Hi,

I'm wondering if any one reading this can help me in making my mind up.

Early last year I built two PCs, I re-used and formatted two used IDE HDs 1x 80gb and 1 x 160gb, some DVD and DVD - RW drives, a couple of sound cards and a spare AGP graphics card, ( I've forgotten what it is ).

I purchased new a 17 in flat monitor, a PCI-E card and 3 x PC 3200 512mb DDR400 ram sticks.

Following a recommendation from the UK Micro Mart mag, I purchased 2 x ASrock 939 Duel Sata MBs along with 2 x Athlon AMD 3200, ( venice core ), CPUs.

Both PCs are running WIN XP home upgrades, the redundant PC is the one with 512mb of ram.

The builds went fine and I have had no problems with either machine.

One of the PCs is now pretty much redundant, the only thing I would wish out of it is the existing 80 gb HD as it does have important data on it.

One of my son's is in desperate need of a PC but there lies my dilemma, I can't make up my mind what to do and which is the most cost effective.

If my understanding is correct the above MBs are a rare beast, not only do they have AGP, PCI-E, SATA and IDE slots, they can also run dual core and can be converted, with some jumper settings and a riser card to run as 940s.

Now should I keep this MB,( having first removed the CPU ), from the redundant machine, as a back up, in the event something goes wrong with the identical MB in mine, is there any point in doing this?

If yes can anyone recommend a 939 MB that I could pair up with the above spare CPU and the existing type of ram, although I would install a further 512 or 1 gig of ram what ever the eventual option.

OR

Should I transfer everything, ( apart from the HD ), from the redundant machine into a new PC case for my son, ( I dented the existing one )?

My son doesn't play PC games but he might want to play the odd one of a mates, all things being balanced, could the existing CPU cope with an intensive game.

Should I reuse the existing AGP card, ( I think it's only a 64 Mb card ), or purchase a budget PCI-E card, or would the existing on board graphics cope on the rare occasions my son might play a game, if I installed 1.5 gb of ram would this help the onboard graphics.

I believe this MB comes with 8 channel on board sound, can I do away with the cheepo sound card installed.

As far as this MB goes what is the largest single core processor I could fit that is still available?