Dell inspiron 531s mobo replacement?

[rpgamer127]

well, as if an act of god (or the devil in my case) my mobo broke, most of the copacitors or whatever the little things sticking up from the mobo broke. in any case i need a new 1 but i don't want dell's. my other components are as follows:

1x 160GB sata Seagate Barracuda
1x x16 cd-rw/dvd player
1x AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ currently clocked at 2.0 GHz
2x DDR2 pc2-5300 677MHz 512 MB 240 pin DIMM RAM
2x DDR2 pc2-6400 800MHz 1 GB 240 pin DIMM RAM total ram 3 GB
1x Sapphire ATI radeon 4650 512 MB DDR2 Memory 128 bit pci-e 2.0
1x 250 watt dell power supply <---- needs to be upgraded, i know
stock everything else including cooling

i really want to keep my memory but if 2 gigs is enough its ok and I'm a mid level gamer so im going to need a pci-e 2.0 mobo

the reason im not doing the research myself is that 1. piece of mind for me and 2. proof of what can fit in our case.

thanks in advance!

 

[jonpaul37]

More than likely, that Dell case will not fit a conventional ATX or Mini-ATX motherboard, again, i am not too sure on this one, but dell has been known to make proprietary cases that only fit motherboards offered by dell.

If it were me, i would start fresh with a new case, power supply and motherboard, the rest will fit just fine.

as for the RAM issue, what operating system are you using and is it 32-bit or 64 bit? I would just stick with 2 x 1GB of the PC2-6400 RAM and ditch/sell the PC@-5300. Motherboards tend to get a little finicky when more than 2 sticks of RAM are used especially if they're not the same RAM sticks.

 

[delluser1]

Standard Micro ATX motherboards will fit the 531s.

 

[rpgamer127]

cool, thanks ill look at some micro atx mobo's and then compare the dimensions.

as far as the memory, would i be better off getting rid of / selling the 667 MHz pair i mean its only a gig and its making my ram slower than it needs to be right?

thanks in advance!