Upgrading motherboard

Look at the case. If all of the peripheral connectors for the MB are on a Little rectangle panel on the back of the MB it is most likely an ATX style MB which can be replaced by any other ATX style MB. Watch your power supply as HP is notoriously stingy with the watts and a P4-3GHZ will probably use more power than the celeron in your current system.

All of the major PC manufactures use a lot of proprietary hardware.

Looking at the product information, I would expect a MATX (micro-ATX) motherboard is in your system.

The problem you will have with a different motherboard is that the I/O shield (where the connectors are) may be built into your case.

Unless you find a motherboard with the exact same connector layout, it won't fit right.

Another common issue is the power supply.
Odds are that you will want / need a larger power supply.
Unless the power supply in your case is a standard full size ATX supply, you won't be able to fit a new power supply in the case.

HP may even use non-standard connectors for the power supply.

Bottom line, I recommend spending an extra $20 to $50 and treat yourself to a new case to go along with your new motherboard.

Chas

You are unlikely to find a M'Board that will fit the case and even if you did you couldn't replace the Power supply as the one is way to underrated for any 3 GIG CPU installation.

It will be easier and faster to replace the case as well and while you can get some cheap ones the Power supplies in these can leave a lot to be desired I've seen one example where one has failed and allowed mains voltage into the case with some fairly disaterious results.

So I would recommend one of the Antec cases or a cheap case with a good Power supply like Antec or Evermax both will set you back a bit but you will be rewarded with a stable system afterwards. You'll also most likely need to replace the RAM as well if you use an Intel M'Board you'll need 2 sticks to get the most out of a P4 and I would recommend makers like Cosair or Kingston again because you get a nice stable system.

For a replacement M'Board go with one that doesn't have onboard Video as this will slow things up way too much and stick with the known brands like ASUS, ABIT, Gygabyte and the like as they offer a good warrantee service and have nice stable Boards.

As far as which type of CPU to use it all depends on what you want the thing to do if it is for games the AMD will work the best but if it is for a business application I would go with Intel as they seem to be the more reliable systems and have less down time or crashes which isn't overly important while playing games but can be costly if you loose a few hours of data entry or CAD processing.

Lets know if that was of any help.

Col

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