Hey basically I have quite an old computer and I just need it to last me another year. It is a prebuilt system I got 6/7 years ago so it is very old and I need a new psu and motherboard as the psu is massively underpowered and my current motherboard is on the way out (the heatsink keeps dropping of it and I keep on having to stick it back on with thermal tape) plus I think it only allows you a max of 1gb of ram. The mobo I have at the moment is a ASUSTek Computer Inc. P4SD-VX, as it is OEM it is really hard to get much info about it off the internet. I know next to nothing about PCs and I just want to know that all of the current components I have will be compatable with this new mobo I am looking at here: Scan.co.uk: ASRock ASR-P4I65GV, Intel 865GV, S 478, AGI 8x, DDR 400MHz, SATA 1.5Gb/s, Micro ATX, On Board VGA I am pretty certain my current CPU will be fine with it. The CPU is a 2.8ghz p4 Northword 800mhz FSB. This mobo is the correct socket and supports 800FSB with HT so that should be fine. What I am worried about is whether the RAM, Hard drive and the disk drives I have at the moment with be compatable. My current RAM is DDR, which is the memory this mobo requires but the RAM I have at the moment is 200mhz and on the specs for the mobo it says DDR 266, 333 or 400. So will my old RAM work with this, if it doesn't I am not too fussed about buying new cheap stuff that will work as it ain't that much. The other concern is all of my drives. My hard drive and my DVD RW and DVD ROM plus my floppy all have an IDE interface. Will all of that work with this motherboard, I mean will it support all of that? Finally, last question, I think I caused the heatsink problem on my last mobo when I fitted a 6600gt a couple of years ago and it was really hard to get on. Do you think there is enough room between heatsink and AGP slot on this new mobo to fit my 6600gt. There is a picture of the board here : http://www.scan.co.uk/Images/Products/1035456-a.jpg Also I was thinking of getting a HD 3850, do you reckon that would fit on the mobo without interfering with the heatsink as well? There is a picture of the one I am looking at here Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (AGP) - Retail [11124-00-20R] Graphics and Video ATI AGP Sorry for this long post, even if someone could just answer one or two of the questions that would be a great help and just any problems they think I might have changing to this mobo, like might it be a lot worse than my current one for some reason.
Hi, that motherboard will work no problem with your cpu or ram and doesn't require a different bios revision. I would recommend investing in 2x 1gb ddr 400mhz ram in dual channel configuration. Dual channel basically means the cpu can request twice the amount of data so therfore more bandwidth. But ram is a bit expensive at the moment ebuyer selling 2x 1gb for £53. Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR 400MHz/PC3200 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL3 - Ebuyer And as for your other question about your devices, they will work fine BUT there is a good chance you might have to repair windows because of the difference in chipsets from your current motherboard, because when you try to boot windows it will just throw memory errors for fun. All you have to do is use your windows OS disk (i presume it's windows xp home or pro) and boot from the cd, then just go through the installation process as you normally would until you come to the windows agreement stuff press f8 to agree then you will see the partition on your disk it will come up with some options (install, repair, quit) press R for repair, then windows will carry on the repair/installation process. That's all to it, good luck and happy new year
Hi My two-pence-worth - If you are already buying a new board, see if you can find a board other than ASRock. I had two and both failed. Perhaps try and find a full ATX board (if your case can fit one...) which sports the 865PE or the 875PE. Having a full ATX board may help solve the issue of the G card fitting in the space provided..... Something along the lines of this - MSI 865PE Neo2-PFS - motherboard - ATX - i865PE - Socket 478
