My friend, who moved to the US some years ago, informed me that his main rig recently broke (motherboard-related).
He is very strapped for cash, and cant afford to buy anything for quite a few months, so me and another friend are hoping to step up for Christmas and buy enough to get him going again.
What i'm thinking is:
Budget - cheap, i'm afraid. We (us in the UK) want to be generous, but not crazy. probably $150 max.
Components - needs a new Mobo, CPU and quite probably RAM (need to confirm the RAM issue).
He'll then be able to use his Radeon 3870 again.
Payment - it'll go on my credit or debit card, but needs to be bought and posted within the US. Actually, it doesnt need to be bought in the US, but it'll be silly to buy in UK then ship across.
What i'm thinking so far is (from NewEgg website):
ASROCK mobo, N68-S (AM3) microATX $42
ADATA 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM $33
Athlon II X3 445 3.1Ghz $74
Shipping is $4, total is $152.
Does this look like what i should be doing? Any obvious mistakes, or alternatives welcome
PS his wife will blow her top if he spends any himself, so I wanted it to be a nice surprise from his UK pals