priced. It has lifetime forward replacement warranty. AMD are okay but run hot. We benchmarked them and found they failed more often than Intel. You're safe with Intel.

 

[Shude]

I dont think I need Raid or SATA.

RAID maybe not but SATA definitely, I think right now the prices are about the same but in the future legacy IDE aka PATA devices will slowly creep up in price compared to their more popular SATA counterparts.

 

[Ian B Walker]

Urgent help please

Right got myself an ECS 755-A2 motherboard and Sempron 2.8 CPU. 1 gig of ram. Thought I was going places. Nope, stuck and am desperate for help. I switch it on and get the power lights. The CPU fan runs but thats all I dont even get a Bios screen. I notice in the destructions and on the board that it has an ATX12V socket. Do I need to plug anything in there to power the drives and dvd's? Coz if I do then I need a new PSU Please help as I hate tapping out on my laptop.

 

[se97mlm]

yeah you need a slightly later psu with the 4-pin atx plug on. the wires are black and yellow, two of each. A 300w psu should be under 20 quid from the right place

 

[grober]

12volt drive supply adapter cable

Ian, ACCORDING TO THIS
"A motherboard with an ATX12V receptacle on it may work OK without the ATX12V connector plugged in, just as a server motherboard may work OK without the "AUX" power plug connected. All these plugs do is provide more wires connecting the motherboard to the power rails. If you don't connect anything to the extra power inputs, though, then there'll be a more resistive path from the PSU to some of the components on the motherboard that need power, and the voltage those components see may be too low.

Some motherboards have an ATX12V socket and also a regular four pin "Molex" power receptacle on the motherboard; you can plug a drive power connector into them instead of the ATX12V plug and they'll be happy. There are also cheap Molex-to-ATX12V adapter cables, which let you do the same trick with normal ATX12V mobos".

sounds as if you could use one of your normal 12v drive supply connectors with a suitable adapter. to power up the ATX12V socket. the problem may be your power supply may not be up to the load certainly in the longer term. However it might be useful for test purposes to see if you can get the board to run. Dont know of a source for adapter cable but a web search should find one or you could make one up.

edit I have just read se97mlm's post. For £20 a new PS would be the safer option!

 

[se97mlm]

In fact i must be out of touch being in Germany, PSUs are even cheaper than 20 quid now!

check this out for £7.77 postage used to be a fiver!

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=4506&category_id=264&manufacturer_id=0

 

[Ian B Walker]

Thanks to everyone :bannana: :bannana: , wish I could use rep points. Up and running now

 

[Ian B Walker]

Firstly I would like to thank everyone for their time in helping me with my delema. I now have everything up and running as it should (ish) however I have a question for those who know. I bought a 1Gb strip of unbuffered PC2700 memory, 184 pins. According to my startup and Belaric Advisor I am only running 1024Mb? Is it the memory strip that is wrong or have I not done something. The Motherboard is an ECS 755-A2. My CPU is an Athlon Sempron. The mem strip is made by Crucial.

 

[machasm]

Firstly I would like to thank everyone for their time in helping me with my delema. I now have everything up and running as it should (ish) however I have a question for those who know. I bought a 1Gb strip of unbuffered PC2700 memory, 184 pins. According to my startup and Belaric Advisor I am only running 1024Mb? Is it the memory strip that is wrong or have I not done something. The Motherboard is an ECS 755-A2. My CPU is an Athlon Sempron. The mem strip is made by Crucial.

Hi Ian,
How much do you think 1024Mb is? That is 1Gb.
Unless you have other memory in then that is the amount you have.
Mac.

 

[Ian B Walker]

Hi Ian,
How much do you think 1024Mb is? That is 1Gb.
Unless you have other memory in then that is the amount you have.
Mac.

Whoops, doesnt that show how much I know about computers One feels very foolish. Many thanks for your swift reply.


Now off to a corner and hide for a while.

 

[PJH]

I am only running 1024Mb?

Mega Giga Tera

 

[grasmere]

to further claify or confuse Ian . . .

In decimal systems, kilo stands for 1,000, but in binary systems, a kilo is 1,024 (2 to the 10th power). Technically, therefore, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, but it is often used loosely as a synonym for 1,000 bytes. For example, a computer that has 256K main memory can store approximately 256,000 bytes (or characters) in memory at one time.
A megabyte is 2 to the 20th power (approximately 1 million) or a megabyte
So a unit of memory equal to 1,024 kilobytes is a megabyte or less precisely, to mean 1 million bytes - and a gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (approximately 1 billion).

In computer literature, kilobyte is usually abbreviated as K or KB. To distinguish between a decimal K (1,000) and a binary K (1,024), the IEEE has suggested following the convention of using a small k for a decimal kilo and a capital K for a binary kilo, but this convention is by no means strictly followed.

HTH

 

[Ian B Walker]

Thanks guys, I think I know whats what now. Now you are going to laugh at this. Because I thought my strip was defective, ordered another one, with the intention of sending back strip one. Looks like I am going to have 2Gb in the near future

 

[machasm]

Thanks guys, I think I know whats what now. Now you are going to laugh at this. Because I thought my strip was defective, ordered another one, with the intention of sending back strip one. Looks like I am going to have 2Gb in the near future

We all had to learn these things at some time or other.
Don't feel embaressed we've all made mistakes like these.
I think one of my most embarrising moments was when I was sixteen.
I walked into a newsagent where I purchased a magazine (No, not one of those magazines). I fished into my pocket to find the five pound note I had stuffed in there and slammed it on to the counter. As I awaited my change from the lovely young shop assistant I noticed that her face turned bright red.
When I looked down at the 'note' I found that I was waiting for change from a condom.
Mac.