Upgrading my current pc to play modern games under $300?

I don't think that board has too many overclocking options, which is a shame since wolfdale based CPUs overclock very well in general. Normally I would say just get a video card, 4GB of 1066 RAM, and a good cooler to overclock that CPU and be good to go. Ah well, the price of saving a few bucks.

I think you would be better off getting an AM3+ board, an Athlon X3 and after market cooler to overclock it, the RAM, and a Radeon 5670.

AMD Athlon II X3 445 $74.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

ASRock 880G PRO3 AM3+ $89.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) $49.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

SAPPHIRE 100287VGAL Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB 128-bit DDR5 $69.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Sunbeam CR-CCTF 120 mm Core-Contact Freezer $24.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

For a nice total of $309.95. With the AM3+ board you can upgrade to bulldozer latter on. You could of course save money by going with a cheaper AM3 board now (that overclocks well of course) but then you won't be able to upgrade to bulldozer latter. Also, if you're only going to do a mild overclock you can stick with the stock cooler assuming your case has decent air flow.

What GPU are you using now?

I only have integrated gpu at the moment.

Well if you don't game that much then maybe it would be cheaper to just O.C. your CPU and get a GPU.A GTX550ti or a 6770 would be a huge improvement,any graphical expansion card would be an improvement over the integrated GPU.The budget seems more flexible if you just upgrade from your current platform.Some more RAM and maybe a Core2Duo and that should be plenty for you.

The PCIe slot on my motherboard is only x16 1.0 would that be a problem?

What do you guys think of this idea: Keep the same

CPU upgrade the motherboard to this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... which supports ddr3 ram and x16 2.0 $80

8gb of1600mhz ddr3 ram $50 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

And blow the rest on the video card Radeon 6850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Total with shipping $296.56

I figure down the road, I can just build a nicer PC and pull the video card out, and use this pc as media center for my living room

Best answer selected by mrcheap.

Thanks so much for the help really I appreciate it.

Don't forget to O.C. your CPU.You will be bottlenecking the either GPU anyway.

Your Welcome.

I went to Microcenter and they had some great deals heres what I ended up with:


XFX 6770 1gb ddr5 $119.(with $30 Mail rebate)

Phenom X2 560 Black edition $88

Power connector for video card $5

Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P AM3+ $10 (It was a special with the Phenom)

4gb 1333mhz ram $20

Total=261.83 with taxes

I installed Deus Ex human revolution and it is running at 1080p pretty much everything maxed and it looks incredible!!!!

I currently have a 450w PSU you think that's something I should upgrade in the future I believe the brand it Raidmax. I have overclocked anything yet. Thanks again.

Raidmax isn't the best quality of PSU so you should upgrade ASAP.

Everything else looks good.