old computer+new motherboard=?

[fyire]

Originally Posted by Chai

I doubt so. These machines often have customised layout with customised PSU. I honestly doubt they will fit, even with superglues.

That'll mainly depend on the series I guess. The chunkier cases will be easier to work on, the problematic ones will be the slim or small ones.

All in all, even with the customized layouts of the casing, if the case is big enough, then it should still be possible, but a lot will depend on how much effort is a person willing to put into it lar. Getting a new PSU in will mainly depend on how much work u'll be willing to do with a hacksaw and soldering iron, but after that the choice of hardware will be pretty much limited by how much space there is left over

[The_YongGrand]

Yes - you still can reuse your old casing and put a new m/b inside.

1.) Check the casing's form factor. Is it AT or ATX or mATX?

2.) OEM manufacturer casings shape are different. Check the layout and measure the dimensions first. If the layout is almost as same as the normal m/board layout, chances that fitting the new one into the board is very high. Some of these older m/boards are fastened to the casing base by plastic spacers, and you certainly can't fit screws onto the holes.

Some OEM casings designs are very weird. The NEC (and the HP) PCs from the late 90s are extremely difficult to deal with. The desktop (not Tower PC) are so slim, and then the trick is actually the board - it has a slot which you can fit a board with some PCI slots which then you can put the cards horizontally. Any motherboard will never fit into these ones, and it's only designed for that particular casing.

3.) And finally, check the PSU. A PSU from 5 years ago couldn't do much, the wattages are very low, around 250W. Get a new one, perhaps 300W and above. And even important, newer PSUs have new connectors and also some of them are already SLi ready.

4.) Is the casing fairly large enough? You don't want the PSU to start blocking the CPU heatsink or the CPU heatsink touching the PSU. Some casings have PSU placed too close to the heatsink, and sometimes it IS a few inches on top of the heatsink, which is thermally unfriendly. Make sure the PSU is sideways in the casing.

5.) Older casings are typically smaller - depends on the manufacturer. I'm not sure about IBM ones, but I've serviced a Micron Computer set (bought in 99) and the layout is extremely limited, the wires are all over in the casing and I have to wrestle out the sea of wires and more wires before I could get to inspect the motherboard properly.

I did that before - but not the branded ones. I ripped out the old Athlon XP from my old casing and then put a new Athlon 64 board into it - without any problems.