new hardware

[rallynavvie]

Well I've been dealing with some bad caps that need replacing on my main workstation's board making cold boots difficult and lately causing random reboots. I swapped in a much larger power supply, a PC Power & Cooling 850W monster, to alleviate some of the power issues due to the caps. Since the DH800 is well-known in the enthusiast community for being one of the best workstation boards built on the 875 chipset I didn't want to just get rid of it but replacing caps is more than I can handle and nobody locally would touch it so my only option is to mail it in for repairs.

Instead I've found a replacement board with better chips. The revision 1.2 board fixed the cap issue and allowed the chips to be overclocked without pin mods like on my rev 1.0 board. And since the seller was parting out his system I got a pair of 3.2 Gallatins with the board.

Unfortunately this means PC surgery and downtime and I hate having to re-install Windows after doing so not long ago to try to resolve the reboot issues. I know you need to re-install Windows on a new system board but what if the board uses the same BIOS and only the processors are faster? Should I try just swapping the board/procs and see how stable XP stays afterwards?

[aedipuss]

i'd only consider it if the 2 boards use exactly the same bios. otherwise there might be problems.

[Soopafresh]

Theoretically, you should be able to change the mobo without a reinstallation of Windows

http://ngohq.com/home.php?page=Articles&go=read&arc_id=36

Try it, but be prepared to reinstall Windows. Make sure you back up your "Documents and Settings" folder, and your bookmarks.

[Video Head]

I have done it a few times but on Pentiums running Win98. Some quirkyness on 2 and 1 that had video and sound issues. A reinstall is a few hours at most including updates, apps and data...highly recommended to do it right.

[rallynavvie]

My worry isn't so much the board but the processor difference. The board is the same model, only the hardware revision is different. The changes include better capacitors and the ability to OC the chips without the pin mod that was needed for my old board. The BIOS used on both boards is identical. The old procs are 130nm 3.06/533 with 1MB L3. The new ones are 90nm/3.2/533 with 2MB L3.

I already have everything backed up from the last time I re-imaged which was about 3 months ago. I just hate re-installing all my applications and getting the preferences back to my liking

[aedipuss]

should be ok to try. after the switch if windows doesn't "find" any new hardware(other than faster cpus) on the first boot you are probably good to go. you can always re-install the m.b. driver infs and force windows to scan for hardware changes if it doesn't seem quite right.

[lordsmurf]

CPU changes don't really affect Windows much. I've done it before, no problems. Changing the motherboard always fubar'd my IDE/SCSI drivers and the power settings (locks on shutdown). Always have to reinstall OS.

[rallynavvie]

Swapping boards is a PITA

I had to reset the CMOS which caused an issue with the PCI devices and I lost one for some reason but otherwise Windows has been running fine. I'll post CPU-Z screenshots later.

[redwudz]

When I changed over to a quad core CPU, I did it without putting in the new BIOS for quad CPUs first. I didn't think it would let me install it before changing CPUs. (OS type BIOS install) Bad idea. I couldn't even get to the BIOS screen. So I had to pull out the quad, put the old CPU back in, put in the new BIOS, shut down, then put the quad CPU back in. I don't know what I was thinking

I've replaced motherboard caps once. But I had two obvious bad ones. It wasn't too bad. The hardest part was to find matching caps that would fit the MB holes and have the proper capacitance and voltage ratings. I used desoldering braid to wick up the excess solder and make the old caps easier to pull. Just a bit of work.