On 12/22/2010 7:56 PM, Seth Gordon wrote: > Our Windows machine stopped working, and the guy at Micro Center was > nice enough to tell us “your motherboard’s fried” without charging us > seventy bucks for the diagnostic. OK, I thought, I’ll just go out and > get a new motherboard. How hard can that be? Bwah-hah-hah. > > The machine is an ASUS CM5571, and the motherboard is a P5QL-M-EPU. I > found the specs for the P5QL/EPU (no M) on newegg.com, but since that is > an ATX keyboard and my machine’s motherboard is micro-ATX, I can’t trust > that this accurately describes my machine. I can’t find technical > documentation for the P5QL-M-EPU itself online, and judging from some of > the things I see in the Asus forums, I am not the only user who is > frustrated by this lack of documentation. My email to Asus tech support > on Saturday night has not yet received a response. > > The CPU is a Pentium E5400 / 2.7 GHz, the data bus is 800 MHz, and the > memory is DDR3-1333 SDRAM. Should I just look for any other micro-ATX > motherboard compatible with those chips? (The Asus P5G41C-M *looks* > like it fits the bill.) Will Windows give me grief once it boots up and > discovers that it’s no longer running on the same motherboard as the OEM > supplied? What other frustrations do I have to look forward to?
Windows WILL complain about being on a different motherboard and will need to be reactivated. The catch: since it's an OEM version of Windows it probably won't smoothly reactivate; you'll end up having to call Microsoft's activation phone number and explaining what happened so they'll give you a code to bless the new installation. They generally ARE willing to buy reasonable stories, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting them to cooperate. The other nuisance with a different motherboard is that you will have to figure out how to reconnect the various front panel stuff like the power LEDs. (USB ports and front panel audio, mercifully, are standardized now, and power and disk drive connections have been for a long time.) If the ASUS system designers were too aggressive in minimizing cable sizes so that they just reach things, you might have to replace things like SATA cables. Aside from that, any motherboard that is compatible with your CPU and memory should work, though the back panel connectors might be laid out a bit differently. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
