WHS Mobo Fried, Need Cheap Suggestions

A few months back I finally turned a 6 or 7 year old Athlon XP PC into a WHS machine and it has been a great solution for my family. However, over the weekend the motherboard fried (MSI's convenient 4 light error codes say it's a general mainboard failure). I've tried re-seating the RAM repeatedly, only using one of the two chips, stripping it down to just the boot drive, and even dancing circles around it with no success.

My technical level isn't too high when it comes to PSUs/motherboards, but it looks like it's a 480W with a 20pin connector, inside an ATX mid-size tower.

The target price for replacement parts is under $200. Because I don't need to replace the HD or optical drives, I'm hoping this is possible. One combination I had looked into was:

AMD Athlon64 X2 5600+/GeForce 7025 SuperCombo
# ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS
# AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
# G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.352411

Looking at the photos of the mobo it appears to need a 24 pin connector, which the old case's PSU doesn't have. This lead me to:

APEX MJ-16 Black Steel MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case ATX12V SFX 250W Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811154085

Which after shipping clocks in at exactly $200. However, will the power supply not be big enough?

Are there other, smarter, cheaper options I can/should pursue? I humbly bow before the collective wisdom and knowledge.

You could always get a similar motherboard to the one that was in there off of ebay for dirt cheap.

You could also upgrade something depending on what the other computers are in the house and knock something down into doing that.

Those adapters are a waste of money. The PSU will either work or it won't. Having an adapter will make no difference.

History lesson:
Long ago, they had 20 pin PSU connectors and everything was powered from the motherboard. Components became more power hungry.

PSU connectors went to 24 pins. The four extra pins were one each 3.3, 5, and 12 volts and a ground. CPU's got their own 12 volt connector and power through the main power plug dropped.

Video cards got bigger and got their own 12 volt power connectors and 5 volt power through the main power plug dropped.

RAM went from SDRAM (3.3 volts) to DDR2 and DDR3 (1.65 - 2.2 volts) and 3.3 volt power through the main power plug dropped.

You don't need an adapter.

Regardless of which path you choose (buy a used MB or go with a new config), you will have to reload all of your WHS installation. Remember how WHS installs itself as a system disk and then it spans whatever number of physical drives you have as a single virtual disk space. If you don't have back-ups of your back-ups, you will lose those as well.

You really have 3 options. Recycle another older PC (folks these days love to give away old systems like the Dell Dimension 2400 I have sitting in my basement), buy a similar MB to the one that died on you, or build a new system.

I would suggest a new system. Remember, WHS is a 32-bit OS. You don't need tons of RAM. 2GB should do it. If you have an ATX or mATX style case, you can pick up a MB combo deal at the Egg for very little. Also get a new PSU.

Have fun! HOOAH!!!