Need Advice... Please Read

D

dodgefate

New Member
Hi all long time subscriber (forgot I even had an account here) first time poster (I think). To start I will give you the back story, ignore this paragraph if you don't feel like reading. My mother's computer died as it over heated and popped all of the capacitors on the mother board. It was pretty outdated anyway. In the mean time to get her by I pieced together a working but super slow computer consisting of a Pentium II processor with 126 mb of ram.... It's pathetic.... My mother lives on a fixed income and is a bit of an internet junkie..... I don't have the money to buy/build her a shiny new fast computer so friends of mine are donating me their old, broken unused or out of date computers. I am trying to do this as cheap as possible.

So here are the questions:

1. Is it cost effective or even possible to attempt to try to cluster all of the ones I get together and build a custom case to hold them all and have them run on windows (unknown version yet)? If so where would I Start.

2. is there any way to connect multiple mother boards?

3. I figure this will be the answer, I'm assuming the best way would to be to take the best compatible parts from all of them and make one monster of a computer... If I do this.... Lets say I take the mother board from computer 1 and the hard drive from computer 3 what is the easiest way to transfer over the bios data so that it will even start?

I am assuming that most of the computers that I will be receiving will have slow outdated processors but I'm hoping that one of the motherboards will have a decent chipset so I could put a half-way decent processor it it. I have never overclocked a processor due to me not wanting to destroy my good computers. I have a above average but not expert knowledge of computers. Basically enough knowledge that I can really mess things up..... Any ideas, help, comments are appreciated!
 
1 - Cost effective - yes. Possible - perhaps.

2 - While you won't be able to daisy chain MoBo's, you may be able to take working parts and combine them to make a better system.

3 - So long as you have a MoBo and CPU that are compatible, the rest is fairly straightforward. The BIOS is part of the MoBo, it has nothing to do with the Drives. It's a self-contained instruction set for the Board that basically tells it it's a Motherboard and that it is capable of having other parts connect to it (HDD, GPU etc). It is completely independent of any other system and can be run without any other peripherals attached. Start with looking at the MoBo/CPUs that are donated and match up the Socket types (AM2, Socket 478, etc), then just do a quick search to see if the specific CPU will work in the specific MoBo.
 
thanks imsati I figured that would be the answer that I would most liley get.. So about overclocking.... I know the potential risks and all where do I start? I know that most of the computers will be dells so i know that It is hard to do it from the Bios menue... I am currently on my Hp laptop and would be willing to experiment with this one Stats are:
Intel Core I5 2.7gh
16 GB ram
7200 rpm HD
 
You can't overclock on a laptop. Not a normal consumer-laptop anyway. You would have to install a modified BIOS, which I would not recommend.
As long as your parts are compatible with each other (AM2 CPU with AM2/AM2+ motherboard, as an example) you should be fine.
You will have to get a new Windows license though, and they usually cost around $80, so if money is an issue, I would recommend Ubuntu.
I may be jumping to conclusion, but since this is build for your mom, she might not be a techie. And if all she ever uses is the internet (anything you can do within a browser), Ubuntu is a great choice.
You won't ever get a virus, because they're all getting made for Windows. You won't have to worry about drivers, that's all done automatically.
It also has great backwards compatibility when it comes to old hardware - in my experience, at least. Also, it's 100% free.

Another option would be to look for a complete system with either socket LGA 775 or AM2 on something like ebay.com
I wouldn't worry about overclocking if I were you, I would worry about assembling a system and then take it from there. You don't need overclocking.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top