Need Help Choosing Upgrades

[psycho_freke]

I think my PC may be getting a bit outdated. It's choking a bit much for my taste these days... I want to upgrade it a little at a time as I can afford, but with an extremely limited budget I'm not sure where to start (or if I would be better off just buying a new barebones system for the price the upgrades may end up costing me). I seem to find a lot of information through this site, so when I decided that I needed some advice you guys were the first ones I thought of.

Here's my current setup:

NZXT M59 case with 3x120mm and 2x140mm case fans
OCZ EliteXstream 800 PSU
ASUS M4A785-M MOBO
nVidia GeForce 8400GS +512 MB
4x1GB Corsair 800MHZ DDR2 (with heatsinks)
AMD 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz
WD Black 1TB 7200RPM w/64MB Cache 6.0Gb/s (Master)
Seagate Barracude 320GB 7200RPM w/16MB Cache (Slave)
TSSTcorb CDRW DVD drive
HL-DT-ST DVDRW +/- DVD Drive
VT1708S High Definition Audio 8-Channel CODEC (onboard)
Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit)

I have a dual monitor setup so my GPU MUST have 2 outputs. The Onboard card on this motherboard is an ATI Radeon HD4200 +512MB, so it should have no trouble supporting ATI GPUs.

My chipset is AMD 785G/SB710 and supports AMD AM3/AM2+/AM2 ;Phenom™II /Athlon™II /Phenom™ / Athlon™ /Sempron™ Processors; however high end processors (that I can't afford) have been known to cause this motherboard to overheat.

Memory on my motherboard is 4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1200(O.C.)/1066*/800/667 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory, however I do not have the yellow slots for the 1200MHz memory. 1066 is supported for one DIMM per channel

Expansion slots on motherboard are 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16, 1 x PCIe x1, and 2 x PCI

System Bus up to 5200 MT/s ; HyperTransport™ 3.0 interface for AM2+/AM3 CPU;
2000 / 1600 MT/s for AM2 CPU

 

[Rammy]

You are at a bit of an awkward point in that most potential upgrades you could make would be fairly expensive and of little benefit.
Also, what you actually use/intend to use the PC for is fairly significant.

While you might find CPU upgrades, such as the Phenom X4/X6, they are pretty hard to get a hold of now as they have been superceded..

You should be able to salvage the case/HDDs/optical drives and at a push, the PSU (it's probably getting fairly old now), but you are basically best to start from scratch with a new motherboard, CPU and memory. You can obviously use your old graphics card until you have the cash to replace it.

If you have a rough budget, country and preferred retailers, people can suggest a base system for you to work from.

 

[psycho_freke]

You are at a bit of an awkward point in that most potential upgrades you could make would be fairly expensive and of little benefit.
Also, what you actually use/intend to use the PC for is fairly significant.

While you might find CPU upgrades, such as the Phenom X4/X6, they are pretty hard to get a hold of now as they have been superceded..

You should be able to salvage the case/HDDs/optical drives and at a push, the PSU (it's probably getting fairly old now), but you are basically best to start from scratch with a new motherboard, CPU and memory. You can obviously use your old graphics card until you have the cash to replace it.

If you have a rough budget, country and preferred retailers, people can suggest a base system for you to work from.

This setup really isn't that old. I was just working with a tight budget. I did my upgrades about two years ago so I figure I still have some mileage left on it. The only things left from my old dell machine are the CPU and the optical drives. I chose the motherboard based on it's upgradability; however I'm learning that for the price of the upgrades I'm looking at I could practically buy a much better motherboard/cpu/ram combo for a cheaper price. My GPU is definitely a weak point since I do enjoy gaming (although I haven't had as much time for it lately which has diminished my usage to merely social networking, streaming, downloads, and forums) and media. I'm not sure how accurate the "Windows Experience" index is, but my GPU gets the lowest score of all. That being said, with a new motherboard combination I could upgrade to DDR3 which is infinitely better than what I'm running now. My optical drives are sufficient for what I use them for. With everything moving in the direction of flash drives, SD cards, and wireless home networks, optical drives are nearly a thing of the past. I'll admit that I didn't make a tremendous upgrade, but just gutting my old Dell machine and replacing the motherboard and PSU made a world of difference. It's amazing how choked back the prefab machines are. I doubt I'll ever buy another manufactured PC (i.e. Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.).

I've considered switching to Ubuntu a couple of times since my PC seems to run better on it, but there still aren't that many programs written for Ubuntu. Also, Ubuntu didn't seem to work quite as well with my dual monitor setup as I would have liked it to, though it did work. The problem was that it had a tendency to stretch games across both monitors. Regardless, I have other people in my household who probably wouldn't invite the OS change quite as warmly as I would.