Should I fix my PC or replace it?

williamh1

It appears that the motherboard on my Medion 8083, bought at Aldi just over 3 years ago and so, unfortunately, just out of warranty, has given up the ghost.

Could I have your opinions on whether it would be a good idea to trash the machine and replace it with, for example, the DELL E520 which seems to be highly rated on this website.

If so, would it be fairly straightforward to copy across the data on the Medion's hard disk?

Alternatively, is it easy to replace the motherboard with a suitable replacement for the MSI 7048 board which is currently installed.

Any help or advice gratefully received

Nikolai

Get a new one. Take the HDD out of the Medion and install it in the new one as another disk drive that you can use for backups etc.
Or you could buy a hard drive caddy for it and use it as an external drive.

Idiophreak

To be honest, if you're confident it's just the MB has gone, I don't see why you wouldn't just replace it...if you were getting bored of that PC, it will be easy to copy the stuff over to the new one, but if it was meeting your needs before, buying a new mb will be a lot cheaper than buying a new PC for the sake of it...

rygon

yeh its definately cheaper to buy a new mb (£60 or so)...but are sre it is that and not the power supply or processor???
my psu went, which in turn took out my mb and processor...got new ones and then i found that it had affected my harddrive as well...so i had to get one of those as well. Although i did have fun building it and its now to my specand fast as h3ll

morris7

An old motherboard, especially an MSI one, will be pretty cheap, i would say maybe even £20 - £25 online. You will need to be able to put your processor, ram and graphics card etc onto you new board though, and also reconnect its power, the hard drives, and your CD drives. Depends on your ability i suppose! And remember to stay static-free when doing it :-)

williamh1

Thanks guys - anyone know where I could get hold of a suitable motherboard?

motorguy

ebay, but unless you're really up on your pc repairs i wouldnt start.

There is an offer on an e520 duo core with 250gb HDD, 1Gb RAM, DVD writer and 19 inch screen for £294 - check out https://www.dmxdimension.co.uk - it redirects you to the appropriate DELL bargain.

The 19 inch screen is probably worth £140 if you dont need it on ebay, which means the machine will stand you £150...

cheepsk8

You need to tell us what processor (brand, model and socket type - although the first two will do) and the type of ram. You should be able to find this out on the medion website or by google.

Stantheman

My mobo blew a few weeks ago and I was thinking much the same as you. In the end I bought a new mobo and processor for £54. I made sure that my existing graphics card, soundcard, power supply was compatable and ended up with an atlon XP 2900 as against my old Athlon 2000 so its quite a bit quicker than before. Putting it together was really easy and took about half an hour. I was suprised to find that I didnt even have to reinstall windows or anything else as once I switched it on everything appeared as it was before the mobo blew. If your short on cash go for a new mobo as its not as bad as it seems.

BeerBelly

If you are using same Grahpics card (if not onboard) and soundcard, ethernet ..etc. - you can use the exisiting hardrive. You can still use the existing HD even is these things are slightly different, but would have to reinstall/update drivers.

You would only want to migrate the data from the harddrive if windows is corrupt/damaaged and cannot be repair. Eitherway getting the data off a Hard Drive is very easy.

Good Luck.