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Nomake Wan | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 07:49 AM |
ShiMACHaze Group: Advanced Members Posts: 19,542 Member No.: 5,394 Joined: Feb 5th 2005 Location: Drydock | I might detail this post later when I haven't been awake for over 16 hours, running mostly on two 24oz cans of Monster. But the gist of it is, a coworker offered to let me swap his motherboard+cpu with mine. My Intel board and Q6600 don't allow overclocking. His ABIT board+Q6700 do. I thought sure! This'll be easy...as long as I have another person, at least. Since my CPU cooler takes two people to do properly. Backplates and all that shit. So Sensation! and Ethos were over today, and after watching Anime and stuff until about 3AM we (and by that I mean I) decided to start the swap project. That was mistake #1. Mistake #2 was not planning the whole swap stuff out ahead of time. A few mishaps (oh crap, miniATX and ATX brass separators are in different spots! etc) and a few hours later, we had at least my PC swapped over to the donor motherboard+cpu. Fire it up and... it shuts down. Crap. Fire up #2, it POSTs... and stops. I notice it's not initializing the keyboard, but it's initializing the Xbox360 controller. I rip out everything except the keyboard and monitor. No dice, same shit. Reset the CMOS, same shit. f**k. At that point it's almost 6AM. We swap back to my original hardware setup like professionals, like trained warehouse workers assembling HPs. And with about as much care, too. My assistant clocks out around 7AM, and I finish the boring wiring bits and stuff not related to physically attaching motherboards or CPU coolers by about 8:00. Fire it up and... thank god, I didn't fry anything. Back in business. Donor PC is still in various pieces around my room, and I have to clean it up tonight so I can have a guest over too. It won't be happening right now, though, because I'm about to crash so I can head to work in 7 hours. It's just how it's gonna go for now. And if I see my coworker there today, I'm just gonna give him the bird for getting the idea in my head. In retrospect, it's a terrible plan. Even if it had worked (and the odds were against me since I was removing his CPU cooler and his RAM and swapping my own in), my OS would have crapped a brick trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Why I couldn't have just been happy with what I had... ugh. I tell you, never before have I been so happy to see my PC. I will never take it apart again unless it's to add another hard drive or some other mundane, effortless task. So learn from my mistake. Don't swap motherboards. It just does not work. Either build yourself a new rig or upgrade a component. If the component you're upgrading is the motherboard, just build yourself a new damn rig. That's all. I'm out. |
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Lebon14 | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 08:54 AM |
🎧 Group: Advanced Members Posts: 6,594 Member No.: 18,005 Joined: May 25th 2006 Location: Canada | It works to swap motherboards but you have to your homework and see if the motherboard is compatible with all your existing hardware. The most important are the RAM and CPU. |
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Möbius | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 09:33 AM |
IDW Top Poster Group: Advanced Members Posts: 33,844 Member No.: 3,524 Joined: Oct 2nd 2004 Location: Update Profile | Swapping mobos is OK, but only if they're the same model ( or similar enough to use the same drivers ). I swapped an SLI-DR to an SLI-DR Expert a couple years back, but that's the same chipset, etc. Sorry to hear about the situation, must have been really frustrating. |
MetalMan777 | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 10:23 AM |
Snooping as usual Group: Advanced Members Posts: 1,780 Member No.: 32,588 Joined: Apr 13th 2009 Location: what are you doing in my swamp? | Not to mention windows usually flips a shit if you swap mobo's. I've never had a problem with swapping motherboards personally, but I've seen an ATI graphics card running on nvidia drivers. |
khat17 | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 02:05 PM |
IDW SIMPLETON Group: Advanced Members Posts: 1,168 Member No.: 17,668 Joined: May 7th 2006 Location: Mandeville, Jamaica | Some links with instructions that may have been an alternative. http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/...ing-windows.ars http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/0...creen-of-death/ http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/MBoard_WinXP.htm I've done this before, but that was a LONG time ago. You can swap it out and such, but it depends on your OS. Never done it with Vista or above. Supposedly Paragon Software has something that can be used to take your existing OS and make it work on new hardware - never experimented with it though..... |
Nomake Wan | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 09:31 PM |
ShiMACHaze Group: Advanced Members Posts: 19,542 Member No.: 5,394 Joined: Feb 5th 2005 Location: Drydock | To those saying the OS would've been okay--I somewhat agree. I know it'll 'work' because my brother's computer had something similar happen and it worked... it just got pissed-off at drivers. I wouldn't have expected it to BSOD. That actually would have surprised me. The real issue here was that I couldn't keep his RAM. I talked with him some at work and came to the same conclusion that my 8GB wasn't compatible. It might have worked with tweaked voltages but without the keyboard operational that would've been difficult to do. At this point, it's just not worth it. I'll reassemble his PC and hand it back. As Lebon said, this may have worked out had I done my research on the motherboard in question ahead of time. I'm sure that the swap would've worked had I kept his RAM, but that was not an option. |
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Sensation! | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 10:05 PM |
As expected of country grown vegetables Group: Special Snowflake Posts: 2,330 Member No.: 19,520 Joined: Aug 14th 2006 Location: Redondo Beach, CA. | glad we got that all sorted out though. it seems like everytime i work on a computer late at night, something terrible always happens lol. |
BOZZ | Posted: Sep 21 2010, 10:12 PM |
IDW Posts A Freaking LOT Member Group: Advanced Members Posts: 28,412 Member No.: 1,414 Joined: Mar 9th 2004 Location: Update Profile | When I first saw the title of the thread I was thinking that in the process of the swap the motherboards got damaged or something, glad that didn't turn out to be true. |
MR_2 | Posted: Oct 6 2010, 10:51 PM |
Radeon Force Group: Members Posts: 348 Member No.: 892 Joined: Oct 9th 2003 Location: Los Angeles | That's what I used to do when I was in high school, since back then computers were simple techs. Now days every techs are complicated with the evolution. Though I thought it was fun to do so, check out the different set ups. It is a pain in the ass when you're doing everything in the mid night, and I've been there before too...straight 6 hours of none stop taking things in and out. |
Spaz | Posted: Oct 7 2010, 06:55 AM |
Just a guy towing a car across the country to chase a dream. Group: FORUM MODERATOR Posts: 9,272 Member No.: 30,193 Joined: Jul 25th 2008 Location: Plymouth, MN | I've swapped boards sporting completely different chipsets (same CPU, though), used the same windows (Vista) install, and had it boot the first time and be 100% stable (before and after new driver installs). There's got to be a hardware conflict of some sort going on in your case. |
Nomake Wan | Posted: Oct 7 2010, 03:09 PM | ||
ShiMACHaze Group: Advanced Members Posts: 19,542 Member No.: 5,394 Joined: Feb 5th 2005 Location: Drydock |
You missed the part where the likely culprit was incompatible RAM, I'm guessing. And that running the compatible RAM wasn't an option because it was 4GB compared to 8GB? | ||
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Tessou | Posted: Oct 7 2010, 03:26 PM |
More NEGATIVE than a black hole Group: ADMINISTRATOR Posts: 19,345 Member No.: 12,263 Joined: Sep 12th 2005 Location: Update Profile | The highest swap I'll do before calling it quits on a rig is a CPU swap (and the first time was hilariously rife with error). Never had a problem with the motherboard so I never found reason to try swapping. |
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Möbius | Posted: Oct 7 2010, 08:37 PM | ||
IDW Top Poster Group: Advanced Members Posts: 33,844 Member No.: 3,524 Joined: Oct 2nd 2004 Location: Update Profile |
I had one burn out, replaced by one of same model, then I went to the revised version of the mobo. Same chipset though... | ||
Nomake Wan | Posted: Oct 7 2010, 10:39 PM |
ShiMACHaze Group: Advanced Members Posts: 19,542 Member No.: 5,394 Joined: Feb 5th 2005 Location: Drydock | If my mobo were bad it'd be a different story--I wouldn't have any option and so would have no choice but to invest in different RAM. Or, I could replace it with the same motherboard (or, as Carver said, one with the same chipset). Replacing the CPU would also work--I could have kept the Q6700... ...but it's only 0.1 faster than my old chip, and I still can't overclock it on the Intel board. |
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