Help upgrading a PC so it will be sufficient for student doing Animation

She's going to school for animation, so there are a couple things to consider. Multi threading CPU's are a needed. As is lots of RAM, and BIG ass hard drives for storage and scratch drives (cheapest thing in this list thankfully).

So option one, Upgrade a few things
1.Bump her up to an i7 CPU. Regardless of the program, it will want to multi thread those cores. Cant do that with an i5.

2.Bump up her memory. 8 gigs is nice. 16 would be better if she's going to be doing any hard core rendering. That motherboard can do up to 32GB.

3.Consider upgrading her SSD, animation programs are pigs in size and she will likely blow through that 64GB SSD in space pretty quick.

4.Ditch out that 80GB HD. Chances are its old and might even be so old its dragging down her system. Go pick up a 3TB for under $120 on your part vendor of choice. She'll need the room.

5.Upgrade the PSU to something a bit higher power. XFX and Seasonic are the top recommended units right now. 500-650watt will do her fine should she have to upgrade her GPU.

6.Consider a GPU upgrade later on if she's truly serious. 3D rendering works ok on her card, and it may do all she needs, but cards like ATI Fire or Nvidia Quadro were designed to do exactly what she's doing.

Now Option 2. Go on ebay and look at rendering machines that are running Xeon CPU's and already have Quadros or ATI Fires already. Look for models like DELL Precision T7500 or there about. Those already come with quad or 6 core xeon CPU's, loaded with RAM, etc.

Also one last thing I would recommend, as someone who works in the IT at a college. Contact the program director/chair/head/PR guy/whatever they're called and ask about lab facilities and get in contact with the lab IT people. They're the ones that maintain and order the computers to be used for the students. They can tell you right off if its a good idea for your daughter to trudge over the dorms with a massive rendering station or if its a waste of time. They would also tell you what specs specifically the software they use in the lab calls for, so they'd have the best info on what she needs. Just don't call them the week before school starts, then they might try and strangle you through the phone line.