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Can I do anything with this AM3 mobo?

R

Rob94hawk

Joined
Aug 24, 2004
Messages
217 (0.03/day)
A coworker gave me her old pc. She said it was 6-7 years old. I was hoping it was going to be a decent motherboard so I could build a cheap gaming rig for World of Tanks. Turns out it's a bottom of the barrel HP pc with a basic socket AM3 mobo.
1599185133424.png

I have 8 GB of ram but according to the specs, I don't even think I can go higher than 4 GB. It has a PCI express x 16 slot but I can't go higher than a 95 watt cpu:

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs - Motherboard Specifications, M2N68-LA (Narra6) | HP® Customer Support

Specification for the Narra6 motherboard
support.hp.com support.hp.com

TDP: 95 watt
  • AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb)
  • AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka)
  • AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto)
  • AMD II Athlon X4 6xx/6xxe (Propus)
  • AMD II Athlon X3 4xx/4xxe (Rana)
  • AMD II Athlon X2 2xx/2xxe (Regor)
  • AMD Sempron 1xx (Sargas)
Thoughts?
 
its really not worth your time. you could probably find a prebuilt pc in your local area for what it would cost just to get a case,psu,proc,hdds and so forth. plus most ivy bridge pre builds are going for cheap and you can easily play wot on one.
 
You’re probably better off selling/donating that HP.
I would be looking for a PC that meets the recommended system requirements.

You could try looking around or find on eBay a used off lease business PC. Make sure to look for one with a minimum i5/7 3750/3700 Ivy Bridge CPU, ideally 8GB of RAM occupying two slots. The power supply is going to limit your graphics card options though.

907EA3CB-5225-4BA2-BDB9-EC4F9A8A4A91.jpeg
 
Oh! I had the 78 version instead of the 68. Those things are solid enough to be office machines. I had it paired with an Athlon II X4 620 and 8GB as my first actual desktop. It'll work as a small server or storage thing.
 
I was playing on my sons 4770k/780GTX/27"1440p system I build a while back but he took it with him. Now I'm down to my Ryzen 2500u/RX 570/15"1080p laptop and I hate playing on a laptop with such a small screen.

I have an old socket 775/8800GT that can barely play it on minimal settings but you're right, I should be either looking for something more current. I was just hoping to score a decent board. The Athlon 250/2GB ram it currently has would even struggle as a NAS server.
 
Connect a large screen to your laptop, problem solved.
 
This is what I was suggesting earlier.

 
Rob94hawk said:
I was playing on my sons 4770k/780GTX/27"1440p system I build a while back but he took it with him. Now I'm down to my Ryzen 2500u/RX 570/15"1080p laptop and I hate playing on a laptop with such a small screen.

I have an old socket 775/8800GT that can barely play it on minimal settings but you're right, I should be either looking for something more current. I was just hoping to score a decent board. The Athlon 250/2GB ram it currently has would even struggle as a NAS server.
Click to expand...
The Athlon 620 or 640 would do great in there. If you manage to find enough ram (8gb) for cheap then it'll go places.

I remember getting my 620 to 2.93ghz and that was a good improvement.
 
Toothless said:
The Athlon 620 or 640 would do great in there. If you manage to find enough ram (8gb) for cheap then it'll go places.

I remember getting my 620 to 2.93ghz and that was a good improvement.
Click to expand...

Just for fun I installed Windows 10 pro. I guess I'll need a key eventually.

I'm sure 4 GB of ram is plenty but I think I might clone the HDD to a SSD. That should help speed things up.

Other than that runs pretty good for an antiquated machine with a HDD.
 
Rob94hawk said:
Just for fun I installed Windows 10 pro. I guess I'll need a key eventually.

I'm sure 4 GB of ram is plenty but I think I might clone the HDD to a SSD. That should help speed things up.

Other than that runs pretty good for an antiquated machine with a HDD.
Click to expand...
SSD would help a ton, and depends on what you're going to do in total with it for memory. Give it a shot and see what happens.
 
Toothless said:
SSD would help a ton, and depends on what you're going to do in total with it for memory. Give it a shot and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I have 8 GB ram I could add in as well but like it’s been said In this thread before, gaming is out of the question, so I doubt just using the Internet is going to saturate 4 GB of ram.

With it’s tiny PSU gaming might actually kill it lol. You think I can use the PCIEx1 slot to add USB 3.0 and replace the old ones?
 

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Could do a HD5450 or 5470, and a USB3.0 card should work in there.
 
Ack. Old Nvidia chipset driver display is conflicting with Windows 10. Changing the compatibility to windows 7 & 8 does nothing. Maybe I’ll look for a dirt cheap vid card on Amazon.
 
www.ebay.com

Nvidia Quadro K620 2GB Graphic Card DVI & Display Port 00FC809 High Profile | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Nvidia Quadro K620 2GB Graphic Card DVI & Display Port 00FC809 High Profile at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com

I run one of these in my relic coming from an AMD R7 250 and this card is very impressive. It's basically a cut down GTX 750, and performs great in newer games at lower resolutions. Currently playing Metro Exodus Sams Story at 1280x768 medium settings and it's staying around 30FPS and looks fine. The only thing I did was BIOS MOD the card and clocked the memory from 900MHz to 1000MHz.
 
Recycle it, plug your laptop into external monitor = win.... there is literally nothing this relic is good for, for anybody with any kind of semi-half decent PC system from the last 10 years.... unless you build a retro gaming PC/emulation rig and even then it's kinda in between old and modern and just kind of useless..... go Pentium 2/3 or go home. Recycle junk.
 
www.ebay.com

Dell AMD Radeon HD 8570 1GB DDR3 DVI DP Full Height Video Card 8HW0R | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell AMD Radeon HD 8570 1GB DDR3 DVI DP Full Height Video Card 8HW0R at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
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If you want to go cheaper, these Dell HD8570s are decent low end cards as well. They are basically an R7 250 clocked down. I have BIOS MODDED these from their stock 780MHz to 1100MHz on GPU and stock 900MHz on memory to 1100MHz and they turn into decent low end gaming cards - Far Cry 5 will run around 30FPS on low settings on one of these overclocked at 720p resolution!

One bummer with old AMD AM3 CPUS is no SSE 4.1 support so many newer games won't run on them without workarounds......
 
budget_Optiplex said:
www.ebay.com

Nvidia Quadro K620 2GB Graphic Card DVI & Display Port 00FC809 High Profile | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Nvidia Quadro K620 2GB Graphic Card DVI & Display Port 00FC809 High Profile at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com

I run one of these in my relic coming from an AMD R7 250 and this card is very impressive. It's basically a cut down GTX 750, and performs great in newer games at lower resolutions. Currently playing Metro Exodus Sams Story at 1280x768 medium settings and it's staying around 30FPS and looks fine. The only thing I did was BIOS MOD the card and clocked the memory from 900MHz to 1000MHz.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I might use this to replace the 8800GT in my Q9650/socket 775. But will it handle a resolution of 1900x1200? That is the question.

And it doesn't look like it needs extra power from the PSU
 
Last edited:
Rob94hawk said:
A coworker gave me her old pc. She said it was 6-7 years old. I was hoping it was going to be a decent motherboard so I could build a cheap gaming rig for World of Tanks. Turns out it's a bottom of the barrel HP pc with a basic socket AM3 mobo.
View attachment 167640
I have 8 GB of ram but according to the specs, I don't even think I can go higher than 4 GB. It has a PCI express x 16 slot but I can't go higher than a 95 watt cpu:

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs - Motherboard Specifications, M2N68-LA (Narra6) | HP® Customer Support

Specification for the Narra6 motherboard
support.hp.com support.hp.com

TDP: 95 watt
  • AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb)
  • AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka)
  • AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto)
  • AMD II Athlon X4 6xx/6xxe (Propus)
  • AMD II Athlon X3 4xx/4xxe (Rana)
  • AMD II Athlon X2 2xx/2xxe (Regor)
  • AMD Sempron 1xx (Sargas)
Thoughts?
Click to expand...

hi Rob94hawk.

sorry for responding almost a few years late on this but, there was one other person in another forum who also owns that AM3 board that put in a pair of 8Gb sticks (aka. 2x8Gb) for a total of 16Gb and has the pics to prove it

I know this post is old, but for anyone searching in the future the max supported ram for the narra6 is 16GB though I do believe I read you had to have windows 7 professional or windows 10 professional to unlock the 16GB... I could be wrong on this.

16GB on a narra6 = Mind Blown!
Click to expand...

it's just that HP only tested that board with only up to 4Gb RAM at that time (anything higher like 6gb or 8gb was untested). also that board is found in most "slimline" (aka. thin) desktop PCs
 
erpguy53 said:
hi Rob94hawk.

sorry for responding almost a few years late on this but, there was one other person in another forum who also owns that AM3 board that put in a pair of 8Gb sticks (aka. 2x8Gb) for a total of 16Gb and has the pics to prove it



it's just that HP only tested that board with only up to 4Gb RAM at that time (anything higher like 6gb or 8gb was untested). also that board is found in most "slimline" (aka. thin) desktop PCs
Click to expand...
Your necro is actually very interesting to me, as I did not know it could take that much ram. A client gave me that board, when I built him a new system back in 2018. Had an X4 955 BE and 2x2GB ram. It was fun to mess around with, and played most of my GOG library fine. I think I was using a GTX 750ti with it and win10 pro.
 
Rob94hawk said:
A coworker gave me her old pc. She said it was 6-7 years old. I was hoping it was going to be a decent motherboard so I could build a cheap gaming rig for World of Tanks. Turns out it's a bottom of the barrel HP pc with a basic socket AM3 mobo.
View attachment 167640
I have 8 GB of ram but according to the specs, I don't even think I can go higher than 4 GB. It has a PCI express x 16 slot but I can't go higher than a 95 watt cpu:

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs - Motherboard Specifications, M2N68-LA (Narra6) | HP® Customer Support

Specification for the Narra6 motherboard
support.hp.com support.hp.com

TDP: 95 watt
  • AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb)
  • AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka)
  • AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto)
  • AMD II Athlon X4 6xx/6xxe (Propus)
  • AMD II Athlon X3 4xx/4xxe (Rana)
  • AMD II Athlon X2 2xx/2xxe (Regor)
  • AMD Sempron 1xx (Sargas)
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Thats an Asus Mobo
 
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