Time for some hardware upgrades?

Alright, here’s the current setup: a Gigabyte M56S-S3, an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core 4800+, 2GB of DDR2, an AMD Radeon HD 6500 with 1GB, some junk 400W power supply, and a 20" widescreen monitor. I just slapped a new Alpine 64Plus cooler on it, but lately, the motherboard has been acting up. I was thinking about putting in minimal investment, probably a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM... though this isn't for me. It's for my neighbor—his kids are in elementary school, so I need something reliable enough to actually work for the next few years 🙂
I’d probably order the parts through Newegg or maybe Best Buy, or something along those lines. I haven't really kept up with the tech market lately, so I have no idea if there are any new, cheaper retailers out there now 🙂
Thanks in advance 🙂

Are the hard drive and optical drive SATA?

The bare minimum build would probably look like this:

1 x Intel Celeron G1820
1 x Crucial RAM 4GB DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL11 Unbuffered UDIMM 240pin Single Ranked
1 x MSI Desktop Motherboard iH81 (S1150, DDR3, SATA II, SATA III, PS/2, USB2.0, USB3.0, LAN, audio Line-In, Line-Out, Microphone-In, DVI, VGA) mATX Retail
Total: $308

I guess $283 you could probably put that together 😉

Good grief, the optical drive is working perfectly, but the hard drive? Absolute garbage. 🙂

The optical drive is basically useless then 😁 I guess you could hunt down a Bluetooth adapter or maybe an old PCI IDE controller, but honestly, if you actually need one, it’s probably better just to pick up a new or used burner

http://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-to-SATA-...item5d41e95174
I’m thinking this thing will actually get the job done. 🙂
Thanks. If the budget ends up shifting, I'll let you know. 🙂

The fan popped right out of my graphics card. I’m not really a hardware guy since I'm focusing on studying web design, but is this something that can be swapped out? My PC is only about six months old
and it keeps overheating constantly!
Any suggestions? Ideally, I'm looking for something budget-friendly...

Brandon Martin said:http://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-to-SATA-...item5d41e95174
I guess this might do the trick. 🙂
Thanks, I'll let you know if the budget changes. 🙂

Maybe grab a different one; I have two of these things and they're pretty crappy and lose connection constantly.

Honestly, you’re better off hunting down a used SATA roaster in a place like Chicago than messing around with that cheap junk. Even if it ends up costing you a little more $5.00.