Taurus

my buddy got his stimulus check and wants to finally upgrade his socket A system. we'll be reusing as much of his old stuff as possible (case, harddrive, dvd burner). his cap is $600 but i already picked out a good power supply which cuts it down to $500 left. and spending less is always better.

here are the other parts i was considering...

motherboard:
ASUS M3N-HD HDMI (nvidia 750a) $175
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3 (AMD 770) $95

processor:
Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz, 45W) $90

memory:
G.SKILL 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 $80

video card:
ECS 9600GT 512MB $140


I've always been the go-to computer guy among my friends and built his current comp years ago. and i've always been an AMD + nvidia guy which still pretty much holds true. i say pretty much because i know current Intel offerings are generally a better option. but i don't really know much about them or the available chipsets.

his priority is gaming (battlefield 2, in particular) which is why i have the 750a board there with it's SLI for future-proofing. but the board/chipset is still very new. makes me nervous.

so what is a good Intel cpu/motherboard/memory combo for roughly $300?

PUTALE

FOR INTEL SYSTEM

i would say go for the E7200 or E8200 processor.

Basekid

The 750i is getting good reviews on the net, so I would pick that one. Memory and vid card look good.

The cpu won't fit (like Putale mentioned) so yeah a 8200 would be a good pick.

Arniestan1

To get within the $300 range get the E4600 processor, Gigabite P35, and Corsaire 2ig xms 6400 ddr2 mem. All can easily be found in Newegg.