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PC Upgrade - still possible to reuse old components?

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lanux128:
all my searches for contemporary mainboards with 2 PATA have returned nothing. so i'm considering this Gigabyte mainboard, apparently for the reason it provides SATA to PATA cable and also that the vendor is reputable (in case of repairs and warranty). somehow, i have to shoe-horn two optical drives and two hard-disks into this motherboard.. has anyone had any experiences with this model?

• http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=1874

Carol Haynes:
How about this one - it has a single IDE connector for two optical drives.

http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=301&l4=0&model=1160&modelmenu=2

Hard disc drives have come down in price remarkably so it might be worth buying a big SATA drive and using your existing drives in a USB housing or as network storage.

Actually the board you list looks potentially interesting - it does appear to have two IDE interfaces it is just that they are different specs. Just use the ATA66/100 version for the optical drives (which don't use ATA133 anyway) and the other one for your hard drives. Having said that I would personally avoid anything with a Promise Controller onboard (I was seriously unimpressed with the Promise RAID interface on my last board which seemed to suffer from constant disc writing errors but didn't notify the user). I am also dubious about any manufacturer that bundles Symantec crapware too (personal gripe I suppose).

The PCIe slots look a bit strange on this board too - why would anyone want 3  PCIe x 1 slots and only one PCIe x 16 slot? You also only have 2 PCI slots which is very limiting if you want to add any extra cards in the future.

lanux128:
the Symantec thingy caused some concerns for me too but normally i'll ignore bundled software.. and from the website you linked, i googled and found this: P5VDC-X.

- LGA775 socket for Intel® 65nm Pentium D/Pentium 4/Celeron CPU
- VIA PT880 Ultra+VIA VT8237A
- 1066/800/ 533 MHz
- Dual-channel DDR2 + DDR
- 1 x AGP 8X
- 1 x PCI-E X16 (max. X4 mode)
- 2 *ATA133 ,2 x SATA
- 10/100 LAN
- 6-Channel HD audio
this board does have 2 IDE slots and looks quite good, as it checks most of the boxes for me but i'm confused by AGP/PCI-E slots. does the mainboard have both, or there are two different models?

• http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=206&l4=0&model=1126&modelmenu=1

Carol Haynes:
this board does have 2 IDE slots and looks quite good, as it checks most of the boxes for me but i'm confused by AGP/PCI-E slots. does the mainboard have both, or there are two different models?

• http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=206&l4=0&model=1126&modelmenu=1
-lanux128 (August 26, 2007, 08:30 AM)
--- End quote ---

If you look at the enlarged image you can see that the link you point to here has AGP / PCIe slots next to each other. Look at the enlorgement of the image and you can see 3 x PCI slots (white), the next black slot looks like a PCIe slot (see the small curved clip at the bottom of the slot) and the final slot looks like an AGP slot with a typical AGP clip.



If you are going to buy a new mobo why not buy one that is a little more future proofed - like the AMD board I quoted?

This AM2 board appears to have 2 IDE connectors (the red and blue sockets on the bottom edge - the black socket is for floppy):

http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=300&l4=0&model=1207&modelmenu=2



and as it is AM2 socket / DDR 2 memory should remain expandable for the foreseeable future. It is also PCIe compatable and you can add two PCIe cards in full speed SLi mode if you want or potentially run two monitors. Not sure about the PCI-X slots though - I haven't come across those before ??? See PCI-X Wiki for details - it suggests that most newer PCI cards are compatible with PCI-X but not PCI cards that require 5V.

Lashiec:
Well, I think you'll have to reuse some diapers for your baby daughter as that mainboard looks expensive ;D

One thing that worries me is that PCI-Express port, which is VERY near to one of the heatsinks, something that could be troublesome. You have the other one of course, which thankfully runs at x16 as well, but forget about doing SLI (a waste of money anyway).

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