Advice on $600-$700 Upgrade please!

[Frisbee_68]

Hi, I'm currently looking to upgrade my processor and cooler, motherboard, and memory, with a budget of about 600-700 dollars. I will be using this for gaming, so it needs to be at least decent for gaming. Any ideas?


Current Specs:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
Motherboard: Intel D975XBX2
RAM: Patriot DDR2 4GB @ 333Mhz
CPU Cooler: Intel Stock
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5770
Power Supply: Kingswin 600 Watt
Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB HDD
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital 160GB HDD
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Other Parts: D-Link DWA-552 XtremeN Network Card

 

[r0aringdrag0n]

You can upgrade to a
Intel i5 2500k ($220)
ASRock P67 EXTREME4 (B3) MoBo ($160)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL RAM ($75)
and use the heatsink+fan that is included with the 2500k
total: $455

 

[dalethepcman]

Your CPU has plenty of power for a radeon 5770. Throw a couple $'s at a new GPU and you will get a much greater bang for the buck than upgrading your cpu/motherboard.

Here are my recomendations based on a $700 upgrade. Some of the parts listed are of lower quality than I would normally recommend, but if you want a gaming PC the video card is the most important piece. It's about $100 more for an overclocking system, if your into that then buy the parts to overclock listed at the bottom instead (its worth the $100.)


Motherboard $110
Ram $85
CPU $210
ATI Video $280
or
Nvidia Video $270

CPU $220 k series / unlocked for overclocking
Cooler $30 for extra CPU cooling / overclocking
Motherboard $160, more features, better @ overclocking