Replacing Parts of HP Desktop

[Salt-City_Slasher]

My Mom's HP P160Y Desktop has pretty much stopped working. I have done everything from system restore point, to full system restore with recovery disc, to different blank HD with Win7 install, and have decided to replace motherboard and hard drive on account there is nothing software related that can fix it.

I plan to replace:

Win7(already have)
Motherboard
CPU
Hard Drive(Already Have)

I am going to keep:

DDR3 Memory
DVD Sata
PSU 300watt
HP Case
HIM GPU


I wanted to get something decent that is not weak, but on a budget, like $200ish, but no more than $250.

I was looking at:

AMD FX-6100
AM3+ Micro ATX Motherboard for $50ish
but I could get

Intel i3-2100t
1155 Micro ATX Mobo for $50ish

I was wondering if I could get some recommendations on which mobo to get and cpu. It has to be micro-atx mobo, and any cpu that fits. The main concern is budget, so price/performance for $200ish.

 

[GI_JONES]

Are you sure the motherboard is the problem? When you turn the pc on, does anything happen? The problem could be the power supply. Also any graphics card that will run on a 300 watt psu will be severly bottlenecked by an i3

 

[deadlockedworld]

I understand your desire to "save" this old PC, but you should recognize that parts you are "saving" have a replacement value of maybe $70-100. (depending on what kind of GPU).

Also I agree that there is a good chance that if anything broke on an HP it was likely caused by the PSU or was the PSU. Replacing a PSU with a quality unit is always a good bet before investing in a PC.

Disregard that last sentence in the above post, it really doesn't make sense. The i3 isn't going to bottleneck anything that came stock in an HP.

Sorry I'm not of more help on your actual question. I prefer Intel myself, but don't follow lower end that closely. Here is a good CPU price/performance graph: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2