I bought a new CPU off eBay a few days ago for £71, and then ordered 512MB of RAM from Crucial which cost £50. This was all for my server as it seriously needed beefing up. It had a 1.7Ghz Celeron and 640MB RAM, now it runs a 2.4Ghz Prescott P4 with 1MB of L2 cache (compared to the Celeron which has only 128KB) and 1GB of RAM.

The server had an MSI 845E Max motherboard, which has a Socket 478. I had assumed that the Prescott would slot right in, but nooooo! They might share the same size socket, but they are totally different.

So, after an hour or two of fiddling around with different hardware combinations, I check out the web, and discover that there is NO way I could use that 845 board. Right, off I go to PC World to try to get my hands on a cheap Prescott supporting board. Of course this is PC World... so that's near impossible.

I end up getting another MSI board, the 865PE Neo2-PFS (Platinum Edition). I also pick up a new 300W PSU as I knew I'd need one. Ended up spending a shade over £100.

Once I got home I crawled up into the loft and pulled down the Chieftec Dragon case I'd once used as my own PC case till I got my Lian Li. I decided to use the Dragon as it's a lot bigger than the shitty case the server was currently using, there would also be room to screw down all 3 of my hard drives and also have a fan blowing cool air over my most important 2.

Eventually I get everything installed into the new case, and fire it up. All the hardware works, but Windows doesn't. After a bit more research on the web, I find some instructions on the Microsoft Knowledge Base on how to move a hard drive to a new motherboard - just what I needed. What you gotta do is boot off the 2003 CD and run a repair, so that it can re-discover all the hardware from scratch.

I leave the PC booting up as it is taking fricking ages and go to bed.