On 2014-06-19, 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. Belarc says its
a 3.60 gigahertz AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core. The current MB manual says its
an AM3+ socket.

OK, I'm looking for a file storage and internet surfer machine, don't
need blazing speed, or a lot of memory.

If you are tired of paying Microsoft every time you change the
color adjustment on your monitor -- let alone make some more substantial
change -- why not go to some version of linux. Nothing you have listed
above seems to exclusively call for Windows -- unlike certain CAD
programs or the like which may only be *made* for Windows.

So I went to Newegg for MBs,
selected AM3+ socket, FX type processor, and started looking for ones
with lots of SATA and other slots. I came up with these tentative
results: http://tinyurl.com/nofnueh I made some selections to narrow
the field that aren't really needed.

How old is your previous system? You don't say, other than
"several years".

Has Microsoft stopped checking the whole configuration of the
system (how many disks of what size, how much memory, what graphics
card, and all) and just checks the serial number in the CPU now? If
they still do all the checks I mentioned, keeping the same CPU (*if* you
can find a modern motherboard which will accept it) may not be enough to
keep them off your back. Using linux (or some other unix which works on
PC hardware) will not only get them off your back, but also make them
quite unhappy in a way that they can't legally do anything about it. :-)

Any suggestions? Am I on the right track to re use this CPU?

I really don't know. It depends on what they check these days.

I've acquired several computers pre-loaded with XP and more
recently Windows 7, and the first thing that I did was to strip out that
disk and install either OpenBSD, Solaris 10, or Ubuntu linux, depending
on what I wanted to do with the system.

Good Luck,
DoN.

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