Help with my complicated MOBO swap

[sbrown02]

Hello all,

The system I built 4 years ago is just too slow now. I'm doing a lot of video editing with Adobe Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements, and my system is lethargic. At first I thought I'd build a new one, but to save money perhaps I should just upgrade my MOBO, CPU, RAM and power supply (current PSU is Antec 340W), and keep everything else the same. It appears from other posts that this is doable. My question is will upgrading these components fix my problem, or is my memory (only 1gb verses 2 or more) HD setup, or video card more of the bottleneck? As you can tell I'd like to fix my problem with as little expense as possible. Here's my current system:

13-131-450 MB ASUS P4P800 DELUXE SPRINGDALE
19-116-157 CPU P4/2.4CGHz 800M 478P/512K HT
20-145-449 DDRAM 1GB TWINX1024-3200C2 COR
27-106-184 CDRW 52x24x52|LITE ON LTR52246S
27-131-211 DVD-/+RW +R Sony DRU510A
33-124-010 WIRELESS ROUTER LINKSYS|WRT54G
36-113-129 ALTEC LANSING ATP3W 2.1 SPEAKER
37-102-015 S/W MS|WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL SP2
14-102-252 VGA ATI OEM|RADEON 9500 128MB DDR

My harddrive setup includes 2 SATA and 2 IDE drives. The 2 SATA drives are setup in a Raid 1mirroring configuration (onboard chipset VIA 6410) to protect my OS, data and applications on the primary drive. The other two drives are for video storage. They are 7200RPM drives with 8GB memory.

Here's the equipment I'm considering buying to swap out with:

ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6750 – Retail
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
Thermaltake W0106RU Complies with ATX 12V 2.2 & EPS 12V version 700W Power Supply

Again, advice I'm looking for is (a) will this swap fix my problem and is it doable as currently planned; and (b) Any other thoughts/input on the equipment I'm going to swap with (different MOBO, etc.)?

Thanks for your help.

[Cricket]

For what you do with your computer the best upgrade would be the one where you replace the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply. Your current build is decent but the CPU is probably holding you back a bit (the P4s weren't Intel's best processors). But you'll also need to upgrade the video card since newer motherboards don't use AGP video cards anymore.

I would change a few things if this was my computer...instead of getting the ABIT, G.Skill and Thermaltake parts, I'd get a ASUS motherboard, Corsair XMS RAM and either a Corsair, Fortron Source or Seasonic power supply.

One thing you should know about...modern Intel based motherboards that use Intel chipsets don't have native support for IDE drives anymore, it's handled by a third party controller (that sucks) so you might want to get some external HDD housings for your IDE HDDs instead of installing them in your computer.

Cricket

[sbrown02]

Any advice on a good video card for what I'm using my PC for?

Also, what are the steps I should follow to accomplish the swap? Are instructions posted somewhere? A post from GLC back in 12/05 on this subject stated, "The key to swapping a motherboard is before shutdown, change your IDE drivers to standard dual IDE. Then when you boot it up, it will find all your hardware again and you can install the new drivers. If you don't change the IDE drivers, there's a good chance it will bluescreen instead of booting and you will have to do a repair reinstall."

Does this advice apply to me, and if so how do I change the IDE drivers to standard... is that something that's done in the CMOS setup?

Thanks

[flanzig1]

For an upgrade like yours, would do a fresh OS install on a new drive. On new motherboards, you don't have the native IDE controller anymore. The primarary drive controller is SATA.
For a video card, would look to a card in the $100 range which would be the ATI X2600 series or the Nvidia 8400/8500 or low end 8600 series.

[glc]

If your OS (boot) drive is a IDE RAID 1, trying to reuse this in an upgrade is very difficult to pull off. I would highly recommend retiring all your IDE drives - both hard and optical - and go 100% SATA with a complete fresh start.

Your data on your 2 existing SATA drives is safe - and I would HIGHLY recommend you copy any data you want to save that's on the IDE array onto one of those drives before you do *anything*. When you are done, you can put the IDE drives into external housings for additional storage and backups.

[sbrown02]

GLC,

My boot (OS) drive is the SATA Raid 1 setup (2 drives that mirror each other) and the 2 IDE drives are for additional storage. Does that change your answer on going to a complete fresh start with a new MOBO, rather than moving the Raid 1 setup over to a new MOBO?

Thanks

[glc]

No, you can't move the array to a different controller without breaking it. You *can* clone the array to a single drive - then set up a new array and clone it back - but you still have to do a Windows repair reinstall.