Building a new PC, have a few questions.

Hey guys, long time no see. So, my brother is still using a Dell Optiplex pc and half the time it doesn't work right. For Christmas I am going to build him a brand new pc and need your opinions on these processors on the pc I may build and if you guys have any better options or ideas. I don't plan on spending more than $450.00 on the whole build. He doesn't play games on his pc at the moment (because his current pc is a POS) but I honestly don't think he will in the future either, he uses his xbox360 for games. I can always drop a GPU in there in the future if needed anyways. So the CPU's I'm looking at are the "AMD Athlon II X4 640, AMD Athlon II X4 645, AMD Phenom II X4 840, and the AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition." All he really does on his pc is browse the net, chat on yahoo messenger, and listen to tons of music.
But like I said I want the CPU and MB to be able to handle games such as Gears of War and Crysis, and Oblivion should he decide to play them one day.
If there are cheaper CPU's out there that can handle these games please let me know. So here is a link to the current pc I may build.
http://cart.microcenter.com/cart.aspx
Please let me know what you think of that build and if I should change anything. I'd like to spend as least as possible due to lack of cash at the moment but I still want it to be a decent pc. I'd still have to buy him a new monitor as well since he is still using a CRT monitor that sheds tons of heat.
Thanks guys.

You can't post carts because that is set to your cookies. Take a screenshot and upload it would be better. You might be better off buying a computer at that price. Depends if you can find a good deal.

Don't go lower than the 955. The CPUs below that are quite pokey. The 955 is a great cpu for the 100-120 dollar price it goes for these days.
55/65/75 are identical. No sense buying something you can do yourself with 2 multi bumps on the stock HSF in the bios.

Since I can't post that link, here are the specs.
1.AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4
2.Asus M5A87 Socket AM3+870 Atx AMD MB
3.WD Caviar Blue 500GB 7,200 RPM Sata 3GB
4.PNY 4GB DDR3-1333 MHz (PC3-10666) Dual Channel
5.Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 600W ATX
6.Samsung 22X DVD+RW Burner with Dual Layer Support - OEM
7.Cooler Master Elite 430 Mid Tower Case
Total Price $419.46

There's also this one, that I won't have to build. But I like the challenge of building pc's, although I've only built one.
http://www.magicmicro.com/smoreinfo.asp?iid=2474

I'd look into the AMD APUs on the FM1 socket. Otherwise, try to get a lower end Sandy Bridge CPU and use the integrated video, then upgrade to a 2500K if he wants to game.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813154020
E 350 board 89.99 after rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231393
2 GB DDR3 13.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145475
2TB Deskstar 79.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147133
Case and PSU 44.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
optical 16.99

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El Cheapo. If you actually build El Cheapo please give it 4GB of RAM and a better PSU. This is El Cheapo "lite".

Knufire, are you talking about the "AMD A8 X4 3850 2.9 FM1"? According to
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html#cpuvalue it is one of the best bang for your buck processors on the market.
Thanks theocnoob for taking your time to find those pc parts but that is actually a little too cheap for what I want to build. Since my brother is still using the pentium 4 dell optiplex from like 10 yrs ago I know it won't take much of a processor to blow him away, but I also want it to still be viable in 3 to 4 yrs. He won't be oc'ing so I doubt he'll need an aftermarket cooler. Also I want to put the pc together myselfbut last time I switched the guts of an old pc to a new case 3 of the cores temps. became stuck and I dont know if it was due to static or if I got a little too messy with the alcohol soaked que-tips and hurt something. The pc was 3 yrs old when I did the transplant and maybe the 775 socket just got old. Microcenter charges $125 to build a pc and that is just too much money. Then there are pc's from www.magicmicro.com that I could have made and shipped but if something were to not work or go bad I'd have to ship it back and wait 2 weeks and all that bullsh*t. I still have 2 months to figure this whole thing out and $ to save so who knows what this thing will end up like.

TickleMyElmo said:

Knufire, are you talking about the "AMD A8 X4 3850 2.9 FM1"? According to
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html#cpuvalue it is one of the best bang for your buck processors on the market.

Click to expand...

It's an APU, they basically took a CPU and stuck a couple GPU cores on it, so it's both in one chip.

for a general purpose system, you can't top the a8 3850 right now.

Its basically a 2.9 GHZ Athlon II with a bit more L2 Cache, and a 6% performance improvement over the earlier platform due to die shrink and other tweaks. The on board GPU is good enough to handle light gaming at 1680x1050 (30-45 FPS with WOW on High, Civ V on Medium, Crysis on Medium). The built in video is like a HD5570 in overall ability, and will crossfire with 6450, 6570, and 6670 discrete cards, offering better performance in DX 11 games (But often a little worse in DX9)