Budget CPU/Mobo/Ram upgrade

[Zetro]

Good morning

I am looking at doing a small upgrade to my girlfriends machine to get the motherboard and such up to snuff and to take advantage of the SSD more that I installed earlier.

Thoughts on the build?

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Primarily web browsing with power draw being low as an important item
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$400 or less tax in would be ideal
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Calgary Alberta, would be shopping at memoryexpress.com
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
I would only need a Motherboard, CPU (with HSF), and RAM
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Antec 300-2
Corsair TX650 v1 (around 4 years old)
ATI R7 260x
Samsung DVD-RW
Samsung 840 250GB
WD Blue 1TB

6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
2 x 21.5" LG IPS @ 1920x1080
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
ASAP
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
Prefer a good onboard NIC if possible (Intel!), no SLI or CF needed
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Have a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro license

I was thinking for this machine of getting the following:

GA-H97-D3H - $114.99
Core™ i3-4130 Processor - $119.99
HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit - $89.99

Total with 5% tax is $341.22

Thoughts?

 

[Zetro]

Hey again

Basically I am curious what is the best process in the $120-$150 range performance/buck wise.

I apologize as I don't follow this stuff as much as I used to

 

[defaultluser]

Sorry I didn't respond earlier this morning, just got off work!

That's pretty solid. You can't do better than Core i3 unless you want to spend more or cut back the mothereboard to some threadbare B85 board, and if the machine's use is primarily web browsing, you wont see any benefit from four real cores.

Enjoy your build

 

[Dangman]

Yeah, just got off work myself.

I concur with defaultuser: It's a pretty solid build.

 

[[21CW]killerofall]

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 $49.99
CPU: Intel Pentium Processor G3258 $79.99
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB DDR3-1333MHz $84.99
Total: $225.72 with 5% tax (no shipping inc)

Since you won't be gaming, a dual core without hyper-threading is fine. You can also overclock later for even better bang for your buck, see http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pentium-g3258-b81-cheap-overclocking,3888.html for this exact CPU/mobo combo used for OCing. The CPU is limited to 1333 RAM. That CPU is also 1 W lower TDP than the i3 (don't know about actual power usage though).