Advice Upgrading 2005 Sony Vaio for Son's Gaming Needs

[SamanthaHHI]

Approximate Purchase Date: 2005

Budget Range: $300-500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: I am going to include specs below to get advice on what parts I need to upgrade and what parts are compatible with which

Do you need to buy OS: Yes

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com, crucial.com, frys.com - I am open. I want good parts, but I am NOT looking for top of the line. Need to budget this a bit.

Location: Bluffton, SC

Parts Preferences: None

Overclocking: Yes...only by 10%, if necessary

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe...prefer AMD products

Your Monitor Resolution: 1440x900

Additional Comments: Want to be able to use Steam, play Battlefield 4

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Good Tower, need to upgrade innards to play sophisticated games.

Would love for someone to say, "Here's a bundle, buy this and install it on your own."

Here is a link to the original build and what the tower looks like:
http://shopping.yahoo.com/9090626-sony-vaio-vgc-ra840g-desktop-computer/;_ylt=ArX5eYhinq.1JYQ8bcrJ6NOgn7sF?#specifications

I know enough to be dangerous and semi-fearless in upgrading and messing with my computer. Would love for this to be an affordable project for my 13yo son.

Thank you!!

Samantha

 

[HiTechObsessed]

Here's my recommendation. Upgrades pretty much everything sans HDD and cd drive. The GPU will play BF4 beautifully, especially at 900p.

Fair warning though, if you want to overclock this in the future, I would recommend buying a CPU cooler first.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($116.97 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($64.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($72.25 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($174.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($58.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $488.17
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-29 11:56 EST-0500)

 

[SamanthaHHI]

I know on this system that there is a fan over the hard drive bay and another fan over the power supply block which is a fairly substantial (in size) battery unit (7w - not sure if that is weak or not).

Where do you add a cooling unit? Does it replace a fan?

Here is a link to internal diagrams. They start on about page 66-84 and it gives you a good idea of the space and configuration with which I am working:
https://docs.sony.com/release/VGCRA840G-940Gseries.pdf

 

[SamanthaHHI]

nvmd...was able to add link to previous post

 

[g-unit1111]

Are you upgrading a laptop or a desktop? Both will be difficult to upgrade as the cases on the desktops don't conform to standard form factors.