Inspiron 531 base for barebones?

[kr236rk]

hi,

am having long-term trouble with my dual core Inspiron 531 so thought i'd take the pc by the horns and replace its motherboard - would this be viable on such a model please, and what mobo might i go in for? basically use the pc for video editing, is there anything else i could plug into it to improve my edit experience?

[ps. am nube / hope this post in the right section? :-o]

many thanks

Edited May 26, 2009 by kr236rk

[puntoMX]

Hello Ric, welcome to the forums.

Your system is now based on a NVIDIA GeForce 6150, those chipsets show a lot of heat problems as they are mostly equipped with small heat sinks. It would be wise to upgrade to an AMD based motherboard, a 780G/700 or the more expensive 790G/750 will do fine, personally I would go with the brand Gigabyte and their "Ultra Durable 3" versions.

The RAM is now based on 1GB, 2GB would give you a better overall performance especially when you use Windows Vista, plus, if you have only one RAM module you would have the graphics do their job at 64bit wide memory bus while with 2 equal sized RAM modules you will get a 128bit wide memory bus.

What are the problem you are facing now?

[kr236rk]

Hello Ric, welcome to the forums.

Your system is now based on a NVIDIA GeForce 6150, those chipsets show a lot of heat problems as they are mostly equipped with small heat sinks. It would be wise to upgrade to an AMD based motherboard, a 780G/700 or the more expensive 790G/750 will do fine, personally I would go with the brand Gigabyte and their "Ultra Durable 3" versions.

The RAM is now based on 1GB, 2GB would give you a better overall performance especially when you use Windows Vista, plus, if you have only one RAM module you would have the graphics do their job at 64bit wide memory bus while with 2 equal sized RAM modules you will get a 128bit wide memory bus.

What are the problem you are facing now?

wow thanks PuntoMX - i have been drowning in a sea of unknowingness

there was obviously some sort of driver glitch with the NVIDIA GeForce 6150, because Windows tried to do an automatic update - it succeeded, plunging my system into 'screen black' from which it heroically recovered a couple of times, then went belly-up about 3 days ago ~ no Bios info, no Safe Mode, nothing: so i figured the best move was to swop motherboards rather than claw the nVidia back to some unstable half-life only for it to fail on me again?

your suggestions are cool - something positive for me to consider

[puntoMX]

Do you run Vista by the way?