irbullet said:
bobkn said:
irbullet said:

I honestly don't have the money. Are there any amd alternatives to the i5?
I believe that AMD doesn't provide much competition for the I5-2500k at the moment.

Something like a Phenom II X4 965 BE might do better than an I3-2100, at about the same price. The chips with more cores (Phenom II X6, FX) might be attractive if you need to run software that can efficiently use multiple cores.

It appears that Dell may use a proprietary connector for the front panel stuff. It may require some extra effort to use an industry standard motherboard in a Dell case, even if your GX280 is one that can fit a standard format (microATX or ATX) board. (Dell made GX280 PCs in a variety of form factors. Which one do you have? If you don't know, take the service tag number to support.dell.com.)

If you want a graphics card, it looks like the best available that doesn't require an auxiliary PCI-E power connection uses the Radeon HD 6670 chipset. I hope that your PSU has enough capacity to support one. Also, that your case can accept full-height graphics cards.

What's your budget? A quck look at www.newegg.com suggests that you could get a Phenom II X4 965BE (retail, with heat sink/fan), an inexpensive AM3+ motherboard, and 2 X 2 GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, for roughly $200US. A 6670 graphics card would add $65.

Maybe your best course would be to plan and save for a new build. Here's a $500 example:

April 2012 Gaming Computer Builds

You might be drawn into wanting to spend more money, though. If you started with an I5-2500k ($220) and a Radeon HD 7950 ($400), I imagine that you could build a high-end machine for not too much over $1k. That's a lot, but you'd get rapidly diminishing returns in spending more.
I have a mini tower. But if it doesnt work ill run out and buy a new case. And could could you link me to the amd phenom and motherboard and gpu? And im 14 I CANNOT build a amazing computer. I dont want one.. I dont need one.. i also do not have that much money. I stated before
Okay. My favorite vendor is Newegg, but they're not always the best deal.

CPU:

Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

Motherboard:

Newegg.com - ASRock 770iCafe AM3+ AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

(A semi-random choice. Cheaper ones use the old nVidia 7025 chipset; I'd give that a miss. This one is also full ATX.)

RAM:

There are many makes at about the same price. This one is probably good:

Newegg.com - G.SKILL NS 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNS

Most 2 X 2 GB DDR3-1333 1.5V would work well. Asrock publishes a Qualified Vendor List, but I don't see the part numbers at Newegg. (The QVL is sometimes out of date.)

Graphics card:

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 11192-22-20G Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Sometimes I'll get stuff from Amazon to avoid shipping charges.

I hope that you don't end up needing a new case and power supply. If you get a new PSU, though, I'd suggest a better graphics card, one that uses auxiliary PCI-E power. (Slippery slope.)