Looking for advice on a mobo

[pcon]

Hi there, I'm not very much in the know but am looking for advice on replacing a faulty motherboard. The PC is an alienware one bout four years old no distiguishing name or model number on it. Anyhow one day it just wouldn't display anything, I tried all the little available suggestions I could find on it such as resetting the BIOS etc, but no joy.There is an LED display on the mobo which alternates between 23 and 45 as error codes and I've read somewhere that it's as good as dead.
My problem is I don't know what I should be looking for as a replacement. It is a Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H board, more details can be found here. I have learned that this mobo has been discontinued so can't purchase a similar one but am clueless as to what would be a suitable replacement, I'm kinda hoping as it's an old one maybe a replacement mobo won't be crazy expensive otherwise I might just leave it off and purchase a new PC. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rifter]

you need a AM2 board, like this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130307

 

[pcon]

Wow thanks for the quick reply Rifterut.That's actually a lot cheaper than I was expecting. My only prob is I live in Europe and NewEgg don't deliver here. So will any AM2 board do me once the form factor is the same?

 

[Rifter]

Yes any AM2 motherboard thats ATX(im assuming your board is ATX?) should work fine, or mATX if you dont need all the expansion slots.

 

[pcon]

Thanks very much Rifterut you've been a great help, found quite a few available to me thanks to your guidance and all are a lot more reasonably priced than I was expecting. Keep up the good work...

 

[pcon]

Ok ran into a new issue when trying to learn about which motherboard I need. There are two nVidia GeForce 8600GTS 256MB PCI-e Video Cards on this machine so I'm having difficulty finding a mobo to suit, apparently it must support SLI. The PSU outputs 750W if that helps...

 

[{uZa}DOA]

Eek.. AM2 plus SLi is gunna be hard to find new... You may have to look for a used one..

ASUS M3N72-D nForce 750a SLI Socket AM2+/AM2 ATX Motherboard

 

[pcon]

Hiya DOA, tanx for that, bit iffy bout getting a refurbished one, but would that be the right one for sure if I was to go down that route? What other options would I have? Could I lose one video card and get a new mobo like the one Rifterut suggested above?

 

[Rifter]

You should look for a Nvidia chipset board then, which is less than ideal as the AMD chipset boards are better.

You will have to buy used they dont make them new anymore.

You could also go with a AMD based motherboard and either only use one card, or purchase a faster single card so that you dont lose performance.