<p>I got a desktop computer for free in college. I’m beginning to pack to go back home and I realized the tower weighs a lot. So I took the motherboard out and I’m planning on replacing it in my fried computer at home. The problem is, I don’t know if the motherboard will fit in my tower. Are motherboard sizes standard? The tower that I have is about 2 years old and the motherboard in there is about 3 years old. The good news is that my old motherboard had a 1.4 ghz AMD chip and this motherboard has a 1.3 ghz AMD chip, so quite possibly the motherboards are the same size??</p>
<p>Also will things like tv tuner cards that work on intel supporting motherboards also work without any problem on AMD supporting motherboards?</p>
<p>I just looked up some stuff and the DDR RAM I have at home is PC3200 while the motherboard for this one only supports PC2100. Can I put that faster ram in and just it run slower or will it not work at all?</p>
<p>You got it for free? Niceeee :o</p>
<p>Why not ship it home?</p>
<p>Check this thread for info about that ram backwards compatibility <a href=“http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=293924[/url]”>http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=293924</a> (don’t want to read it all, sorry 
)
Most motherboards are similar sizes (older usually = bigger)</p>
<p>Its not the best idea to move motherboards, because you can really easily mess something up</p>
<p>I don’t want to ship it home because the cost of shipping it home and then back again would easily be >$50. I would probably be carrying the motherboard in my carry-on luggage, so it won’t get damaged.</p>
<p>Let’s summarize:</p>
<p>Your desktop computer at school has a 1.3 GHz AMD processor running PC2100 speed ram.
Your desktop computer at home has a bad motherboard running a 1.4 GHz AMD processor running PC3200 ram.</p>
<p>Most motherboards come standard in the ATX form factor that fit in most computer cases. The motherboards should be interchangeable. The only issue is the number of slots on each board for expansion cards. They must match up. Typically, most motherboards support five slots. There are ATX motherboards that have four or six slots. As long as your home computer has the same number of slots as your school desktop, you should be fine.</p>
<p>The physical dimensions of PC2100 and PC3200 ram are the same. You can insert the faster ram into your working motherboard to see if they work. Check your motherboard manual or on-line to see if you need to change any BIOS settings to accept faster memory.</p>
<p>A bigger issue is your home hard drive. You may have to go into your working motherboard’s BIOS settings to recognize your home computer’s hard drive.</p>
<p>As for TV tuner cards, as long as your desktop meets the processor speed and memory requirements, it should work. All peripheral cards work with either Intel or AMD chipsets (though high-end graphic cards may prefer one over another…). </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>my advice: toss both mobos and buy a new one with an athlon 64 processor.</p>
<p>buy a new one with the core 2 duo! It ownssss</p>