And yet again...

[Advent]

A friend of mine is looking to upgrade his existing setup. He's a fan of AMD, and if I remember correctly he has an Athlon II X3 right now and wants to upgrade some of his parts, but he's only got a budget of like $300. I told him I would ask around and see if the parts he picked out would work together. I've come here to ask.

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103846
MoBo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130585
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817152035
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145299
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133094

Mind, he's already got an HD 5770 GPU and a 1.5TB Western Digital HDD from some random acquisition of his (>.>), and a DVD drive. He's upgrading from 2GB of DDR2 I believe, so it looks solid to me, but I am far from the expert. I have no idea why he wants to upgrade now when he could wait and get something better, but he says it has to do with some 'quality of life' issue. (I have NO idea what that means in terms of computer usage, but...)

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions?

[vesseblah]

A friend of mine is looking to upgrade his existing setup. He's a fan of AMD, and if I remember correctly he has an Athlon II X3 right now and wants to upgrade some of his parts, but he's only got a budget of like $300.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions?

You sure the old motherboard and case can't be reused? Would leave enough money for x4 955.

[TanAxys]

I am a fan of micro ATX boards, but not that one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130295 same price, same brand, (MSI rocks btw) but with 4 memory slots

that's a decent CPU choice if you're on a tight budget. It's a BE with the AM3 socket, so he can dial it up a bit now, and then upgrade to a x4 or even x6 later when the prices come down.

a bit skeptical about 600w PSU for that price... I'd suggest http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256060 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371034 at the $50 price point, and either of those will have enough juice for the 5770 card

memory is fine, might be able to save a couple bucks with G-skill, but meh...

cases are purely subjective for the most part. I wouldn't recommend getting a case less than 8" wide because that limits choices in cpu coolers, but that's not a big deal really.

[qw4]

AM3 is compatible with AM2+ boards. You do not need a new board.

You could easily buy 2x2Gb RAM and an AMD 965 for under $300 and be done.

---------- Post added 2011-03-17 at 07:55 PM ----------

Why do you need a new power supply and case, anyway...

[Advent]

You sure the old motherboard and case can't be reused? Would leave enough money for x4 955.

I'm afraid not. He just told me he smashed his old motherboard. (He's a dumbass >.>) He's in a funk about his whole computer issue; I don't want to ask why. He's giving his case to me, which I desperately need since it fits the parts I'm buying, fortunately.

As to why he needs a power supply, I can't be sure. Maybe he's got a 350W? I honestly have no idea if it can power his new GPU so if I had to guess I'd say that's why he picked out a new one.