Upgrading my son's computer on $300 budget

shan1784

In Runtime
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396
Location
Michigan
Hey everyone,
My son has $300 in Christmas money and wants to upgrade his computer. His system is pretty old as shown by the components below. We are just looking to upgrade the Motherboard, cpu, video card, and memory..

He is a PC gamer and currently get very low frames in Planetside 2... Looking to improve this for him as much as possible...

Here is what we currently have to upgrade from...

AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ 2.61 ghz
4 GB DDR2
Older ASrock or Foxcon Motherboard
EVGA GTX260 (not core 216)

What I was looking to upgrade to -

Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32100 - $119.99
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32100


MSI Z77A-G41 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - $79.99
Newegg.com - MSI Z77A-G41 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9S-4GBRL - $21.99
Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9S-4GBRL

EVGA 01G-P4-2650-KR GeForce GTX 650 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - $109.99
Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P4-2650-KR GeForce GTX 650 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

This comes to $331.96 which is outside of the $300 budget but I am going to cover the balance for him..

If anyone can give me an idea if this is a decent upgrade path or suggest new items I would appreciate it..
 
A SB or IB i3 are perfect for any gaming these days. Actually, I would go the extra mile and say grab the IB Pentium and get a B75 board to get the 8GB of DDR3 and maybe get a GTX 650ti instead.
 
A SB or IB i3 are perfect for any gaming these days. Actually, I would go the extra mile and say grab the IB Pentium and get a B75 board to get the 8GB of DDR3 and maybe get a GTX 650ti instead.


Is there a way to do this while being within budget???
 
 
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I like it... Is there any reason why I couldn't use the 4 GB Gskill Memory I originally posted? If I did that it would drop it back down to the original price that I started with...
 
Because these days with RAM being so cheap it really isn't that smart to use 4GB over 8. I mean, not everybody is OCD about resources like I am and 4GB can be capped easy. Besides, the 8GB kit is only a few bucks more.
 
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