Old build upgrade advice!

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been on here but I'm really stuck and could use some advice!

I have a build I made a few years ago now and the specs are:

AMD Athlon II x2 250 (or 270 can't remember which)
4Gb DDR3 1600MHz RAM
Radeon HD 5850
400W PSU

So I'm thinking of upgrading this build and bringing it to university with me, maybe in a smaller case as the case I have is unnecessarily HUGE! What would be the best thing to upgrade?

I'm only looking to spend about £200 max at the moment and my thoughts were the RAM and the processor as the graphics card seem pretty good to me still.

The build is for light gaming and mostly university work in which I will be doing Computing Science and Programming. Thanks for any help you can give, and if you need any more info just let me know!

Btw I forgot to mention! I have a bit of a previous loving for AMD but I'm willing to try an Intel if I can get one for a reasonable price.

AM3 socket is really old and pretty much dead, why don`t you get what you can for that machine or keep it as a spare and go for a full new build or even partial, you could use the ddr3 ram from that machine as ram is stupidly expensive since the fire at the hynix factory.

You can get a brand new intel haswell motherboard and cpu for £120

http://www.ebuyer.com/603583-ga-z87-ds3h-motherboard-ga-z87-ds3h

http://www.ebuyer.com/538149-intel-...cket-1150-3mb-cache-retail-boxed-bx80646g3420

Then how about this graphics card http://www.cclonline.com/product/13...lor-Radeon-HD-7770-2GB-Graphics-Card/VGA2206/

All that inside your £200 budget

What do you do on it that feels inadequate?

Personally I would choke a bit on the limited amount of RAM, that'd be my first choice.
You could always get an SSD if you want a nice seat of the pants boost.

What motherboard have you got?
What brand of PSU?

JamesD1981 - Those sound like great suggestions to stay within budget and utilise my old tech! Thanks a lot Are there many upgrades available from the pentium on the 1150 socket? I'm not up to date on my intel sockets.

beers - It's just sometimes it feels somewhat tired when trying to multitask, if I have several programs open at once, especially a few different programming environments and youtube tutorials etc it can get a bit sluggish. Not too mention the games I want to play on it, I would hope to play medium setting at least and they tend to be PC exclusives or PC games that look tremendously better than the console coutnerparts!

daisymtc - I'm away at the moment, but I should be back with my PC at the weekend, so I'll be able to post specifics then!

Thanks for the help already though!

daisymtc said:

What motherboard have you got?
What brand of PSU?

Click to expand...

It's a 500Watt Cooler Master PSU, but in terms of the motherboard I'm not a 100% as I cannot remember! Sorry!

download CPU-Z. It tells what mobo you got.

With AM3 socket. You should be able to grab phenom II x4 or x 6 at ebay. however, some older mobo not support 125w CPU
I wonder if you mobo support AM3+ CPU.

Personally don't see the point of getting new mobo + CPU if you only have OEM Microsoft windows.

Also. you would need more RAM. and thus, you need to know what your existing mobo support.