new Motherboard purchase

[foundonfloor]

need help with new motherboard

im looking into purchasing a new mother board and building up from scratch with most of the parts i already have.

the existing components include:
4 sticks of DDR Memory, 2 (250meg) 1 (500meg) and 1 (1gig)
an ATI Radeon 9250 (256 MB DDR) PCI BUS
a Seagate SATA 200 gig hard drive
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 ghz processor
a everyday heatsink/cooling fan
and a Power Source capable of 100-127 watts of energy

the only pieces i would be willing to part with would be the 2 250 meg DDR sticks. my old board had 4 slots for DDR and now it seems DDR2 is becoming the more commonplace.

i have some experience with fixing/modifying CPUs but have never put one together myself. im very wary of purchasing a new mother board as i want to be positive it will suit all my needs, and when i look at the spec sheets a lot of it seems foreign to me.

i would love some reccomendations or insight to help me through this process. anything and everything.

thanks in advance. you guys rock

 

[tomc102968]

usually I was told to start with the processor. If you are not willing or wanting to change that that is where I would stat. what socket type is yours

 

[Trotter]

Sounds like a socket 478. PCI graphics? Was it a Dell?

A new mobo is a good start. If it is a socket 478, you can keep your DDR, as the mobo would have to use it. you might want to get more of it, though.

Staying with a PCI graphics card ain't a good idea, though. I can understand if you are just wanting to hold out for a while, but a full upgrade would be in order. But you have to crawl before you can run.

The selection of 478 mobos on NewEgg ain't that great. Let us know either which socket your CPU is, or what the make and model of the comp it came out of.

 

[jaymontague]

eventually i will be upgrading the graphics card, but it will by no means be immediately, therefore the new mobo must accept the PCI

the computer this all came from was an HP Pavilion a815n

here are the relative specs from their site that may be able to answer a few questions:

CPU/Processor

* Socket: LGA775
* Supports processor up to 3.8 GHz
* Supports Intel Pentium 4 HT processors

Front-side bus (FSB)

* 800 MHz

Chipset

* Northbridge: i915G graphics and memory controller hub
* Southbridge: ICH6 Intel I/O Controller Hub 5

hope this helps.

 

[tomc102968]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135023

i found this does that help? something along those lines?