Dan Here, and needs some advice.

[Dan Hunter]

This video explains about everything. Ask anything



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YNdY9wZNm8[/ame]

 

[I'm your huckleberry]

Keep the hdds and dvd drive and possibly the OS if it can be transferred and start anew. Maybe see if you can resell the rest on CL? If the OS cannot be moved to a new system, then try selling it on CL with one of the smaller hard drives so you can recover some money.

While it would be nice to use the case, those prebuilt comps from dell and the like have special cases that really won't fit most equipment you want. A cheap case though will only run you $30 or so and provide superior airflow and decent enough looks in comparison to the dell.

So basically, need

cpu and mobo
ram
gpu
psu
case

Hopefully you won't need the OS or you can get it cheap through a school if you are a student. If not, a prebuilt customized one from ibuypower may be the best option.

You are probably looking at $40 on ram, $30 on case, $100 on cpu, $100 on mobo, $40 on psu, $200 on vid card. Should be an impressive little system. If you can up your budget any more or if you happen to live near a microcenter, you could even snag a top of the line intel cpu with mobo bundle at a hefty discount.

 

[Dan Hunter]

How much do you think i could get for the hard drives?

i have a 300, a 700 and two 80 gig hard drives.

 

[Snipeye]

How old are the HDDs? Brand and model?

 

[TheYonderGod]

What CPU is in the ASUS one? You said it's an Athlon II, but is it a dual or quad core? Either way, the CPU is good enough for TF2 and stuff, or almost even Bf3 on low settings, your GPU and RAM are really what's holding you back. But, old hardware like that isn't really worth upgrading, it costs more for less than you would get if you just bought new stuff. I need specific details, but it's probably DDR2 RAM, which is like $60+ for 4gb, where DDR3 is like $50 for 8GB (and faster)
I can't really tell from the video but the Dell case doesn't look like a standard atx/matx case. I would just get a new one anyways, it doesn't look like it has any airflow at all.

I would just build a new one, only re-using the hard drives, and the Asus case if you want to save the money (around $30-40) to upgrade something else.
Buuuut you'll also need to buy an OS if you can't "acquire" it from somewhere else. (and by that I of course mean in a legal way ;p )
In this build there's still $50(plus $30-40 if you want to just reuse the Asus case) left of your $500 budget, so you can either use it on your OS, get a better GPU (7790 or 7850 are good), or get a 64gb SSD. Either way I would try to save up some more money to get an SSD soon. Also you can pick a different case if you want, I just looked at a couple cheap ones really quick and picked that one.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($117.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($52.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 370 ATX Mid Tower Case ($33.78 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($47.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $452.73
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-06-23 06:53 EDT-0400)