Greetings,
I could not find any of the boards mentioned in this thread as of Jan 2013. They're all out of production.
However, wanted to pass along the good news that I got an AM3+ board to work in an
HP a6318f (2007 vintage, refurb'd unit bought in 2008, replaced with an ebay MCP61PM-HM board in 2010, died again here in Jan 2013 -- the usual... exploded/bad caps and... I'm not a
hardware sautering jock so... had to do the rip and replace thing). Many other HP Pavilions had variations of this MB in them so hopefully this helps a few people-- I still see a lot of these towers for sale on ebay; I would really question how long they'll last as this MB is infamous for bad caps (see link above - if you're into it you can replace caps for ~$20)
NOTE: You can still get MCP61PM-HM 1.0B replacement boards on ebay for about $80 but I really question their reliability-- this last one cost me $60 and it only lasted two years before it's repeat belly up performance.
Anyway, I was able to replace the board for about $150 by buying some stuff cheap/used.
- Gigabyte mATX, 78LMT-USB3 MB from Newegg for $49 after rebate - xmas special.
- 8 GB DDR3 RAM for $46 - used, ebay (board can take up to 32GB)
- Athlon II X3 450 with heat sink for $50 (enabled processor for quad processor for a few reboots) - new
I hope to recoupe ~$50+ of this by selling off the old processor, fan and memory (8GB).. so net cost should be under $100.
(Yes, overall, I was a bit bummed that I couldn't find an AM2 board so I could cannibalize the CPU and DDR2 memory. Oh well... total machine update to ~2013 standards for <$100 isn't bad. I just couldn't find a board which I trusted I could map all the ports trying to do it sight unseen via the internet.)
I did need one additional, 6 inch 3 pin system fan extension wire since the MCP board system fan is at the back of the unit and the Gigabyte board's power is at the front of the unit next to the main ATX power plug. NOTE: the Giga MB had a 4 pin fan connector for both CPU and System fan-- so far just plugging in the three pin system fan has worked -- no system alerts about fan speed or sensor alerts... maybe it will run too much though?)
Good old HP gives you just enough info about the MB connectors on their OEM board to be
really, really frustrating. Fortunately, most of what you need is silkscreened right on the MB itself.
All USB connectors worked without modification (including front) -- just take careful note of their orientation and position on the original HP MBs (there are three - one for front usb, one for HP L120 drive (fuhgettaboutit-- I just plugged it in and it is recognized, it's junk) and one for the 15-in-1 media card reader (SD, MMC, Sony Memory Stick/Duo etc) ).
The Power Switch and front LEDs work. the block layout is identical on the Giga MB as it was on the OEM HP board. there's a blocked pin on the original connector which guides you to proper install on the Giga board. See the HP block layout for power, LEDs, reset...
here.
Two things not working:
1. front sound ports - the plug for the HP board doesn't map neatly to the Gigabyte board but I really don't care-- not even bothering to futz with it.
2. the 1394 port has no connector on the new board-- zero loss for me-- I used it on my ancient (even in 2008) 15GB ipod and then... nevermore.
Existing Win7 install (from the MCP motherboard) was amazingly forgiving on bootup and doing driver replacement ... :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin: toughest one was my Kensington optical mouse... had to make a couple passes on drivers to get it to install. There was one massive driver search for about 10 minutes and all but the Ethernet card and and USB 3.0 bus were recognized.
I installed the Ethernet and USB 3.0 drivers off of the Giga supplied CD (came in box) and both were recognized without a hitch.
Overall, 24 hours into it: A+
.
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