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How to tell if a case can hold a bigger ATX mother board

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JhonConners

Honorable
Jul 17, 2015
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10,790
Short and sweet, I bought a prebuilt which I have mostly upgraded.

It has an MSI 760GM-P34(fx) motherboard which is a micro atx board.

But that is AM3+
and AMD CPUs aren't exactly the greatest for performance, yeah, they're cheap, but that's about it.

So I was thinking of putting in a new cpu, and of course, would need a new mother board.

Based on just sizes of the case and stuff is there any way to tell if it can fit a regular atx board?
 
Solution
Usually you can eyeball it pretty easy, because of the large difference in size between micro ATX and ATX form factors. ATX chassis can take microATX, but not the other way around.
Here's a guideline on ATX sizes, board measurements and standoff spacings: https://img.atwikiimg.com/www19.atwiki.jp/vippc2/attach/12/87/ATX.png
If your case has the holes in the locations numbered A, G and K in the drawing, then you are in business. If not, then not 🙁
To be sure, send us a make and model number of your prebuilt PC.
This is completely unrelated but I just did a win 7 update and it said failed to update reverting changes. It stuck there for around an hour so thinkin it fully broke or froze I shut my PC down, now it won't even boot into safe mode. Help