CaptainSWJR

About 4 or 5 years ago I built a system around a 2.4gig p4 (I think, can't check until I can post). It worked quite well for it's time, I had the flashy nvidia geforce AGP card (with 16megs ram! I've had HDDs with less memory!).

I'd fought with this system from the get-go. I had a mobo burn out on it, screwed up seating the cpu on the new mobo (lucky I didn't burn anything out, I took it to the store I bought it from and they re-seated it, posted, called me, then charged me $100 in labor for 10 minutes work while looking at me like an idiot). Assorted cheapo memory sticks frying out and a hard drive crash later and I finally had it working for a couple years without problems.

Then one sad day, she died.

My courage failed me. I went to Staples and bought a HP.

So, a couple more years have passed and now I'm engaged, living with my fiance and her 2 daughters, and money's tight.


My prospective step daughter's ancient desktop is on it's last legs. It takes about 10 minutes to boot XP and it can barely render modern web pages.


So, I've dug up the dead body of my old system. Now that the pain is a bit farther in the past I can look at this system with fresh eyes. I *think* that it's just the graphics card that's dead. I know that I sadly neglected the poor thing, the dust inside the case wasn't pretty after running a couple of years without a cleaning.


So here's my dilemma. I can't confirm that it's just the graphics card. When I power up, the fans spin, the HDD spins up and seems to track, etc... but who knows if the ram's dead again or the CPU, or the motherboard.


I'm trying to decide whether to bite the bullet and spend $15 on a used AGP graphics card from E-Bay or going for a new motherboard. I've been looking at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813138079

I'm still trying to decide what I can salvage and what should get put on the curb.

Mygaffer

Do you have access to parts you can test with? $15 isn't that much money to spend to get a computer up and running. I say give it a shot.

Also, if you list your symptoms we can help diagnose. Even though the display is blank, do you hear the beep that happens at POST? If you used to and don't anymore than it may be the board.

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epitek

Take it to the basement or outside (hopefully you have a compressor) if not you can rent one or buy a can of dust off (always keep can upright and parallel to the case) and dust her out!. What are you system specs ? What would a budget be for you atm ? AMD is your friend !

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CaptainSWJR

I don't have anything to swap/test with. The thing that's got me waffling is that if it's not the video card then it's the motherboard. I'm about 75% sure it's the video card, because it's getting power (fan's spinning) but not sending a signal. If it's the motherboard though, I'm going to have to upgrade to the one I linked earlier which doesn't have an AGP slot and does have onboard video.

I'm trying to keep this cheap, in the sub-$150 range if at all possible. I'm reasonably sure my power supply, case, hard drive, dvd drive, etc are still good. $15 isn't much, but it's around 10% of my budget. What I really need is someone local with a spare AGP card in a box in their basement or a socket 478 board they're willing to risk in testing to see if the chip's okay.

Unfortunately, for some reason the case's speaker isn't hooked up. So no beeps I don't remember what model the board is, and I vaguely recall having trouble getting a diagram for it so I could figure out where to hook it up.

Yeah, I'm going to do the build at work. I'll blow it out good. It's REALLY disgusting. 1/8" dust blankets over the fans etc. Gee, wonder why it fried.

My budget is around $150. The specs... kids born when I built this system are in first grade, I'm a little vague on that. I'll know more when I can get it to post / boot.


Edit: I took another look at the mobo. It's an Intel(link) . Turns out there's an integrated speaker on the board for beeping purposes. I'm going to go pull the optical drives, HDD, memory, video card, firewire card, and anything else and see what I get.

CaptainSWJR

Okay, I've decided. I'm going to bite the bullet and upgrade.

Things I want to save:
Case: There shouldn't be any problem here since it's a full tower, plenty of room to work with.
Power Supply: It's a CompUSA branded 500w, 20 pin. The motherboard I'm going to upgrade to is a 24 pin. I'm looking for advise here. I'm thinking of just getting an adapter cable for now.
Hard Disk: 160 gigs is plenty for what I'll be using this for.
CPU: I took the heat sink off (and tore the chip right out of the mount because the heat transfer gunk turned into glue.) It's a P4 2.4G.

Things I'm going to buy:
Motherboard: BIOSTAR P4M900M4. Only choice the egg has for P4. Should work okay.
Ram: Gonna go with 1G of Super Talent.
Adapter Cable: 20 pin ATX PSU to 24 pin Mobo adapter cable
CPU cooler: The stock was always loud as hell. Grabbing a Rosewill

Grand Total (shipped): $104.52

Okay, now what have I missed, overlooked, screwed up, etc?