Stretching $400 for an upgrade

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2007
Messages
390
I am upgrading an existing PC that has an aged ASUS M2N-E mobo, an AMD Athlon 64 3800+, 2GB of Corsair PC2-6400, and a 160GB harddrive.

There are four items that I need to upgrade, and they are:

1) CPU
2) RAM
3) HDD
4) OS

The OS will be Win 7 x64. With the CPU, RAM and HDD I don't have a clear direction of where to start, but I did anyway and provided a build below. I did manage to fit a new mobo into the build while still keeping within the budget lines.

This PC will be used for office work, also file compression, lots of web browsing (managing a website) - so that means like 20 tabs open, and of course gaming.

I compiled a tentative build so as not to lay the entire burden on everyone else. Tell me what you think, or explain just how far $400 can stretch.


Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX (URL) - $79.99
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W (URL) - $165.00
RAM: 2 x Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) (URL) - $77.98
Hard-drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM (URL) - $54.99

TOTAL: $377.96
 
Pick up a WD6400AAKS or 6401AALS in place of the Seagate for about the same money; they're much faster drives, and another 140GB of space doesn't hurt either.

Everything else looks decent. AM3 is probably a better choice than LGA775 at this point, since it's at least theoretically not dead end, and you don't really have the cash for LGA1366, though a P55 based system might not be completely out of reach with some used parts. See if you can find some faster RAM, regardless of the direction you choose, cause DDR3 1066 is pretty damn slow.
 
The Ripjaws bring the total to $393.97. I think that'll work. Thanks.
 
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