Asus Motherboard Box Turns into PC Chassis

Now here's one way to stay green: use the motherboard packaging as a chassis.

We've seen mods in the past that bypass the chassis and use what's available in the nearby vicinity to create a unique rig. A great example was the one crammed within a used Little Caesar's pizza box; another resided in an actual trash can. Needless to say, the modders were looking to stay "green" with their designs, and it seems that ASUS may be following in those footsteps starting this June.

According to a report by PCWorld, Asus plans to alter the shipping box for one of its upcoming Mini ATX motherboards so that additional components can be added without removing the mainboard, thus replacing the typical metal chassis with the cardboard box. Punch-out holes for ventilation will also be present as well as an actual panel for containing the rig's connectors and interfaces.

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Motherboard Replacement for Intel E2200

On my previous post Is My Motherboard Dead? My 3rd computer is motherboard is dead. My board was MSI P6NGM with Intel E2200 processor. I was very lucky that only motherboard is broken, other parts are working and in good shape.

So last Monday I visited my favorite computer store to check a replacement for it. Processor is the main consideration for motherboard selection, was happy that my Intel E2200 has found its new home with MSI G31TM-P31
Below are the specs.:

• Intel® G31 Chipset
- Supports FSB 800/1066/1333/1600* (OC) MHz.
- Supports dual channel, DDR2 667/800.

• Intel® ICH7 Chipset
- Hi-Speed USB (USB2.0) controller, 480Mb/sec, up to 8 ports.
- 4 SATA ports with transfer rate up to 3Gb/s.
- PCI Master v2.3, I/O APIC.

Main Memory
• Supports two unbuffered DIMM of 1.8 Volt DDR2 SDRAM
• Supports up to 8GB memory size.
• Supports dual channel DDR2 memory architecture.
• Supports DDR2 667/800 memory interface.
• Due to the limitation of G31 chipsets, dual channel support must meet some requirement in the specification of memory modules. please refer to Test Reports for detailed description.

On-Board IDE/SATA
• One Ultra DMA 66/100 IDE controller integrated in ICH7
- Supports PIO, Bus Master operation modes.
- Can connect up to two Ultra ATA drives.

• SATA controller integrated in ICH7
- Up to 3Gb/s transfer speed.
- Supports four SATA ports.

Audio
• Chip integrated by Realtek® ALC888S
- Flexible 7.1-channel audio with retasking
- Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec
- Meet Microsoft Vista Premium SPEC

• To reach the 8-channel sound effect, the 7th and 8th channels must be output from front panel if you purchase the mainboard with 3 audio jacks.

On-Board Pinheaders/ Connectors
- ATX 24-pin power connector
- ATX 4-pin 12V CPU power connector
- CPU / System x 2 FAN connectors
- CD-in connector
- Front panel audio connector
- Front panel connector
- Chassis intrusion switch connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 connector support additional 4 ports
- 1 x Floppy disk drive connector
- 4 x Serial ATA II connectors
- 1 x ATA133 IDE connector
- Clear CMOS jumper
- 1 x Serial port connector
- 1 x SPDIF-out header
- 1 x Parellel port connector

After installing my new motherboard and made sure that everything is OK I then booted the computer and was expecting a BSOD as it is a different chipset but to my surprise I got into the desktop with any issue. I just had to install Windows XP Drivers that comes with it. So my computer was back into business in just 20 minutes!