Replacement needed for socket AM2 motherboard (M2N-SLI Deluxe)

[Schmutz]

Hello,

My socket AM2 based computer has a faulty motherboard and needs a replacement to get it up and running again. It does not turn on, I have ruled out the other components as the cause of this problem.

The other components are:

AMD Athlon 64 4xxx/5xxx+ X2 series dual core processor
2GB PC3200 RAM
Asus 7900GS GPU

It looks like a replacement will cost around £25-60 judging by what is available on ebuyer.com.

Any suggestions/recommendations? Anything on par with the old motherboard will be fine. I won't need something future proof as this is only a secondary computer my family uses.

I will be upgrading my own computer next year and passing it down to them so we are only looking at getting this computer back up and running in the meantime (they are currently stuck with the aging laptop!)

Thank you in advance your help will be much appreciated

also, Merry Christmas =)

 

[EDO219]

You might have made a typo in describing your CPU. Is it an Athlon 64 X2 4600+?

I am surprised how few retailers are selling AM2 boards these days. TigerDirect has two and Newegg has three available. Personally, I would go with the Foxconn one, but I am biased for Newegg. haha

 

[Schmutz]

aha. I actually forgotten which CPU it had, it is somewhere amongst the 4xxx/5xxx+ X2 series hehe.

Thank you for the suggestions, PYGMUS. I'm based in UK so unfortunately newegg is not an option. I looked around some UK sites for the Foxconn M61PMV AM2+/AM2 board you mentioned but it was out of stock.

I mostly use ebuyer.com for computer components. There are a few socket AM2 boards on the site but I am not confident which ones will be fully compatible with my system.

Ebuyers selection is here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Motherboards-AMD/subcat/Socket-AM2-AMD

any suggestions?

 

[EDO219]

Hopefully you have already ordered a replacement board before I got around to posting this. xD

If not, you might go with the inexpensive Asrock N68C-S. That board seems to be fairly reliable based on the reviews and its integrated graphics (GeForce 7025) is better than that of the other boards in case your GPU dies as well.

 

[dikbozo]

You could well consider an AM2+ board that uses DDR2 and there are more of these available as well. here is what I found:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pricelow&q=am2+&sq=motherboard&limit=20&page=1

The one I would look at first is this one:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/170282

The main reason I go in this direction is that ASUS has recently been updating almost all the older boards through BIOS updates to allow for the running of Athlon II and Phenom II CPUs in most of their older boards. I personally have an Athlon II X2 255 running in an ASUS M2A-VM which uses the old 690G chipset.

As you are coming from a Nvidia based board perhaps you might consider this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/205512

This too will also allow for the upgrade to both Athlon II and Phenom II CPUs. There is no reason for you to throw out the perfectly usable CPU that you have, this would just allow for even longer use of the other components.

Good luck.

 

[Schmutz]

Thank you for the help and support PYGMUS, dikbozo

I went with the Asrock N68C-S as suggested by PYGMUS and it seems to have done the trick (appears my diagnosis was correct!) I will report back at a later date once I have installed correct drivers/can confirm everything is stable.

Also, it booted the previous windows 7 64bit operating system with the new board (I thought major hardware changes prevented this) I may get to avoid the headache of formatting/doing a fresh OS installation