SWBFGamers

Hey guys, I'm back at it again in the tech field!

So recently, as part of my IT course, I need to refurbish an old PC. I've done minor repairs to the stuff the schools has, but I'm tackling a big one right now. I'm taking my parent's 8-year old Media Center machine and am planning to upgrade it so I could use it as my person machine (hopefully to replace my piece-of-crap laptop!)

Anyways, this is the old junker I'm repairing:

[spoiler]
(https://www.swbfgamers.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FzuzMrV1.jpg&hash=440a51b69473b0524bd0dae4c85ec3211ff129b7)
Name: Hp Pavilion Media Center a1477c Desktop PC
Processor: Athlon 64 X2 (T) 4400+ 2.2 GHz
Chipset: ATI Radeon Xpress 200
Motherboard: MSI MS-7184 AmethystM-GL6E
RAM: 1GB (2x 512MB DDR SDRAM)
Hard Drive: 250 GB SATA
Graphics Card: Integrated
Additional: TV Tuner with FM Tuner
[/spoiler]

As you can see, this thing was quite a powerhouse back in the day, but that day was long ago. I want to run Windows 7 on it, but it requires 4GB of RAM. I've luckily found where I can get 4 1GB sticks of old DDR SDRAM, however my main concern is the processor. Having looked up specs for Battlefield 4 recently, they require processors with around 2.4 GHz, whereas mine produces almost that. On top of this, the power supply (which has been replaced before) needs to have old connectors (otherwise I'm looking at buying a ton of adapters).

To summarize what I just said, I need help finding a good power supply that would have an old PCI connector (since everything these days uses the PCI-e conncector). All of today's power supply units have what I need for everything else, but I need to find one with an old PCI connector. On top of that, I also need to find a much more powerful processor, and one compatible with the old chipset that I mentioned above.

Could you guys help me out? Again? :confused:

Something on this page is lighting up my anti-virus.  Something about memory-up.

I don's see that URL in GM's profile.  I will have to do some digging.

OK, it must have been your picture in the spoiler tag.  Something about a malformed URL.  I took it out for now, as it didn't seem to work anyway.

OK, so here is my take on computer it self:

graphics card needed, would probably require the PS upgrade.  (Although I think you are using the incorrect terminology on the PS.)

more memory = better, although windows 7 can run with very little
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/windows-7-ram-requirements-how-much-memory-do-i-need/

wanting to play battlefield 4...umm, not so sure about that.

I'm not sure how much you want to spend, but I would really look at ebay for a system that comes with window 7 and maybe a better graphics card if you are wanting to play newer games.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xhp+h9&_nkw=hp+h9&_sacat=0&_from=R40

Well, I'm carrying a tightman's budget of $100. I know I could probably find the power supply for around $50, But then that leaves me with the other half for the processor and SDRAM, so I don't quite have a big enough budget.

At the least, if I can't run Battlefield 4 at first, I'd like for it to be able to run something like TFU II at decent speeds. Maybe once I get this sucker working again to finish up my IT course, I'l just start saving up to buy that H9 Phoenix model you're suggesting, Led. ;)

Quote from: Gold Man on May 09, 2014, 05:41:38 PM
Well, I'm carrying a tightman's budget of $100. I know I could probably find the power supply for around $50, But then that leaves me with the other half for the processor and SDRAM, so I don't quite have a big enough budget.

Do your research on power supply brands before you buy one. The last thing you want is a bad quality one frying your mother board.

There is no reason you can't play some recent games off a low end graphics card as well, but Battlefield 4 at a decent framerate is probably out of your reach. (That game is pretty intensive on hardware.) Other games like TF2 in DX8 mode you could probably hope for a pretty good framerate... Wait no I'm getting in TF2 stuff again my bad. (I really love that game.) But anyway Tirpider brought himself a GT 610 and played Dishonoured on it. I don't know if he's upgraded yet but I see him playing Rust a lot on Steam. So if he hasn't you certainly have some options available, even then Dishonoured ain't exactly an old game itself.

Also 4GB of ram shouldn't be your highest priority in my opinion if you're on a budget. 2GB will work just fine for most games until you can afford better. If you can afford 4GB without sacrificing anything else then of course you should get it. But you should focus on a GPU first.

Here is a PS
http://www.cputopia.com/psu-replacement-hp-pavilion-a1477c.html

here are some video cards:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_16?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=pci+express+x16+video+card&sprefix=pci+express+x16+%2Caps%2C256


the evga 210 looks good




here are your computer specs
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00617492&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

Perhaps I should explain how far I've gone:

I've looked at power supply options in several places, but I'm actually trying to find one like the one it has now that is busted, which is a Cooler Master 500W Extreme Power Plus. I don't know if it's still considered a good one, but I know Cooler Master itself is a well-known and trusted brand. And the reason our PS was corrupted anyways was because we never did shut off the computer.

I have found it on eBay for around $51, however I suppose I could go spelunking in my IT teacher's office and hunt down if he has a power supply that would work for my machine.

Once I have that done, I'l need the 4GB of DDR SDRAM, since it is recommend Windows 7 runs on 4GB RAM, or so my IT teacher says. The cost for that is around $20-30 (planning to buy it off eBay), so in total I'l have either spent around $80 alone, or just $20-30 for the RAM if I get lucky with one of my teacher's PS units.

There is also the potential for GPU, but for now I just need the clunker to work. Once I get that working I'l probably still play old SWBF and whatnot, but at least I'l have a machine that runs it nicely. Only time will tell what I decide to do once it starts working.

I used to do IT work regularly so I'll drop some knowledge.

Your PC is less than ideal in terms of upgrade options. However it's not absolutely obsolete.

100 dollar budget is REALLY small. But this is what you can do:

- Max it out to 4 GB of RAM. No brainer.
- Skip out on the video card. For your budget there's no room for an adequate graphics card. In addition, you will be bottlenecked by PCI Express 1.0 X16. The good news is the bottleneck isn't so much. The bad news is that there's still a bottleneck and money is better spent on the RAM+SSD combo.
- Go on ebay and get yourself any cheap SATA II Solid State Disk. SSDs are incredibly fast and REALLY help making old computers run better. Install Windows on the SSD and store your files on the HDD. Windows will run very fast and you can still have the storage options you wanted.

Coincidenially I've worked with the 500W Extreme Power Plus a few times. In fact, I have an extra one lying around in my room. (http://i.imgur.com/3SqLBZ9l.jpg)

[spoiler](https://www.swbfgamers.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F3SqLBZ9l.jpg&hash=1f81b17f2a5ffa830f63ebf88a7626dc5dbcdf94)[/spoiler]

It's an outdated PSU and they aren't easy to find in stock anymore. They're not terrible PSUs for basic builds but I wouldn't put one of these in a gaming PC. I also wouldn't recommend going out of your way to get this PSU. Any 80+ certified 300W PSU under a good brand should do well for your machine. If you want to run modern games, get yourself a minimum of a 430W. I can't stress enough how important it is not skimp out on the PSU. Don't get some random no name company off ebay. Those can kill your PC.

There is no such thing as a PSU with a "PCI" connector. Not that I'm aware of at the least. The PCI-E connectors are usually used to give extra power to graphics cards. Perhaps you are referring to the SATA or the 4-pin molex connectors. Any modern PSU should have those connectors standard.

I would not recommend turning it into a full out gaming machine, as it's too obsolete. Money is better spent making a new build if that is your intention. However for your IT course, you can turn this old build into a very fast internet and office machine.

-----------------------------------

Reasons why this shouldn't be converted into a gaming pc (assuming you're going over your $100 budget:
- Your CPU is 9 years old and will be a big bottleneck. Clock speeds are not the main resource for performance in CPUs anymore. The performance difference between my 4.0 GHz i7-3770k and my 2.3 GHz i7-4850HQ (this is my laptop) are not very far off, despite almost half the clock speed. Your CPU might get away with running some modern titles but your games will still have unstable framerates. I've worked with cheap AMD CPUs before and they haven't aged well for gaming.
- Outdated but not huge bottlenecks all around otherwise. Limited by SATA II speeds but that's not a deal breaker. The motherboard has PCI Express 1.0 X16 when most video cards run on PCI-E 2.0 or even 3.0. It's not a huge bottleneck compared to the CPU but it will still be there.
- If trying to play Battlefield 4, you might run into clearance issues with the video card in your case. Perhaps if you purchased a half-size video card it'll fit.

-----------------------------------
Sorry for the wall of text but that's my attempt to give a crash course. Here's a recap:

-4 GB RAM
-cheap SSD off ebay
-Any 300W PSU off newegg from a good brand.

I'm open to answer questions as I pretty much worked with crap PCs on a daily basis.

Thanks for the help, aeria!

I know off the bat I should max the RAM and not to bother with a GPU, as for now I just need the machine to work, more or less. The thing was a pretty good Media Center machine back in the day, so I'm still unsure what the wattage was for the original PSU. I think I'l just go spelunking in my teacher's office for a decent PSU, if I find one. If I don't, then I'l just look for one off eBay or newegg.

As for the hard drive, the SATA is an SSD, not an HDD. Even so, it's still a good hard drive, so chances are I'l keep using and won't bother with buying another hard drive.

My only other question is, what happens if I find a PSU that meets my requirements, but the size doesn't match? What then?

Your PC shouldn't have an SSD unless someone bought one for the computer in the past. SSD + HDD is a fantastic combo. The boot time and system responsiveness improve dramatically and you still have a full hard drive to store your files.

All standard PSUs are the same form factor so I doubt you'll have issues of whether it'll fit or not. If you can't salvage a PSU, get one off Newegg.

This one is perfectly fine for your computer and the price isn't too high. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371003&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=)

Here's an SSD that should serve its purpose. It's worth the steep price. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211718)

Quote from: aeria. on May 10, 2014, 08:58:58 PM
Your PC shouldn't have an SSD unless someone bought one for the computer in the past. SSD + HDD is a fantastic combo. The boot time and system responsiveness improve dramatically and you still have a full hard drive to store your files.

All standard PSUs are the same form factor so I doubt you'll have issues of whether it'll fit or not. If you can't salvage a PSU, get one off Newegg.

This one is perfectly fine for your computer and the price isn't too high. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371003&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=)

Here's an SSD that should serve its purpose. It's worth the steep price. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211718)

Well, looking back at the hard drive again, it states Western Digital, so it obviously didn't come with the machine. I'd assume the IT guys transferred data from our old hard drive to the other hard drive the first time, and replaced the PSU the second time we went.

And that's good to know, so it means I should be able to find a good working one my my teacher's cave of an office. :P It should also save me $30!

I guess I'l only be spending that $30 for the SDRAM, which again shouldn't be hard to find off eBay. Thanks for the help, aeria!

Almost all pre-built PCs come with 3rd party products. Western Digital supplies A LOT of the hard drives to manufacturers. If the storage capacity of that hard drive is 250 GB, then it likely came with the computer.

Also WD does not make SSDs.

Have fun refurbishing the computer!

Well, after talking it over with an IT expert, it seems my PSU isn't the problem here at all. The thing can turn on my PC, but I can't get any further, because the OS is corrupted (I may have deleted some useful files on there in my haste to clear up space on the thing). I plan to wipe the hard drive and slap Windows 7 on there, but if it doesn't work I'l be looking for a new hard drive I guess. (Turns out I might be buying an SSD after all!)

I'm still hunting for SDRAM on eBay, and I've found some good offers, so I might take up one of their offers if I can. Figured I'd keep you guys in the loop on my PC. :D

That's good news. Any parts you can salvage, the better.

EDIT: Here's the cheapest I found of 4x1GB DDR 400 MHz modules.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Edge-1GB-40-4GB-4-x-1GB-PC-3200-400MHz-DDR-184-Pin-Desktop-Memory-RAM-/151297641998?pt=US_Memory_RAM_&hash=item233a0ace0e

Quote from: aeria. on May 12, 2014, 01:40:05 PM
That's good news. Any parts you can salvage, the better.

EDIT: Here's the cheapest I found of 4x1GB DDR 400 MHz modules.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Edge-1GB-40-4GB-4-x-1GB-PC-3200-400MHz-DDR-184-Pin-Desktop-Memory-RAM-/151297641998?pt=US_Memory_RAM_&hash=item233a0ace0e

Well, I've been hunting for RAM the past few days, and all the offers range from $36-$50+. I've seen several offers with free shipping, but none of them confirm they can ship to Canada. That's one of the better offers I've seen, but it doesn't say it can ship to Canada, it just says it may/may not be able to ship to Canada.

EDIT: Ok, after hearing that I'd need to purchase a product key for Win 7, I've decided I'l just go with a reinstall of XP, so I won't need to hunt for RAM anymore.

Anyways, the reinstall works from what I see, all I need to do now is hunt for drivers. Once the drivers are in place, I should be good to go. Unless of course the XP reinstall doesn't work right, in which case I'l need to hunt down the Media Centre Edition install disc in my house to reinstall XP properly.

I know there's gotta be a place that lists drivers for XP, however, can anyone help me find the Ethernet driver for my HP Pavilion 1477c Media Centre machine?

Oh man you're a Canadian.

I still recommend to max out the RAM. NCIX is a great Canadian retailer for computer parts.

And I recommend getting Windows 7/8. They have much better built-in hardware compatibility.

Well, I've hit a roadblock in my refurbishing.

Apparently it's incredibly hard to find Network drivers for the old tower. I've hunted down the Realtek LAN driver that it needs (from both HP and Lenovo), and all 3 drivers don't seem to work on the tower.

Any chance you guys could help me out? I'm looking for network, graphics, audio, and multimedia drivers for an MSI Amethyst GL6E 5188-4307 motherboard. I've tried the HP site, and only one thread had the similar question, and was redirected to a model with the same motherboard. I tried the drivers, but none of them seemed to work. :wall:

Windows 7 is less of a pain when it comes to drivers. See if you can get Windows 7.

Quote from: aeria. on May 21, 2014, 09:21:58 AM
Windows 7 is less of a pain when it comes to drivers. See if you can get Windows 7.

I would, but I still don't have 4GB of RAM. I only have 1GB of RAM in the machine, which basically means if I want Windows 7 on it, I can't use any programs once it's installed. 2GB potentially might work, but it'll still be somewhat slow. I'm literally out of options at this point, and the 400MHz DDR SDRAM in 4x1GB packs is becoming harder to find. I know of a friend who may install Windows 7 for me for free, but again, at this point I have no other option left but to find the drivers.

Good luck on the driver hunt!

After much driver-hunting (and much thanks to oldsnake for helping me), I have finally got all my drivers installed!

Now comes the final question: In it's current state (with WinXP MCE and 1GB of RAM), will it be able to run SWBFII and/or Guns of Icarus Online?

You might want to hunt for a low profile GPU if you don't have the money for a new PC build. I doubt SWBF2 will run well but you'd might as well try.

Quote from: aeria. on May 28, 2014, 07:23:49 AM
You might want to hunt for a low profile GPU if you don't have the money for a new PC build. I doubt SWBF2 will run well but you'd might as well try.

Ok, I still have some space for that, anything you'd recommend for an MSI-7184 Motherboard with an ATI Xpress 200 Chipset?

Hey Good Luck with the computer! :D

I was looking at your post and when I clicked on your spoiler I couldn't believe my eyes, we have a computer just like it at home! My younger brothers are using right know for some older games.  :happy:

Quote from: PatriotNorwood on May 28, 2014, 08:37:33 AM
Hey Good Luck with the computer! :D

I was looking at your post and when I clicked on your spoiler I couldn't believe my eyes, we have a computer just like it at home! My younger brothers are using right know for some older games.  :happy:

Whoa, small world then. :)

But yeah, I have it all said in done, just need to know if it'll run those games. By the way, does your model have everything as it was, or did you do some upgrades to it as well?

If I remember correctly, the only thing we have done to it (other than wiping it clean :P) is added some RAM memory. I don't remember the exact details off the top of my head. :slap:

Ok, I'm resurrecting this old thread, because I intend to actually overhaul this junker this year.

Last we left off, the machine has 2GB of RAM in it, and the components are still the same from the last time.

I intend to replace:

• Motherboard
• RAM
• CPU
• Power Supply (if I really have to)
• OS (for obvious reasons, it runs XP)

I intend to salvage:

• Hard Drive
• Optical Drives (if possible)
• Power Supply (if possible)
• Case

In essence, I'm carrying a tighman's budget again (planning to splurge around $200-$300 for the parts this time though, once I have the money for it), and would like to actually fix this machine up so it can run the new SWBF. If it comes down to it, I might end up blowing $500 all in all just to overhaul the rig. Again, it'll most likely depend on my wage and what I can actually afford, even planning to sell off the old parts to make a quick buck to help out on this, actually. Current components are listed in the first post if you guys need an idea as to what it is I'm salvaging and replacing.

EDIT: Funny, I don't remember my name being blue. :P

Ok, so after doing some more hunting around, I've found that thanks to the terrible currency exchange between USD/CND, it's nigh impossible for me to really beef up the junker for anything below $500 to run something like the new SWBF.

I'm heavily considering about just going out there and buying a whole new rig at this point. Unless you guys know how I could even salvage parts of the current rig and slab them with some newer parts.

This seems like a half-decent deal. Running it alongside Battlefield 4's old specs off GameDebate, this thing can run it on Medium to High settings, meaning I should be able to at least achieve Medium settings on the new SWBF with this machine:

http://pc.ncix.com/ncixpc_new/ncixpc.cfm?uuid=F10341F0-BC2C-4A80-B38BDE56DEC5503B-6383610

Tell me what ya think.

If your PSU has the correct connectors, has enough power output, and if it is working perfectly fine, you could probably just reuse it. Your hard drive and optical drive of course work with your power supply, they need to connect to the motherboard with a sata cable (I think its called sata). If they do connect to the motherboard with sata you should be able to reuse them (I don't know, they could use some older connector). I would just reuse the case if it supports your new motherboard's size.

If you reuse that stuff you could get a tad faster AMD APU or a faster hard drive like an sshd (solid state drive and hard drive hybrid). SSHD are slower than a SSD and faster than a HDD, your most accessed files would be faster to acces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlCqYyAQE_w

Quote from: {PLA} Van STING on April 22, 2015, 08:20:30 PM
If your PSU has the correct connectors, has enough power output, and if it is working perfectly fine, you could probably just reuse it. Your hard drive and optical drive of course work with your power supply, they need to connect to the motherboard with a sata cable (I think its called sata). If they do connect to the motherboard with sata you should be able to reuse them (I don't know, they could use some older connector). I would just reuse the case if it supports your new motherboard's size.

If you reuse that stuff you could get a tad faster AMD APU or a faster hard drive like an sshd (solid state drive and hard drive hybrid). SSHD are slower than a SSD and faster than a HDD, your most accessed files would be faster to acces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlCqYyAQE_w

I believe the components work with SATA cables (the hard drive does I know that). The PSU might use some rather unique connectors, and I don't know what cable the optical drives use (might be SATAs). In any case, I plan to reuse the case (saves me a couple buck there as well, since it already has some fans in it too).

I might get an SSD, budget pending, and I've been debating if I should go for an APU or not. Are the able to run such high-demand games?

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.

Quote from: aeria. on April 22, 2015, 10:01:08 PM
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.

Well, the build I have is the same as last time (refer to first post again), only now it has 2GB of RAM. I've been considering an APU actually (my current laptop has an A10-5745M with Radeon 8610G graphics, and it handles well with the games I have).

I'm even planning on selling some of the parts I'm not salvaging, so I can have more of a money pool to draw from to buy parts with. I know I can make a killing with some Crucial 8GB RAM from my older laptop, but the rest of the parts may prove a tough sell from my desktop.

Also, before you start giving me options, remember I'm Canadian, meaning the prices on parts will be highly inflated for me compared to the US market. :P

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 (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/wJ2MdC) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/wJ2MdC/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54460)  ($222.50 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-h81mp33)  ($58.25 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f310666cl9s8gbxl)  ($64.05 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon R9 270 2GB '14Series Video Card (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/club-3d-video-card-cgaxr927614)  ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/fractal-design-case-fdcacore1500bl)  ($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.

Quote from: aeria. on April 23, 2015, 12:55:02 PM
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 (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/wJ2MdC) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/wJ2MdC/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54460)  ($222.50 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-h81mp33)  ($58.25 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f310666cl9s8gbxl)  ($64.05 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon R9 270 2GB '14Series Video Card (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/club-3d-video-card-cgaxr927614)  ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/fractal-design-case-fdcacore1500bl)  ($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.

Hmm, I see. The parts list looks decent enough. Now I gotta get selling my parts!

I know there's money to be made off the RAM from both my old laptop and the desktop, the motherboard and CPU might be harder to auction off though, alongside the cases, OS product keys.

I've seen the Crucial DDR2 laptop RAM sell for a good price, the older stuff might also get me some good money too. The only roadblock will be a way to sell my Vista product key (no disc included). I can sell the XP MCE OS with a disc and key, the motherboard might be tougher, as might the CPU be.

The laptop case is really nothing more than a husk of a computer (only has the CPU and GPU in it, and I'm not about to rip that case up to get them out of there), so I doubt I could effectively sell it without the hard drive or RAM. The desktop case might be worth some money though as is, though I thought perhaps my current case might be able to complement the newer hardware. If not, I'm perfectly content with buying the newer one and trying to sell my old one.

When your on a budget the fx-6300 is probably best http://www.ncix.com/detail/amd-fx-6300-six-core-3-5-4-1ghz-c1-76934-1611.htm http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/361/AMD_FX-Series_FX-6300_vs_Intel_Core_i5_i5-4460.html http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4460-vs-AMD-FX-6300 . Plus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66BiQsOM9_M The i5 performs slightly better but it's like $100 more, and the i5 is definitely better when using a single thread.