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Thread: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

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    New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    I'm no longer a hardware guy and never really was, but I had built a server for web hosting some years ago and now am on such a tight budget that I need some help.

    Basically, I have a Supermicro dual CPU motherboard:
    X5DPL-iGM

    I have 2 gigs of DDR333 ram (that's what it says on the ram sticks, ~500 megs each, 4 of them)

    I have two xeon pentium 3 2.8ghz cpus (or something along those lines).

    Anyways, the system works all-right but this motherboard does not have pci-express and I want to turn it into the best gaming laptop I can afford right now.

    However, I have no idea if these cpus and memory will work on a variety of other motherboards i'm looking at, so any recommendations and expertise is really appreciated.

    I was looking at this motherboard:

    SE7320VP2

    which is pretty cheap and seems to support my components. However, I don't quite understand the riser slot thing - will it support my wireless network card and a new video card via pciexpress?

    Alternatively, my current motherboard has PCI-X slots but I don't know if any good video cards can be found for that, so I'd rather spend 70 bucks on a new motherboard and another 100 on a new video card to make the machine pretty good for my needs.

    Thanks, and please don't baselessly recommend an alternate solution unless it's like an under 200 dollar solution (eg, "what are you diong that for? go buy a new laptop for 500 bucks!" or "that's a stupid thing to do. your machine will be slower than a mac!")

    Thanks!

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    sorry I am confused... gaming laptop with a server board?
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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    lol

    Did you read my post?

    I am wondering if I should try to describe it again, accepting the possibility that I wasn't clear enough. lol

    Okay... here goes...

    I built a server years ago

    Have server and components

    Want to use components to make best gaming machine I can with the components

    Need motherboard that will work with those components that also has pci express

    Need suggestions on if previously mentioned motherboard will work with said components

    Need suggestions on alternate motherboards.

    Need suggestions on if there are video cards that are good that will work with current motherboard (thereby removing the need for a new one, though this is not a preferable option)

    I hope that is literal enough for you Jay. Please, do let me know if there is any further confusion.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    I saw this:

    pci-to-pci-express-adapter.php

    at amfeltec

    But I don't trust that a video card will work well on one of these. Seems hokey.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    OK, point 1. AFAIK there is no graphics card the runs off PCI-X. There's a few PCI ones but they're very much low end, as PCI doesn't have the bandwidth required for decent graphics performance.

    from a quick look that Intel board would do the job, assuming you have a chassis that will support the riser cards appropriately, but you do realise that your processors will bottleneck any modern mid-range graphics card horrendously, don't you? How much have you seen that board or sale for? My experience of looking or server boards is that they're very expensive, and for a gaming PC you'd almost certainly be better off getting an Athlon II processor, cheap AM2+ motherboard and 2GB of DDR2-800 memory - there's no point trying to force 5 year old server technology to do a job it wasn't designed for...

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    PCI-X was not designed for use with graphics cards AFAIK. PCI itself does not have enough bandwidth for anything other than low end graphics cards. Even a PCI-E adaptor would not be much use as it would mean the graphics card would bottlenecked by too slow an interface.

    The SE7320VP2 has a PCI-E 4X interface which means there will be a performance loss with some of the newer PCI-E graphics cards. If it were even PCI-E 8X this would not be an issue. Also, even a pair of P4 2.8GHZ processors would bottleneck most modern games.


    You can get an AMD Athlon II X3 440,ASRock M3A770DE motherboard and 2GB of 1333MHZ DDR3 RAM for around $180 delivered from Newegg:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103843

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157176

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148194

    If you want to save some more money you can an AMD Athlon II X2 245 for around $58:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-687-_-Product


    With regards to graphics cards an HD4670 DDR3 or GDDR3 will be the cheapest card to consider for around $60:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-052-_-Product

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-179-_-Product

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-314-_-Product

    The GT240 GDDR5 for around $70 is better:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-466-_-Product

    The HD5670 is a bit better than the GT240 GDDR5 and is around $78:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-871-_-Product

    The HD4850 is much better than the previous cards and is around $100:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-161-_-Product

    Also make sure you have a decent PSU to power your computer. An OCZ StealthXStream 400W or Corsair CX400W would be fine AFAIK.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 31-08-2010 at 01:46 AM.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Thanks for the replies guys. Looking into the info provided.

    My ram is DDR 333 so it will not work with DDR2 as far as I can tell, and that appears to be the main primary problem now because I don't want to have to buy new ram as well as a new motherboard.

    Overall, looks like this is going to go in the clunker. If I'm going to spend 200 bucks I might as well build a whole new machine, and CAT's excellent post testifies to that.

    So thank you very very much. Now I need to figure out the best hardware solution. I'm debating what to do now.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    You could go for an Athlon II X2 as stated in my previous post and you could save around $17.

    If money is very tight you could go for an Intel E3300,2GB of DDR2 and a G31 motherboard for around $125:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116264

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153157

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116264

    However,the motherboard only has two RAM slots and will probably have limited upgrade options as it is one of the cheaper Intel motherboards. Also socket 775 is EOL.

    However, both the AMD Athlon II X2 245 and Athlon II X3 440 will be faster.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 31-08-2010 at 01:58 AM.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Looking into that stuff CAT. That Intel motherboard is really cheap... is a better Intel CPU too expensive with that option?

    In looking at laptops, is the ATI Radeon 4250 any good?

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Quote Originally Posted by Decius View Post
    lol

    Did you read my post?
    lol

    yes I read this part as well

    Quote Originally Posted by Decius View Post
    Anyways, the system works all-right but this motherboard does not have pci-express and I want to turn it into the best gaming laptop I can afford right now.
    Thats when I got confused. (I still am a bit becuase you are atill talking about laptops)

    To me you are throwing good money after bad here, there is no way you can make a decend gaming system out of what you have.

    You have also posted in the wrong part of the forum

    I hope that is literal enough for you
    Last edited by Jay; 31-08-2010 at 07:52 AM.
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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post
    You have also posted in the wrong part of the forum
    Well, putting a server board into a laptop would make for one hell of a mod

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Quote Originally Posted by Decius View Post
    Looking into that stuff CAT. That Intel motherboard is really cheap... is a better Intel CPU too expensive with that option?

    In looking at laptops, is the ATI Radeon 4250 any good?
    I would go with the AMD setup I suggested as the motherboards has 4 RAM slots and the Athlon II X3 has a three cores which should be useful in many games. The AMD motherboard can also work with the six core AMD Phenom II X6 processors too.

    The HD4250 is considerably slower than an HD4670 DDR3 or GDDR3.

    Edit!!

    Also if you are very lucky you maybe able to unlock the Athlon II X3 to an Athlon II X4 or a Phenom II X4. One of my friends unlocked their Athlon II X3 435 to a Phenom II X4. However,this is not guaranteed.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 01-09-2010 at 12:25 AM.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    CAT - your help is impressive. I've never found such reliable accurate information on a forum so damn quickly.

    I am strongly considering the AMD solution you mentioned.

    I have an extended ATX case (bought that a few months ago). It's loaded with fans and comes with a 500w Maximum power supply - should that suffice? The exact model number is PSIV-500-2.

    So with this case, if I buy that motherboard, ram and cpu and one of the video cards, it should fly?

    The case model is: NZXT TEMPEST

    Sorry it's so disjointed (my message that is). If you can confirm that this mobo will fit in this case and can use this power supply, it would move me closer to a solution!

    Edit:

    Is there any motherboard that makes it more likely to be able to unlock the 4th core on that processor or is it entirely dependent on the processor?

    Additionally, I am looking to opt for 4gb of ram if possible - would this ram be okay? DDR3 2GB DDR 3 PC3-10600 1333 MHZ 240 PIN 2G PC MEMORY, found on ebay (I can't post links but if you do a search for DDR3 on ebay you see a 2gb chip for 35 bucks or something along those lines. So I'd get two and put it in.

    Another question - is this an 64x configuration?

    Thanks.
    Last edited by Decius; 01-09-2010 at 08:16 AM.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    Oh and Jim, thanks for the suggestion too... looks like you were dead on with the alternative recommendation. See, that's something it's hard to find - the guts of the information. After researching it's clear the Athlon II x3 440 is a WICKED deal... you know, one of those deals that only people who are really familiar with the tech world would know.

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    Re: New oldschool motherboard... need help!

    CAT: Just wanted to say thanks again.

    I am sitting next to the machine I've built based on your advice:

    AMD 440 x3 Athlon II
    4 GIGS DDR3 1333
    Asrock motherboard
    Went for the 5750 Powercolor Radeon, 1gig
    Put it in my massive air cooled case with like 6 fans with the 500w power supply and it's humming with Windows 7 64.

    I tried overclocking and it worked in XP but keeps hanging in 7, so I had to put it back. Looks like the 4th core is bad, or I need to increase the voltage. But its already stock at like 1.45v (which I've reduced in the BIOS to 1.36).

    If anyone has any input on why the stock voltage being fed to this CPU is so high let me know. I assume it's because the motherboard is making a mistake or something.

    Also, if you know what I should do to get the 4th core working in a stable fashion, that too would be super.

    Starcraft II on Ultra settings all around is smooth as silk - for 400 bucks.

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