Thunderstorm fried my mobo - help me rebuild plz

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CharlieSpears

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Jun 9, 2013
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Please help me, I need suggestions for replacing mobo and cpu.

Electric surge took out my system. I tested the psu in another machine and it appears to have survived okay. Looks like just the mobo is dead.

releated specs:

computer: Gateway model GT5658e

mobo: ECS MCP61PM-GM AM2 mATX Motherboard

cpu: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core

What are my options for upgrading the mobo and cpu? What do you guys recommend?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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Sep 22, 2011
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What price range and what do you want to do with the system? If your computer came with the operating system pre-installed (an OEM license), you may need to buy a new license as OEM licenses are tied to the motherboard (~$100 USD for a OEM liscense or ~$200 for standard license). You will probably want to format anyway because most of the drivers would be different.

Be sure to put your system on a surge protector. I'm thinking a good PSU should have helped prevent a surge from getting to the motherboard as well.
 
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CharlieSpears

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Jun 9, 2013
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Hey pyro226, thanks for your help.

I'm in Florida and we had a huge electrical storm yesterday. When I got home, I noticed the circuit breaker was tripped for the room with the computer. The outlet on the powerstrip to the psu is dead but the other outlets on same strip still working. (power strip is now going in the trash).

Nothing happens when I hit the power switch on computer. I tested the psu with a jumper and got the fans and power light to turn on. I ran a volt meter check on the wires per some guide I found for checking psu and it appparently all of the readings checked out good so I think it survived okay.

Capacitors on the mobo look normal except for one which is rusting.

My budget is up to $500 including OS. I use this machine for everything from spreadsheet office work to gaming and video editing. What would you recommend?
 
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pyro226

pyro226

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Sep 22, 2011
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@Calvin7: No offense, but I wouldn't recommend that barebones set. It's an old CPU and chipset, and he mentioned gaming. Those integrated graphics are not very good (Radeon HD 3000).

My recommendations would depend on which parts you are able to reuse and which parts you need. The parts I guessed you will re-use: Case, Power Supply, Optical Drive. In the parts listed below, you could upgrade the CPU to a 4300 ($120) or a 6300 (more threads, better at video editing $140 regular, $120 on sale). If you plan to overclock, you will need a cooler. For the graphics card, I recommended a 6670 or 7750 as they don't require a connection to the power supply. Otherwise if you have a compatible power supply, you could go with higher. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-3.html

I am not sure if you will need another Hard Drive to recover as much data as you can from your original one. Did you make good backups or do you need another HDD to install a new system onto and recover data from the old?

Edit:Also, I think the OEM operating systems install a bit different than the standard media. I have not installed via OEM license, so it's something you should read up on before purchasing OEM.

Base AMD Parts http://pcpartpicker.com/user/pyro226/saved/1JSu
 
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