Yeah, having poked around in the guts of the thing again (it's been a while), no way am I swapping the MoBo. I would be doing the most pain in the ass aspect of the operation at least three times. Nice to know it should work, tho

I'm still thinking about starting w/ the vid card, but I'll definitely need a new PSU if I do it--current system is 250W. Also, swapping the PSU seems like good practice for the main build, which would be probably 2-3 months off. I don't see any point in trying anything else in the old system, though.

Why the time-lapse approach? Funds obviously, but I suppose my dissatisfaction w/ the current system is building to a head and I just want to take action on it. All this research isn't helping--I didn't realize just what a POS my Dell is, and it won't cost me much more than this one did originally to have a much better machine.