What a n00b!
I’m in the process of rebuilding one of my parents’ computers that had the motherboard die a little over three months ago. We decided to get a new motherboard, CPU, and memory, as opposed to buying a new, low-end computer. Getting a replacement motherboard was out of the question since this was a five year old computer (AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 266 MHz DDR SDRAM) because it is simply impossible to find a motherboard that supports all of our old components.
I ended up getting a BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 motherboard and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ (1.9 GHz, Brisbane core) along with a gig of 667 MHz DDR2 memory. I chose the motherboard because it has a x8 AGP slot, an IDE slot, and two IDE channels, which would handle all of our old components. I got the processor simply because it was the cheapest dual core processor that I could find.
The parts came in the main on Wednesday and I rushed to put the computer together so that I could get it rebuilt before I leave for school on Saturday. It’s been a very long time since I’ve built a computer and obviously things have changed a bit. I was caught off guard by the pre-applied thermal paste on the heat sink. So was the carpet in my living room. The parents weren’t too happy about that. I completed the otherwise uneventful build and took the computer back downstairs to test it out.
Upon the first boot, the old Windows install tried to boot, but immediately blue-screened. I decided that the computer was probably overdue for a Windows reinstall, so I put in the Windows XP Home CD and rebooted the computer. I immediately noticed weird graphical glitches in the text that was displayed on the screen. I thought that it might be something to do with the graphics card that I was using (possibly died along with the old motherboard), so I plugged the monitor into the on-board video, but did not get a signal. I then removed the video card (maybe the BIOS automatically disables the on-board video when an AGP video card is inserted) and booted the computer again. Well, I tried to boot it anyway. The computer refused to boot until I put the video card back in.
Then I thought about the fact that I was working with a 300W power supply and trying to run a GeForce 4, SoundBlaster Audigy, two hard drives, two optical drives, a case fan, a CPU, and a motherboard. The load seemed to be a little high to me, so I tried out many power requirement calculators around the web and got estimates between about 250W and 350W. I decided to throw in a 450W PS that my dad had in the closet and see if it fixed things. It didn’t change a thing. I decided to call it quits for the night before I went Office Space on it out of frustration.
This morning, my dad talked with the former IT guy at his place of employment to get his feedback on what might be going on. He ended up being right on: the motherboard did not support Athlon 64 X2 processors. I ends up that just being a Socket AM2 motherboard does not mean that it supports all Socket AM2 processors. In this case, the motherboard only supported AMD Sempron 64 processors. So, I’ll be RMA-ing the X2 and getting a Sempron 64 3600+ (2.0 GHz, Manila core) to replace it since it is the cheaper option (versus getting a supporting motherboard and an IDE add-in card). So much for building it before I leave for school.
