Motherboard Gone AGAIN in my XPS 435mt - please help with case/motherboard swap questions

Got a really cool system here and want to know what you think of my options - please let me know!  Would love to be able to keep my stuff and put it into a new box + I wasn't fully backed up :-/ My XPS 435mt has - i7-920, 24gb Ram, 500gb SSD 1. New Motherboard $175 for the 2nd time + the case is very limiting/ 2. Can I use my exiting parts and put them all into another box that is x58 LGA1366?  Will the ssd work at my main HD? loaded as it is today? 3. Other x58 lga1336 choices Alienware Aurora ALX, Precision T3500, XPS 8100 - but would prefer a mini tower, built (MB: Asus P6T rev. 1.01G , PSU: 600w Case: Antec 300) I am kind of ignorant here as to my options and would really appreciate some schooling / suggestions thanks! David

 dcfsf

1) The quickest and probably the less expensive repair would be to replace the motherboard with another Dell OEM unit, this way the hard drive should be compatible.

2) It depends, you could reuse all the compatible parts from the XPS 435MT, but when a different make of motherboard is installed, you would need to buy a new copy of windows, as Dell's OEM copy is tied to their XPS 435MT BIOS and will not activate, plus because of the differences between the systems, you would need to perform a clean reinstall of windows and load the appropriate drivers, this would delete all the data on the hard drive.

But, you could buy and install a new hard drive and after the system is working to your satisfaction, install the 'old' HD from the Studio XPS 425MT as a secondary drive, then transfer the files and folders to the new HD and keep the 'old HD' for extra storage/backups, after formatting it.

Note. Only data files and folders can be transfered, all programmes and applications must reinstalled from their discs, or downloaded from the publishers website.

3) The XPS 8100 would be my choice.

Bev.