On Thursday, June 19, 2014 9:09:01 AM UTC-4, Karl Townsend wrote:
I'm looking for a new motherboard and haven't really kept up with

computer technology for several years now.

If I can re-use the CPU, I will save the cost of this part PLUS greedy

greedy M$oft won't make me pay for ANOTHER win 7 OS disk. I don't want

to reuse it if I'm being penny wise and pound foolish.

I deal mostly with high voltage circuitry/devices, but I did see this in yahoo answers, recently. It seems pretty urgent. I think you should read it..


Reusing a "CPU...You won't find a current motherboard to accept it"

"OK first, NEVER reuse a power supply. I don't care if the power supply is 6 months old. Good power supplies last about 5 years maximum, usually. AVERAGE quality power supplies will go 2-3 years if you are lucky. And when they die (not if, WHEN) they have a nasty habit of destroying other components..
Always use a good quality BRAND NEW power supply for a new build...or even a major upgrade!

If your computer is more than a year old, you might be able to reuse some disk drives. And yes, if your case is good quality, you can probably reuse that.

For the most part though, if your system is more than a few years old it's better to start over from scratch.

Case...cheap enough, do you really want to keep the old one?
Power supply...NEVER use the old one
Motherboard...won't be compatible with well, anything you want to use.
CPU...You won't find a current motherboard to accept it
RAM...You won't find a current motherboard to accept it. If you do find that motherboard, you do not want to buy it.
Video card...Might not fit current motherboards, but is terribly outdated anyway. Get rid of it.
Hard Drive...will slow down your new hardware, UNLESS the hard drive is much newer than the rest of your current system
Optical drive...yeah, you could reuse it. but 5-7 years old? That's got to be close to the end of its useful life anyway (replace it for like 17 bucks)

Basically, start over from nothing.

Another reason you want to replace EVERY component is quite simple...

Whenever you are building a new system, you want to have a COMPLETE, working system handy...in case you need to hop on the web to research something during the build process. "

-- https://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...7150523AABz3nK

(in other words, everything is now designed to become obsolete too quickly for reuse)