Need to upgrade for under $300 (gaming)

What kind of games are you looking to play with this?

What PSU do you have currently?
Hard drive?
optical?

Your better of saving for another month, or buy an xbox 360. Your not gonna get a rig to play Crysis very well at all for $300.

Do not waste money on a 9500GT. Go with a Radeon 4670, or a 3850 if you can find that cheaper. There is a pretty decent combo deal to use that 5200 and this 790GX board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138130

for $152.99

Or you could combo with this 770 based board for $115.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138106

That ram you chose is $49.99 so that's $202.98 so far if we go with the 790GX board. As for the GPU this Radeon 4670 is $80.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127383

And this should be fine if your PSU is at least 400W with 17A on the 12v. If your PSU is rated less than that, and it isn't an Antec Earth Watts, then you should get a decent PSU and buy a better GPU latter, or get the 770 combo and get this PSU.

Antec Basiq BP500UB 500W $40.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371019

Personally I think getting the 790GX board and a decent PSU is the better option. Even though you will have to use the onboard graphics for a while you can save up some money and add a better GPU latter. Upgrade your CPU to a phenom latter on and the SB750 in that board will allow you to overclock it a little further. Also getting a better PSU now gives you more options in the future and if you choose wisely you can use it in your future builds.

Awesome info. Thanks guys. I'm glad I decided to post here first. Lots of good info. I'll let you know what I end up going with

u can get a decent system....

OCZ StealthXStream OCZ500SXS 500W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341012
$49.99
($19.99 after $30.00 Mail-In Rebate


Kingston 2 gb (2x1 gb) ddr2 800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820134488
$27.99

GIGABYTE GA-EG31M-S2 LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128338
$52.99

Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819116052
$69.99

EDIT:I chaged the 4670 with the more powerfull 9600 gt

EVGA 512-P3-N861-TR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130393
$97.99
($77.99 after $20.00 Mail-In Rebate )

so the total now is = $298.95 - $50 MIR = $248.95 after rebate...offcourse ull have to add shipping and I am not sure if there are any taxes for your state...

u can overclock the cpu on that mobo to 3.0ghz easily with stock cooling and the video card is pretty decent for the money as well..u can expect probably med quality in crysis and high to very high graphics on 12xx resolution on most other games like COD 4

Not a bad build either. Both PSU's have their advantages.
* The OCZ has 27A on the 12v rails and the Antec has 30A on the 12v rails (Advantage: Antec)
* OCZ has 1 x 6+2pin PCI-e power connector and the Antec has 1 x 6 pin connector (Advantage: OCZ)
* Antec is $35 w/o waiting for rebate (Advantage: Antec)
* Both have 3 yr. warranties (Advantage: Customer!!)

Your memory is CAS6!!! The one I selected is Cas4!!! Much faster (4-4-4-15). The only ding on my selection is that it's at 2.1v and yours is at 1.8v. Not a big deal in the scheme of things.

The CPU you selected is 2.0 gHz and will need to come up to about 2.4-2.5 gHz to meet/exceed the 2.7 gHz AMD chip. Not usually a big deal on Intel chips, just will need to keep that in mind (OC to 2.4-2.5 gHz).

Your Intel mobo only supports 4 SATA drives, the 2 mobo's I listed above support 6 SATA AND also support RAID functions!!
Also your mobo has only 2 RAM slots (support up to 4 gb's) and both of mine have 4 RAM slots (16 gb's total!!)
Your onboard GPU is Intel GMA 3100 (yuk!!), I suggested the nVidia 8300 or the AMD 3300 GPU, which are leaps above the Intel GMA 3100!!

Now these comments are just nit picking, but you can see the bigger differences in the mobo's between an AMD mobo and an Intel mobo, when the prices are similar. You can go either way, but I thought I'd point out some of the major differences in the builds.

I agree that you can OC the e2180 pretty easily, but most people don't even OC, so I was just pointing out that the AMD build wouldn't need an OC to be a bit better. Don't get me wrong, I'd buy the Intel chip, but I could OC the chip and not worry much about it. The OP might not want to OC, so in my mind, if that is what the OP wants to do, the AMD build is better. Now there is a slim chance that the AMD mobo "might" accept the next gen AM3 CPU chips. Not sure yet, but I know the Intel s775 is dead, so there are those arguements that one could use.
I'd still stick with the 4670, it's better than the 9600gt. It's between the 9600gt and the 9800gt.

agreed completely on the OC thing but bro the 4670 is a 9600 GSO and 3850 comparable card...9600gt and 3870 are a tier above it

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2 [...] 0-512mb/12

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews [...] 70/30.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3405&p=11