Mobo advice for an old Presario

[kabotnik]

I recently acquired an old Presario SR1120NX pc from around 2004. Since I built a box last year for most of my computing needs, my hope was to upgrade the components in the Presario and use it as a media, web, source control, and storage server. Currently it has an old Intel motherboard (Giovani, Giovani2) and a Celeron D processor. As far as I can tell it is a micro-ATX motherboard, but I'm wondering if there is anything I should look for when deciding on a micro-ATX as opposed to a full size ATX. I would like to upgrade to a dual core, but I'm not sure what the minimum requirements would be for something like this. I would like to switch to AMD since I've had good experience with AMD in the past.

The only parts I would need to replace would be the motherboard, CPU, PSU, and probably RAM. The HD and other drives are all SATA drives which I will continue to use for the time being.

Any advice for this endeavor would be appreciated.

 

[o1die]

I would recommend something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx?cm_sp=ShellShocker-_-761446-_-11032011_1 as much of your old stuff needs to be replaced, such as the power supply and ram. If you have any leftover parts, save them for spares or sell them on craigslist. This is the board I use in my system with a sempron 140 and 16 gb of gskill 1333 ddr3: biostar A880GU3+ for $55 after rebate at newegg (link doesn't work). It runs very well, will fit your presario case, and has usb 3.0 and sata 6 support for ssd drives, which I use. Newegg should also have an amd shellshocker deal sometime this week if you want to save some money. By the time you buy a board/cpu/ram/power supply, you'll probably spend at least $200; with the shellshocker special, you will probably get a new case and hardrive for about the same $$ as buying individual parts.

 

[kabotnik]

Best answer selected by kabotnik.