upgrades

Mother of all upgrades
By Don Labriola
(7/11/02)
Upgrading your system can be a great way of guarding against obsolescence, but sooner or later, old faithful will need more than just a new graphics card or another 128MB of RAM. Keeping up with the times will demand the biggest upgrade of all: a new motherboard.
A new motherboard with CPU and a heat sink and fan.
Upgrading a motherboard is more an exercise in courage and persistence than a show of expertise, but most motherboard-upgrade warriors have a horror story or two to share. The good news is today's motherboards are far more consumer-friendly, thanks to better documentation and jumper-free configuration procedures. As long as you approach the upgrade methodically, you can get through it without wishing you hadn't started.

Finding a motherboard requires a bit of forethought and research. For starters, you'll have to narrow your selections to those that support your CPU of choice. If you're determined to move your 256MB of PC133 SDRAM to your new motherboard, you'll need a board that accommodates SDRAM DIMMs. (For reviews of a few top choices, check out our roundup, "Modernize your motherboard.")

In this article, we'll lead you through the steps necessary to revitalize your old PC with a spanking-new system board. For our example, we overhauled a 450MHz Pentium II-based system running Windows 98 by installing a new Intel D850MVSE motherboard ($149 average) configured with a 2.2GHz Pentium 4 CPU ($684 average). This meant replacing the chassis to accommodate the Pentium 4 motherboard. If your system is more than a year old, chances are you'll have to do the same (more on that in a moment).

Expect the process to take a few hours. In addition to disconnecting and possibly removing every component in your PC, you'll have to coax Windows back to life after you've rebuilt your system. But the increased performance and sense of satisfaction you achieve should be ample reward.
Don Labriola is a frequent contributor to Computer Shopper and ZDNet. Tune-Up is featured monthly in Computer Shopper magazine.