Budget gaming upgrade build, bottleneck question

[Lynxvi]

years ago, upon installing Everest i realize my ram is severely bottlenecking my current rig, but was still satisfied with performance, so it went ignored until recent... turns out there's not much RAM upgrading to be done when my current mobo supports only DDR2, and is currently far more expensive than much faster DDR3 because of obsoletism. i'd have to upgrade my mobo to upgrade my RAM. within that, i can't find worthwhile mobo that supports my AM2+ socket CPU, so i add this to my list. my PSU has sub-par wattage for any newer components, and GPU is the last remaining core component, so it gets upgraded, too. the rest are parts i'm fine continuing using(including recently purchased SSD, so no bottleneck there), especially considering i've got a ~$400 budget to work with.

Approximate Purchase Date: very soon, within next week

Budget Range: $450 maximum, shipped

System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: GPU, CPU, PSU, RAM, mobo (my OCZ Vertex 3 SSD should continue to be solid for gaming as it has been, and have plenty of older SATA HDD auxiliary space)

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg

Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Parts Preferences: none

Overclocking: very likely once cooling is upgraded later

SLI or Crossfire: not likely

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

Additional Comments: the only thing that matters to me for this build is price/power tradeoff. looking for the biggest bang for my limited bucks.
will play anything... racing, (MMO)RPGs, FPS, etc.. currently playing NFS Shift 2, Blur, NFS MW, Darksiders 2, DmC

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: it's time. currently using:
Phenom X4 9550@stock 2.2ghz
ASUS M3N-HD/HDMI
4gb worth of random, mismatched sticks of 333-400mhz =\
nV GTS 250


mobo, PSU, CPU
RAM, GPU
the Bluetooth dongle is a necessity as well

after doing much research and price deliberation, i've cut the original ~$500 price tag down to $419. was especially easy after heavily considering what parts could bottleneck, and what parts would be overkill for the rest of the rig. however on other builds i've been seeing, the parts are all sub-$100 except for the GPU which is $160+. is this proportionate to how contemporary builds are? i've been custom building PCs for over a decade now but have been out of the loop in the newest generation of hardware, which leads me to my closing:

i need to know if there will be any foreseeable bottlenecking within the parts i've selected, or if any suggestions can be made to lessen the overall cost/swap for better parts within said budget.

thanks in advance

 

[tator_80]

the extreme 4 has an extra PCI 3.0 slot, different LAN chip set,few more rear panel ports compared to the pro3, other than, yea pretty much the same board. The pro 4 should do you more than good though.

 

[Lynxvi]

parts are ordered, and decided to tack on one of these at the last minute for good measure, i heard a few people talking of stock cooler being ...sub-par, which i believe, as stock HSFs have always been shoddy at best. hopefully i can get the money up to grab a nice 660ti to make this rig truly shine. thanks again for all your help, much appreciated

 

[Lynxvi]

Best answer selected by Lynxvi.

 

[tator_80]

that's a nice cooler. Never heard anything bad about those.They are rather tall though. If you have any other questions or if you want to tell how the build went just post it up. always like seeing a build go well