Keep the card reader, the DVD player, the hard drive, and power supply if you upgraded it to the 500W IIRC.

Everything else you'll definitely want to get new as it's too old to work with.

Here's a budget i5 build. I tried my best to make it sub 500 without making poor part decisions.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($222.50 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($58.25 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($64.05 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon R9 270 2GB '14Series Video Card  ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ NCIX)
Other: salvaged hard drive
Other: salvaged dvd drive
Other: salvaged psu
Total: $564.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-23 15:51 EDT-0400

For a long term computer, you're better off spending the money on the i5 now instead of compromising with an APU that will bottleneck modern games. But switching to an AMD FX 6-core or an AMD APU+removing GPU are your two options to make it cheaper.

The i5 is a fantastic chip. I have a 4 year old i5 on an second computer and it runs like a champ in games.

If you want to compromise on the GPU, drop it to a 260X.

Tell me your build right now and I'll give you my opinion on what to salvage. Approved by a microcenter employee!

As far as BF4 goes, I would say minimum an AMD 260X. I wouldn't get a GPU any worse than that. And that's just to play on modest settings.

While it's more ideal to grab an FX chip or an Intel i5/i7, the APU isn't the worst idea as a starting point. You can start without the graphics card and play on its integrated graphics and then eventually add a discrete video card when you have the money. If you do go the APU route, getting 1866MHz ram is a nice way to increase the gaming performance while not overspending.

Do build it from scratch though. You'll save money versus getting it prebuilt.

Shoutouts to no story mode.

Not like we played SWBF for story mode to begin with.

The game looks DANK. All we need is real gameplay now.

Nice bundle we got here. Bought it.

The game won't be dropping until early 2015 and that's assuming they won't delay it again.

It's specific enough.

Whatever Toshiba uses to factory restore most likely messed up legacy games for you. I'd say install windows onto a flash drive and test out the game that fresh install. If it still doesn't work then you're out of luck.

Whatever you did to "factory restore" your computer definitely messed it up. Do a fresh install and give it another shot. The game should run fine in Windows 8.

Nitro was trash. Need for Speed Rivals is actually a LOT of fun.

The Run wasn't too good IMO but it had its moments.

I'm going to give a big shoutout to Counter Strike Global Offensive. Hit me up if you got the game. Right now the only game I'm playing seriously. ESEA is a cesspool of toxic players but it's the highest level in North America.

Great memories of playind cod2, cod4, and swbf1 with this community. Also spent a LOT of time playing Street Fighter competitively but I dropped the game.

I first heard about the game when I was in middle school. I'm in college now.

I don't know when it'll come out. But it will eventually.

Update directx manually.

Update directx.

Like a better TF2? Based off better... CGI?

Wait until you see more gameplay. I quickly looked at the E3 footage and it's nothing like TF2. Class based gameplay is enough commonplace.

What definitely intrigues me is variety of how the classes play. I might give it a download when it comes out.

My concern is that right now PLA's server is in Chicago, which is a fair compromise for the US in terms of location. West coast based players would have latency issues if there's a server in NYC. If you had a West Coast server, it would be interesting.

What did you host on the VPS? I live in NYC so I might be able to help you host.