My desktop died. Friday it froze up. Powered down, left it alone until Sunday when I tried again. I was able to use it for 10 minutes, and it froze. Kept trying to start it - if it would boot, it began to freeze even faster. Yesterday TheKid tried to boot it up, got to the “Welcome” screen and it froze.
Today I had a tech guy come out, he opened it up and said more than likely I fried the motherboard. The fan was completely clogged with dust - it was bad.
It’s an Acer Aspire M5641.
He said it’s pretty simple to replace it, I just need to go buy one. With my previous computer, I had no problems tearing it apart, I replaced the hard drive, video card, etc. So doing it my self - what’s the worst I could do? Break a dead computer?
However, I have no idea what I should get. I’m looking at MicroCenter (because I can go buy it today) and they have motherboards from $60 - $200.
I’m not so sure the technician is correct. Unless you can see any popped capacitors, this sounds more like a cooked CPU.
You need to be very careful when replacing a motherboard. You need to get one into which all your other components will fit, particularly the CPU and memory. And it needs to be sized correctly for your case - MicroATX in your case, I think. And you still have the possibility of the component you replace not being the faulty one. It might be better to buy yourself a barebones system - case, motherboard, memory, and PSU - and transplant your current HDD and graphics card. Don’t forget to transfer the Windows license correctly.
First of all, if the fan wasn’t working, try just replacing the fan. The symptoms sound like they could just be from the CPU overheating.
If it’s not just the fan then it could be the MB, the CPU or the power supply. With the way it’s crashing at different points in the boot up, the power supply becomes a bigger suspect, though it’s not clear.
He said it was overheating due to the dust (and the spiderwebs, and the spider, and we do have three cats). When you turn it on, you can hear spinning, like it wants to start… but it does nothing.
I faced a similar issue, mobo was dead, and I ended up replacing the mobo and cpu together–worked like a charm (of course, IANA Computer Dr, YMMV, etc). Microcenter has some really good combo deals, particularly around the holidays. I took my tower in with me so the sales duder could find one that fit my case.
I wouldn’t recommend paying for their diagnostic fee, though. It’s INSANE. It was cheaper to gamble my luck on the mobo being dead and replace it than it would have been to get the diagnostic and then have to replace it anyway. Unless you have a laptop, in which case you can’t swap things out yourself.
You will need to, in the future, use canned air to clean out your pc’s innards on a weekly basis with all the cats–and there was a spider IN YOUR CASE? gross Also look into getting a new case with multiple fans. I have one blowing in and one blowing out.
Are you sure you can even get the CPU off the old motherboard? A lot of mobos in retail desktops use surface mount CPUs.
You probably want a 2.2Ghz or faster CPU to replace the one you had.
Dual core is standard these days, but not necessary.
64-bit is the wave of the future as well.
If you do an equivalent replacement, you’d be buying a 32-bit 2.2Ghz single-core CPU. They’re dirt cheap, but they’re already obsolete technology. Just so you know.
Once you know which CPU you want, you’ll know which motherboard you need to buy. You have to match mobo to CPU.
Once you have that all matched up, you have to decide what parts of your existing computer you want to keep, and then make sure your new motherboard is compatible with that, including:
[ul]
[li]hard drive connections (eSATA? SATA? SCSI?)[/li][li]CD-ROM connection (SATA? SCSI? Proprietary?)[/li][li]Video card (AGP? PCI Express?)[/li][li]Audio (builtin? PCI?)[/li][li]LAN card (builtin? PCI?)[/li][li]Firewire?[/li][/ul]
But don’t panic. The easiest way to tell is to take the computer apart and then take the motherboard/CPU/memory, drive cables, and add-in cards to MicroCenter. Or better yet, take photos of both sides and take those in.
