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I recently upgraded three of my Computers with new Mother Boards, CPUs and Cases.

The first one was a Packard Bell 166 Mhz

The second one was a HP Pavilion 6360 366 Mhz

The third one mine, was aVbox 450 Mhz,( I also added a 40 gig Western Digital 7200 rpm harddrive and a Geforce2 Ti 64 AGP Graphics card ).

Each one of these Computers had the following in them, 8 gig hard drives, Sound Blaster sound cards, Linksys Network cards, CD ram drives, Floppy drives and Voodoo3 2000 Graphic cards.

Here is what I did to upgrade them:

Bought a ATX cases with a 300 watt power supplies, Gigabyte Motherboard GA-71XEH, Duron 800 MHz CPUs, Case fans, CPU Fans and 256 megs of Micron ram.

The case was $60.00 and came with the 300 watt power supply, 800 Duron CPU $59.00, CPU Fan $15.00, Motherboard $89.00, Case fan $8.00, Ram $42.00, Total =$263.00

Before I started, I wanted to just hook up the Harddrives to the new Mobo and not Reformat them, so before I started taking them apart I went into the Device Manager and Removed everything, I saved the Mouse for the last, so I didn't have to use the Key Board. This is not, the recommended method but I just didn't feel like reinstalling everything. You should Reformat the drive before you use it in a new system, then install everything.

Next I put the Motherboard in the new case, it was pretty easy, you screwed in brass supports into the case to line up with the holes in the mobo, then set the mobo on the brass supports and screw it in place.

Next I put in the CPU, you have to be careful doing this, the chips are very fragile, if you chip it just a little it is a goner. You line up the notched corner of the chip to the proper corner of the Socket, it should drop in with 0 pressure ! Then you lock it in place.

Next is tricky to, attaching the CPU fan, I bought one with the tape insulator instead of messing with the cream, you have this between the processor and the Heat sink for better heat transfer. You make sure you have the large notched side of the Heat Sink facing the raised part of the Socket, clip that side, then holding the Heat Sink up above the chip, set it in place. then attach the other clip, then plug the power cord into the Motherboard.

Next I installed the Ram, the Power connector, screwed in the case Fan and plugged that in, plugged in the wires for the power to the Harddrive, switches and lights, this came with easy to follow direction and pictures to follow.

This is a picture of the Mobo and the Specs for the: GIGABYTE GA-71XEH Mobo

VIA KT133E+686B AGset, Socket A FSB 200 CPU, # DIMM / ATX, 5 PCI / 1 ISA / ATA100. It will support a 600 MHz to a 1.4 GHz. No onboard sound or graphics, I really dislike disabling those.

( Parts were bought at RamTechnologies in Wi )

Next I installed the , Harddrive, CD-ROM drive and the Floppy drive, hooked up all the power connectors and IDE connectors.

Next I installed the Cards, Voodoo card, Sound card and the Network card, you may want to just install the Drives if you are doing a fresh install of the OS, then after the OS is installed, install the Cards one by one.

Next I hooked up everything to the back of the Computer, plugged it in and crossed my fingers, said a little prayer and fired it up. Amazingly it worked, the Bios did it's normal Beeps and fired up. Before I let the OS load I went into the New Bios first to set it up the same as I did in the old Bios, then I saved the settings and rebooted. When I Rebooted I booted to the Windows Startup Disk and the Windows CD, in other words I did a reinstall of Windows, I did not save the old registry. Windows found most everything, had some Device Manager problems but I just Removed them, after I installed the New Bios Software, Windows was able to Detect everything. I had to reinstall my Directx, Windows reinstalled Version 6, I installed Version 8.1. There were a couple of programs I had to reinstall and Drivers, but nothing major. All in All it went really smooth and going from a 200 MHz or 366 MHz to a 800 Mhz , Whew what a difference, especially in games like Unreal Tournament or Quake III, also I'm amazed at how fast IE and Outlook opens COOL !!! Definitely worth the $ 268 and thats a lot cheaper then having to spend $1700.00 on a new Computer.

Update: Added Geforce2 Ti AGP 64 meg Graphics cards to all three computers and more Ram, I'm running 512 Pc133, Matts 290, Debs 192, plus added Creative Labs Inspire 2.1 Speaker System for mine and Matt got the Creative Labs Inspire 4.1 Surround Sound Speaker System Model: 4400. Next I'm getting an Athlon 1.4 Ghz processor with the 200 FSB.

Here is a link to my recent build, a Gaming Machine Build your own Computer

This is a Link to Information on all aspects of the Motherboards motherboards.org