My old rig from 2006. Anything I can do to make it Cata rdy?Follow

Your existing hard drive is fine. Unless its sarting to fail or you need a bigger one, i'd wait a year or so before buying a new one. That 430 gt video card is about the lowest of the low in terms of potential video quality, and is going to be your system bottleneck. Get this one instead if you can (should be able to if you ditch the hard drive) $124 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121390

The board and processor are good for the price.

Might also want to check your power supply wattage and make sure you have at least a 525 watt for a better video card and if not factor that in too.

My PC is older than yours, and it plays Cata fine.

The card you have linked in your build post should run in that MOBO, seeing as how it's PCIe 2.0 compatible. You will probably need to upgrade your PSU for any newer card. I don't know that I can recommend you a card. I use a 9800 GT and it runs well. This is the exact card I have, with half the Video RAM. It DOES NOT require and additional 6 pin PCIe connector to run. The only "bad" thing about this car, is that you will HAVE to download nVidias nTune software to mess with the fan speed. They're kept low and as a result the card will run hotter. The price of that card is about what I paid for my 512 way back when I bought it.

Edited, May 6th 2011 6:12pm by Kastigir

It really depends on what you want to do and how long you are willing to wait for some components. A good mid to high range video card is going to start at $250 and go up, and that will generally be one of your larger expenses for a gaming rig. If you have truly usable, rebuildable components such as a case, power supply, DVD drive, maybe a hard drive, you can shave another $150 off the cost of a new machine. From there, you just have to ask yourself what upgrade schedule you can meet. If you are not going to keep investing in keeping the machine up to date, it doesn't make sense to spring for a higher end, potentially rebuildable motherboard, or at least one that will use newer components that will be more likely to transfer over to a newer motherboard / CPU combination later. Right now, Ram is going to stay at DDR3 for probably at least 2, maybe 3 years. DDR4 and DDR5 do exist, but you only find them in video cards at this time, because larger amounts of ram, not faster ram is key at the moment with the trend towards multiple cores, so likely you can hang on to your existing ram longer than you would have otherwise been able to in recent past.

Assuming you need to start from scratch, $800 isn't an unreasonable number for a solid, upgradeable foundation PC. Figure $120-$150 on your motherboard, $35ish for a basic 160GB hdd, $100 for a case and DVD drive together, $100 for a decent 700ish watt PSU, $70 for 2 sticks of ram for starters, then $250 for a video card and $200ish for a CPU. Operating system adds a bit to that if you need it as well of course.

If you skimp on the internals and get a cheaper motherboard and a lower end processor and video card, its doable for $500, though you'll pay for that later when you try to upgrade.

I tend to prefer Intel components personally, but if you are ona budget, AMD makes some very nice, cost effective processors that are almost as fast as their Intel counterparts.

When purchasing though, remember that your computer case will be the one piece of hardware that will last you longer than any other part of your computer. It pays to get one that is easy to access, and built fairly stout even if it costs a bit more, since chances are you won't be upggeading it in the next 10 years on average. Motherboards come and go, but they are the next most pain in the *** thing to replace.

There are also some physical limitations on electrical grid draw capability that mean 1,000 and 1,250 watt PSU's are likely the largest you will see in existance for the next 10 or so years. Buying 1 really good one with a lifetime warranty, though spendy, may eventually pay for itself in purchases you don't have to make again later on.

WooT, also turns out I can still get 64-bit Win 7 Professional cheap through my school. So that's $80 saved right there (and that's between the school price and the Home version--The professional is a $170 savings).

:D