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Some motherboard advice...

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First post, by mr_bigmouth_502

Posted on 
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Oldbie

OK, so I have this random motherboard lying around, and it's an OEM board from an Acer box with the model name "MCP61PM-AM REV 1.0A". I'd like to throw together a basic system with it just for web surfing and some light LAN gaming (mostly just MOHAA, Diablo II, and TF2 and Starcraft II on low settings), but I'd like to throw a dual-core CPU of some sort into it first (it currently has a single core Athlon 64 of some sort). As far as I know, it's a socket AM2 board, but vanilla AM2 CPUs are hard to find, so I'm wondering what AM2+ (or even AM3) processors would work with it. I know I'd probably be better off buying all new parts, but doing this will help me save a few bucks on a new motherboard, heatsink, and RAM. 😉

EDIT: The model name is for the motherboard, NOT the computer it originated from.

EDIT2: I found out that the board was from an Aspire T180.

Reply 1 of 1, by Tetrium

Posted on 
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l33t++

In theory, any AM2/AM3 cpu should work in it. AM3 might only work if you update the bios..and there is where the 'limit' is.
You should, at least in theory, be safe using any AM2 cpu when it comes to the bios.

The 2nd limit is, not all AM2 boards will work with all AM2 cpu's. Many motherboards will have a maximum rated TDP, meaning some of the top of the line cpu's will not work (reliably).
Some boards may support cpu's with a maximum TDP of 125W, or even 95W.

Edit: Did some more searching and got a couple links from Gateway (Apparently your board is the same as used in Emachines, Gateway and a couple others except for HP):
http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Shared/ … 006202Rmv.shtml overview
http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Shared/ … 06202Rsp2.shtml specs

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