Upgrading a friend

[Roark]

Hey all, been a while.

Friend of mine is looking to upgrade his rig and I offered to help, but not sure what the best price/performance hardware options are available now.
Mainly it is used for gaming (Civ5, PoE, LoL, TF2, Magic2014) and music/movie streaming.

He is looking to spend around $300 and doesn't need peripherals, but will need an OEM of Win7.

Current specs:
AMD Athlon II X4 630
GA-MA785GM-US2H
4GB DDR2 800mhz Kingston RAM
500GB HDD (7200RPM)
Nvidia 9600GT

I have some stuff I can give him:
NZXT source 210 case
XFX 550 PSU
4GB DDR2 1066mhz G.Skill RAM
And my Q6600 and Asus P5K-E (needs a cooler)


One of these CPU/MB combos should be fine, and may just jam all 8GB of RAM into it, main concern is probably going to be a GPU and possibly an SSD boot drive.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well, 100 goes straight to Windows so you're left with just a good GPU. Personally would I would do is stick with the X4, stick all the RAM in there, and get this card.
Newegg.com - MSI R9 270X GAMING 2G Radeon R9 270X 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

 

[Roark]

Thanks PP, that card looks boss for the price, may even get one for myself since I'm still using a 5750.

I figured the CPUs were equivalent enough that it didn't really matter which one he used, just curious as to why you like the 630 over the Q6600 (either will probly stay stock clocks).

Also, will need to ask but he may be able to get a deal on an OS through school (got my 7-ult for $32 through uni). If he only needs to drop say $50-ish is there an worthwhile upgrade from the R9 270X, or just take the surplus and drop it on a small SSD boot?

 

[PP Mguire]

If he can save an extra 50 then drop a 760 in the machine.

The 640 is actually better than the Q6600, as it performs closely to the Q9400 which is a good deal better than the 6600. That's why I favor it over the Intel quad. Not only that, but a good 990FX board and some DDR3 could bump the performance of the 640 up more.