Are mobo's universal?

bamhm182

bamhm182

New Member
I was going to get a new mobo for my Dell from pricewatch.com, I was wondering, will any mobo fit in the computer, or does it need to be a certain kind of mobo to work? Also, will this get rid of any compatibility problems that my current mobo has, like only allowing about 768 MB of Ram and 1 GHz or whatever it allows now?
 
Nope. There are a variety of mobos like ATX, BTX, Extended ATX, Micro ATX, etc. I doubt that a new mobo would fit into a Dell case because companies like Dell and HP install their mobos differently(but some mobos will fit just fine). You can't just buy a motherboard and install it, you have know what kind of CPU you have and what socket it is, if you have on-board video or an AGP/PCI/PCI-E slot for a video card, what kind of memory you want to use and a lot of other things. If you do buy the right mobo and everything else then you'll also need to reinstall the OS to prevent some problems.
 
I don't care about reinstalling the OS, I've only had it up and running for a few days, so I havn't really gotten anywhere, also I was going to get a mobo/CPU combo, so the CPU I will get will be compatable with the mobo, the CPU I have now is a Pentium 3, 500 MHz, Slot 1, and what do you mean they install it differently, are the screw holes in differant places or something? and what's the AGP/PCI/PCI-E slot? sorry, I'm still learning.
 
Is the AGP/PCI/PCI-E slot the ones that the ethernet care and the other cards go into, or the one that's a little pushed over and smaller and a differant color, if it's this one, than I have a monitor card there, and where can I find out what kind of memory I have?
 
AGP, PCI, PCI-E are different "connections" for video cards that are found on the mobo. AGP is being phased out, PCI-E x16 is the newest and latest(you probably won't have to worry about a PCI video card if you have AGP, PCI-E or on-board video). About the different mobo installations, yes, the screw placements are pretty much the biggest problem.
 
bamhm182 said:
Is the AGP/PCI/PCI-E slot the ones that the ethernet care and the other cards go into, or the one that's a little pushed over and smaller and a differant color, if it's this one, than I have a monitor card there, and where can I find out what kind of memory I have?
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Most ethernet cards go in the PCI slot. There are normally several of these on the board, and are almost always white.

And no motherboard are not universal, the motherboards can only fit certain types of cpu's, as well as certain types of video cards and memory.
 
okay, thanks, where's the video card located, so I can see which ones are compatable with my video card? Is that where I plug my monitor into?
 
bamhm182 said:
okay, thanks, where's the video card located, so I can see which ones are compatable with my video card? Is that where I plug my monitor into?
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The video card slot is generally the top one on the motherboard, and yes it is what you plug the monitor into

I don't know about Dells, but my Compaq motherboard was a regular MicroATX
 
it looks just like the other ones, but it's pushed over to the right a little and smaller
and about the ram, what kinds of memory are there? I thought that there was just one kind? Do you have a website with pictures of differant memory? can you please go into better detail on this, so far it sounds like I could get a differant mobo and fix it if somethings wrong(drill holes if screws are differant and stuff)
 
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no, not in the motherboard, in the case, haha! I was planning to drill holes in the case and bolt the motherboard on using the holes I just drilled and the holes already in the mobo

Thanks
 
bamhm182 said:
no, not in the motherboard, in the case, haha! I was planning to drill holes in the case and bolt the motherboard on using the holes I just drilled and the holes already in the mobo

Thanks
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It might work if you are really skilled.....technically there is no problem with that. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to
 
well of course I'm not going to do it if I don't have to, but there's always that possibility that I will have to.

BTW today's my 14th birthday.
 
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