buying a motherboard

[dashiel]

I am trying to build my own editing systems. i finally got around to buying a Firewire card and a wireless router for my dsl and now find that although there are empty bays on the back of my computer there are no empty slots.
any suggestions for a new mother board? processor? should i buy them together or separate? how many bays /slots/usbs etc. should i be looking for? i have been told to stay away from celeron processors, what about AMD or pentium IV? i also need a good size housing.
also i have two drives on this computer, is there a limit to number i have run?
any advice would be much appreciated
cheers
Dash

:confused:

[V_I_R_U_S]

1) Yes, stay away from celerons, they aren't very good with handling processor intensive applications, no matter what the speed.

2) Personally, I would buy the AMD Athlon, but the Pentium IVs are very good too. More power than the AMD Athlon, but I am just an AMD fan so that explains it.

3) For slots, I would recommend at least 5 PCI and 1 AGP.

4) as for the number of drives, there is a maximum limit, two devices per IDE connector, which means a total of four on most boards. However, some boards have more than 2 connectors, and you can buy IDE drive controllers as expansion cards. However if you have an SCSI interface ( which I am 99% sure you don't) then you can use up to 38 drives I think. Something like that. If you are talking about minimum limit, yes, if you want to boot up the computer, but you only need one drive.

I hope that answers your questions.

Best Regards

[dashiel]

thanks for the info, on the old computer i had five slots but only 1 free, do you think htat 6 is enought? what is an agp?

can one buy the processor separate form the board? would that make it upgradeable?

[Rocketmech]

More details , Kiddo!... What kind of editing machine you want? What kind of system do you have now? You got a budget?

As for the slot questions, you'll not find a motherboard with more than 6 pci slots, and an AGP slot is a designated video card slot, brown in color and close to the processor area.
The processsor and motherboard are separate components and are purchased separately , though you can buy them as a bundle to save $$.

[dashiel]

Curretnly i have 20 gigs, 256 ram and am working with a 2 year old hp pavilion (window 98).

i thought that i coudl edit on this so i wasn't really prepared for an enourmous expense so the answer to the budget question would be as little as possible, but whatever it takes so that i don;t have to go through all this in the near future.

will all the stuff i have on this computer work on a new mother board? will i need to replace the graphic card?

Soz, for not knowing anything about this stuff , i'm so glad that you guys are out there. trying ot read up on all this stuff is enough to drive a gril to drink!
all i want to do is edit my bloody movie

cheers
Dash
:mad:

[redwolf]

Since you have a Compaq you can also plan on a new ATX case. Compaq cases aren't usually compatible with other mobo's. You didn't say which model Compaq so I will have to assume it probably has integrated video which means a new vidio card will also be needed. You will also probably need to upgrade the memory, depending on the new proc you get and your current memory type and speed. Most of your cards should be transferable depending on their current slot type's. Older mobo's had more ISA slots than current boards. Better budget around $250 - 300 for these upgrades.