Upgrade only motherboard

[prasad_den]

Hi guys,
I have a P4 2.4 GHz, Intel 845 GBF MoBo, 512MBRam, 80GB HDD machine, which is now almost 1.5 years old. I love gaming and am badly feeling the need for a MoBo that supports graphic cards.. Is it possible to upgrade the MoBo to a new one, without disturbing the other components, and without losing any data? If yes, which MoBo and graphic card do you suggest? My max budget is around 10K. BTW, I run Windows XP Pro and Linux FC4 on my sys.. Help me guys....

 

[Sourabh]

You can try getting a basic 845 motherboard with AGP slot which is available for near abt 2k and squeeze in a 6600GT , some of the brands cost abt 9k.

Else you can get boards based on 865 chipset from Intel/ Asus and get a vanilla 6600.

Make sure you have a descent 350W PSU to go with the graphics card.

 

[rohanbee]

totally agree with saurabh................i did the same with one of my old machines and it does get rid of the pesky over-heating and other problems of the 915 series of intel mobo's

 

[prasad_den]

Thanks guys for the replies. Anyway, i also wanted to know if it is possible to just change the mobo without losing any data....??

 

[Sourabh]

Changing a motherboard is quite a task and you just cant do it all by yourself for the first time. So make sure you get it done by the dealer which u get these products from or a local hardware person. To change the motherboard, you would first have to plug out the hdd,optical drive and the power/IDE connectors and then the processor, and the RAM from the cabiner. Then unscrew the motherboard from the cabinet and lift it up. And then replace the new motherboard and connect the cables/devices.

So you wont ever loose DATA as far you dont format the hard disk. If you meant windows issues due to upgrade of motherboard, that wont be a problem too. you can boot in safe mode and install the new drivers for the motherboard and the graphics card.