Opinion on this computer upgrade?

the motherboard link points to a video card so i dont know what to tell you about that. if i was going to recommend a motherboard, i would recommend this one from tigerdirect. its a good motherboard at a decent price, with compatibility for dual SLI http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...

your CPU seems to be adequate, but if you are going for a gaming rig i would recommend an intel quad core CPU, the cheapest one being the Q8200 / 2.33GHz at $149.99, it comes with a cooler as well.

as for your ram, that ram is adequate, but me being the way i am i would max out the 32 bit ram capacity at 4GB. getting two of these http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool... you would double the amount of RAM for $4 less than your selection.

that video card will be MORE THAN ENOUGH!! to power any game you throw at it, even crysis at the medium/high mixed presets

as for the IDE to SATA converter, i would recommend just getting a SATA hard drive, chances are your IDE hard drive will give out soon anyway. a nice cheap SATA drive is here http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool... and besides preventing hard drive failure, this drive will function much more efficiently than an older IDE drive.

the GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 is perfect.

the Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Wolfdale 2.8GHz 3MB L2 Cache is also perfect (i have the same one works great)

the rams are great. no worries there

the link for the motherboard is the same as the video cards link

i really don't know anything about ide to sata converters and thermal compounds. why do you even need a ide to sata converter (if you have a ide hard drive that you want to use with your new motherboard i recommend you don't because then you'll have to get the drivers and everything and if you mess up there you'll end up with a slow system[saying this with experiance])

For his applications, you may shop him the dough by using in simple terms upping the RAM. like the 1st guy reported, the video card isn't required, on condition that he in simple terms IMs. If he's pleased with the RAM improve, do not hassle with the processor improve. He ought to in all threat in simple terms stash that funds aside (what he could have spent on the video card/processor) and purchase a clean laptop in like 3 years. i'm not in all threat prepared on processor enhancements until eventually the laptop became equipped with the purpose of later upgrading the processor. i think of the RAM will do precisely advantageous. I have been given an AMD64 Athlon ~2.0GHz with 1gb of SDRAM and a geforce fx5500 and it runs completely advantageous. i've got even re-coded video clips on that concern until eventually now. not the main suitable high quality, and it takes a mutually as, notwithstanding it is achievable. So, use the ok.I.S.S. theory. in simple terms improve the RAM, and make any further judgements later. EDIT: So that's a mobo/processor combination deal. ok, I in simple terms concept it became a on the instant processor substitute out. nevertheless nonetheless, i think of the 1gb of DDR and the $24 pix card ought to do the trick. single center processors are not completely valueless yet. depart or not it is for now. And DDR isn't that costly. SDRAM is costly. it is $a hundred/gb incredibly plenty. DDR you may snag for like $40/gb and DDR2 is ~$25/gb.