System upgrade/rebuild recommendation?

[piginspring]

I'm thinking to upgrade or maybe replace my 3-year old desktop. It's primarily a work pc, plus a little bit gaming (FPS). What I have now is:
Barton 2500+, MSI KT3 Ultra2-R, 1G PC2700 Crucial, WD 120GB 8mb, Visiontec Ti-4200, DVD Burner and Antec 1080AMG with a 430W PS.

Could any of you recommend a setup cost between $400-500? I'd like to keep as many old components as possible without sacrificing the speed... Many thanks!

 

[piginspring]

bump

 

[alimoalem]

to save some money, keep the following: the harddrive,dvd burner, case and psu.

get an epox 9npa+ motherboard for around $100 or a dfi board for about $100. if you're not doing anything that needs a decent video card, get one with a built-in card.

i would just get an amd 3200+ for the cpu

for the gpu, the eVGA 6800gs would be good for your price range. if you're fine with TigerDirect, you can get a "superclocked" 6800gs for like $10 more.

for ram, get a 1gig stick (so you have the ability to expand to 2gb without going to 2T) of value ram (corsair, g.skill, or ocz in no particular order of preference)

so the prices go as follows:

$100 for the motherboard
$160 for the cpu
$180 for the gpu
$75 for value ram
------------------------
Total is $535. if you really want to stay under $500, drop down to an amd 3000+ for the cpu

 

[piginspring]

Thanks! Maybe I can just get a pci-e 6800 nu to save a little more, especially considering that chance of unlocking the 4 extra pipelines.

A couple of questions:
1. What about the 4-pin connector for the pci-e vid card? Is DIY possible/easy?
2. Is there a good motherboard at $100 range with onboard gigabye NIC?
3. Will the retail hs and fan do the cooling job well? Is that noisy? What the best budget HS for an OEM cpu?

Looking forward to your reply.....

Originally posted by: alimoalem
to save some money, keep the following: the harddrive,dvd burner, case and psu.

get an epox 9npa+ motherboard for around $100 or a dfi board for about $100. if you're not doing anything that needs a decent video card, get one with a built-in card.

i would just get an amd 3200+ for the cpu

for the gpu, the eVGA 6800gs would be good for your price range. if you're fine with TigerDirect, you can get a "superclocked" 6800gs for like $10 more.

for ram, get a 1gig stick (so you have the ability to expand to 2gb without going to 2T) of value ram (corsair, g.skill, or ocz in no particular order of preference)

so the prices go as follows:

$100 for the motherboard
$160 for the cpu
$180 for the gpu
$75 for value ram
------------------------
Total is $535. if you really want to stay under $500, drop down to an amd 3000+ for the cpu

 

[piginspring]

bump...