[phillpower2]

I always stress the importance of having an adequate quality and output of PSU and Antec is one of the better brands, the one downside to your PSU is its age, the combined +12V rails should put out around 24 amps between them which is enough for the suggested card and as long as the unit produces the claimed max of 336W you will be fine.

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phillpower2, I plan to buy and install the micro-ATX motherboard and the CPU and RAM you recommended, holding off on the video card until I see how well the current card works. It will be about a month before the project gets moving because I'm traveling in the interim. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for your advice (and patience).

 

Regards,

Warren

 

[Day_late]

phillpower2, I plan to buy and install the micro-ATX motherboard and the CPU and RAM you recommended, holding off on the video card until I see how well the current card works. It will be about a month before the project gets moving because I'm traveling in the interim. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for your advice (and patience).

 

Regards,

Warren

 

[terry1966]

just for info, if your case is for an atx motherboard it may not have the standoff holes required to install a micro-atx motherboard so i'd check that first before buying.
 
eg.
http://hardforum.com...d.php?t=1141865
 

[phillpower2]

phillpower2, I plan to buy and install the micro-ATX motherboard and the CPU and RAM you recommended, holding off on the video card until I see how well the current card works. It will be about a month before the project gets moving because I'm traveling in the interim. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for your advice (and patience).

 

Regards,

Warren

 

 

No problem and thanks for the update Day_late 

[Day_late]

Best Answer

Time for an update. I visited with my son and family in Japan and discovered the Intel NUC; my son's using one to minimize their household power consumption. I decided to buy one and got the i3 core device, put in 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, and loaded ubuntu. The setup makes a neat small package and runs very well.

 

I replaced the RAM on my old machine, the subject of this upgrade discussion, and it still senses only 2.7GB of 4GB RAM so I think there must be a problem on the motherboard. I did a clean install of ubuntu and it runs, but very slowly. I think I'll try one or two lightweight linux distros and see how they do. If they don't run well the machine will go away.

 

Thanks for the advice here. In the end, I didn't follow through on the project but I'm pleased with the outcome.

 

Regards,

Warren

[phillpower2]

Hello Day_late,

 

The amount of Ram reported by an OS will not be the full 4GB, this because a % of the memory is allocated to the onboard video chip and some is tied up with the OS itself, it also depends on the version of Ubuntu/Linux you use and where earlier versions are concerned like Windows 32 or 64 bit.

 

Checking how much Ram is detected in the BIOS will determine if there is a problem, if 4GB is reported in the BIOS your Ram and DIMM slots are good.