Need some advice on Upgrading my system $400 budget

[church555]

Hello everyone! Thanks for taking the time out of your busy days to read this, any help would be greatly appreciated. I use my computer for gaming(GW2,Rift, D3, Skyrim, WoW) and also just MS word/excel for school assignments.

My current PC is an old gateway here are the specs

Mobo- Unkown
Ram- 6gb that came with it
PSU- thermaltake 600w
GPU- GeForce GTX 550 TI
CPU- AMD Phenom 9550 quad core 2.2 ghz that came with it
HDD- Came with the computer I've had it for quite awhile now

I just bought a NZXT Phantom mid tower case and I'd really like to reuse the power supply and my video card as I recently purchased them. This $400 I can spend is all the money I'll have to upgrade my PC for awhile I'm currently in college and money is tight to say the least. I'm pretty much just looking to get the most bang for my buck, I'd really like to be able to upgrade in the future I would like to not have to replace the motherboard again later on. The $400 budget is purely for hardware no software.

 

[o1die]

If you're using gateway installed software, it probably won't run on a non gateway board. Newegg has combo shellshocker deals about twice a week usually for around your budget if you can order from them. Some of them have included ssd's which I prefer.

Here's some recommendations:

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx?cm_sp=ShellShocker-_-20-227-726-_-09052012_2 ( I use te 60 gb version )
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138345 ( I use an older version of this board)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220705
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042

Total after rebates is around $290.

 

[church555]

Sweet thanks for the recommendations, I'm planning on getting a new hard drive and a new copy of win 7 I just wanted the $400 to be pretty much for Motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I already have a case, Power supply and video card. I'll start looking at those shell shocker deals.

 

[church555]

Best answer selected by church555.