Motherboard selection help

[AltonS]

My nephew's unit croaked and his parents want me to work a miracle for $200 bucks. He has a good 3.06 Celeron D processor, 120 gig sata hdd, and the other misc.parts from his unit. He needs a better than average mobo and memory to match. I want it to have on board everything to eliminate cost at this time yet still be able to accept a better processor down the road. I am donating a case as his was a Dell Optiplex 320. So I need some good solid suggestions. He will be using it mainly for school, very little gaming but ability to do so is a plus. He will not be overclocking as he doesn't have tge foggiest idea how to and neither do I. All help is appreciated immensely and immediately. You can write me directly at AltonSul@Charter.net.

 

[o1die]

I suggest the Tiger Direct Msi p6ngm2 Intel barebones kit with motherboard, retail boxed Intel e5200 cpu, and ddr2 memory for $179.99 plus shipping. It comes with a basic case and 450w power supply. Your old dell optiplex case has too many proprietary form factors and power supply connectors. You might be able to sell it separately on ebay for a few $$$. When you assemble the kit, I recommend you place the bare board on a phonebook (non conductive surface) and do a bare bones test before mounting the board in the case. Install the cpu/heatsink, memory, keyboard, mouse,and video connection. Do not connect any optical or hardrives. Connect the 24 pin and 4 pin leads from the power supply to the board. Touch the pin cluster with the power led, power switch, reset, etc. with a plain flathead screwdriver until the board fires up. Enter the bios, set the boot order to cd (or dvd) and hardrive (same as ide 0), save and exit. Then turn the power off, and finish the installation. You may want to remove the power supply from the case for the test, so the leads can reach the board. This will also make mounting the board easier, keeping wires out of the way. Finally, you only need about 4-6 standoffs to match up with the motherboard holes. Standoffs are 1/4 inch brass or silver colored and screw into the side of the case, to lift the board slightly and line it up with the backplate (i/o shield). Install the motherboard backplate and standoffs at the same time. Remove any temporary plate from the case by twisting it off, assuming your kit comes with the motherboard backplate. Any standoffs that don't line up with a hole in the board need to be removed if necessary. Some cases have the standoffs already mounted, some you have to screw them in yourself. Finally, when you are finished installing all drives, etc in the case, when you fire up the system, if you get a windows bluescreen, it means you have to format the hardrive and reinstall windows and install the motherboard drivers on the cd that comes with the board. If you don't have a windows cd, you can buy a dell oem xp or vista cd for about $16 online, and use your old microsoft coa sticker number on the dell case to reactivate windows. Do not remove the sticker; if you damage it, you won't be able to read the numbers. Write them down carefully and test the number before trying to remove the sticker.

 

[o1die]

If you don't like the tiger direct combo, directron has a similar "winter combo special" with msi g31 board, 2 gigs of mushkin ddr2 and e5200 retail boxed cpu for $139.95 plus shipping. You can try it in your old case, but will probably end up getting a different case anyway.