Upgrades to m7160n

[halomademeapc]

Hi, I finally got the green light from my dad to order some new stuff for my PC. I need it to last about two and a half more years. I will be ordering the parts in march so that they can arrive before april. My current specs are:

Asus P5LP-LE Limestone motherboard
Intel Pentium D 820
3GB DDR2 RAM
MSi Nvidia GeForce GT440

I'm looking to upgrade to this if I spend $165:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0039ZURBU/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003N1A5W6/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003L870JM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

however, I will try to pick up another amazon gift card to up the budget by $25, and I'm not sure what the best deal is at that price range.

Some typical stuff I do would be
-gaming
-flash animation
-Modeling in Autodesk Inventor
-watching movies
-listening to music
-office/productivity stuff
-doing all of the above while streaming video using procaster (this is the one that makes performance absolutely intolerable)

I use two monitors, 1280x1024 and 1440x900. My current mobo has 7.1 Surround sound (I use 5.1) and I would like to keep that in a new motherboard, but I'd be willing to trade that functionality for a faster comp. Can I squeeze a Core-i3 at this price or will I still be getting an AMD processor?

if it is absolutely necessary, I might be able to up the budget in increments of $25 by sneaking trips to CVS and picking up gift cards.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Assuning your are running 3gb of ram at the moment..that implies you are running 32 BIT Windows ..either Vista or 7...

You are going to have to add the cost of a 64 bit operating system to use more than 4 gb of ram in your new build...and it aint cheap....

All the best Brett

 

[halomademeapc]

Already have the OS (my mom works for Indiana University, so we got it for just $20)