The Great MOBO Upgrade Adventure Begins

[KellyK]

I have finally decided to take the plunge into upgrading my existing motherboard and cpu. I have done minor upgrades before i.e. hard drives, video cards, CD RW drives, internal modems, but never something of this nature. From reading these forums I can tell that you are the experts in this field and I would Greatly Appreciate any help/information/tidbits/general pieces of knowledge to help make this transition as smooth as possible.

I currently have a FIC KA-6130 MOBO with a Celeron 400 running Windows ME. I have purchased a PCCHIPS MOBO M930MLR, Pentium 4 1.6 OEM CPU, an Intel CPU Fan and new ATX case. These were all ordered seperately so I will be installing them along with transferring the following from the existing system.
Western Digitial 20 Meg IDE hard drive with Windows ME
possibly a 2nd 6 meg IDE hard drive
Lite-On CD read/Write Drive
Generic 40x CD Drive & 3.5 floppy
3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra
128 Meg & 64 Meg SDRAM PC100
Belkin 2 port USB card
Roadrunner Cable Modem connection
Microsoft Optical Mouse
HP PSC750 USB printer/scanner/copier
Speaker system (using onboard audio)
I know that I will eventually want to replace the memory, video, onboard sound and hard drive but I can't afford that yet.

I have also read the article about by Modus about Windows and the motherboard upgrade. It had some really good information that I hope will make this easier, but any additional information to make this as painless as possible will be greatly valued.
Thanks in advance
Kelly K.

 

[KellyK]

One additional comment the PCCHIPS motherboard looks to be equivalent to the ECS P4s5a motherboard.

 

[AndyHui]

PC Chips and ECS are the same company, that's why the boards are the same (but sold under different names).

 

[Buz2b]

Problem area #1:


<< 128 Meg & 64 Meg SDRAM PC100 >>

I'm assuming you mean a total of 192 MB RAM here. I know you mentioned that you recognize that you need to upgrade here but I cannot empahasize it enough that you need to budget in some better/more RAM now, rather than later.

Problem are #2:


<< Western Digitial 20 Meg IDE hard drive with Windows ME >>

I take it from this and the other comment concerning "Modus" that you are looking to use the existing OS, programs etc already loaded and NOT doing a fresh reload. While I have done this successfully a few times, I've also had some that did not work. There are no guarantees. Even on the successful ones a subsequent reload showed a vast speed improvement over the transferred OS. I would recommend that you reconsider this and do a fresh reload. Why possibly handcuff you new "toy" by trying this?? In order to get the maximum benefit from your new sytem you should do a reload and not a transfer, especially since the chances are not that good that you will succeed. ME is a Pain trying to do this and fails more than it works, IMHO.

Those two areas are your best "window of opportunity" for getting the most from your system. Otherwise you may not "feel" the big jump in speed as you though you would.

 

[SP33Demon]

I'd recommend the new KT333 chipset, along with an Athlon XP, which is what I'll be buying. Of course, I'm going to be overclocking a ton... for video editing, you probably want AMD instead of Intel, so I've heard... Unless you want to be spending a fortune on the new P4's and their mobo's, go with AMD... I personally will be buying a 512 stick of PC2700, an Epox 8K3A+, and an Athlon XP, all for about $375 or less... unless you would just want to wait until the new T-Bred's come out, they'll blow P4's out of the water Just my .02

 

[KellyK]

I have been convinced. I will perform a clean install of windows ME with the motherboard installation rather than let the existing installation try to configure to the new motherboard.

Buzz2b - Just for clarification I have 1-64 meg and 1-128 meg sdram memory chip to install.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[Buz2b]

<< I will perform a clean install of windows ME with the motherboard installation >>

Good choice. You'll appreciate the speed more doing this. For the record, I HATE doing it also and try to avoid it like the plague. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet though.
The amount of RAM is OK but you would get another speed jump with the PC133 IMHO. But, I understand budgets. :frown:

 

[pcmodem]

<< unless you would just want to wait until the new T-Bred's come out, they'll blow P4's out of the water Just my .02 >>



What's the ETA of the new Tbirds and will they be running at 333 FSB or some other speed?

Thanks,
PCM

 

[SP33Demon]

PCModem,

I can tell you that the Thoroughbred, the next chip out by AMD, will blow past the 2 Ghz mark... the chipset that will be coming out for it, probably the KT333A made by VIA, should be able to be overclocked beyond the 200MHz Front Side Bus (dual pumped) = 400MHz... They will be used in conjunction with PC3000 memory which should easily let you hit the 400MHz FSB mark...