I wasn't thinking about upgrading until my friend started talking about upgrading from his crappy HP box. Now I'm thinking about upgrading my gaming PC to an AMD 64 3500+, EVGA 7800 256mb GTX, mobo, and ram and pass my old rig on to him.

The real question here is what I should ask for the components, intact, so my friend can get up and running with some real hardware.

AMD XP 3200+ 400mhz Barton (Paid $169 for OEM plus $14 for aftermarket heatsink/fan (quieter and better cooling capacity)
Asus  A7N8X-E Deluxe (Paid 80)
EVGA 6800GT with Arctic Cooling 5 heatsink/fan unit installed (Paid $405 plus $30 for Arctic Cooler 5)
2x512 Corsair Value Select RAM (Paid $156)

Also consider that I am installing all components for him.

This rig has been 100% rock solid for the past year and would be more than happy to handle any problems he encounters down the road.

I understand some of the components, mainly the processor, have risen in price since I paid for them and will not be passing this increase along to my friend.

Thanks for any advice guys.

Quoted: Quoted: AMD XP 3200+ 400mhz Barton (Paid $169 for OEM plus $14 for aftermarket heatsink/fan (quieter and better cooling capacity) $289 Asus  A7N8X-E Deluxe (Paid 80) $85 EVGA 6800GT with Arctic Cooling 5 heatsink/fan unit installed (Paid $405 plus $30 for Arctic Cooler 5) $347 for v card 2x512 Corsair Value Select RAM (Paid $156) $77 . The prices in red are  current retail new.  First, socket A is phased out, AMD is no longer producing these chips and the MB maker's , to my knowledge are not coming out with anything new. it's "old tech ". there's certainly nothing wrong with that system. i as a matter of fact i'm typing right now on a system with the same CPU and MB. it's my internet and games i can't play on my 64 systems computer. I can't think of any reason why anybody would pay that kind of money now for a socket A system when for about the same you can put together a nice 64 system. I think of them as replacement parts. maybe $ 400-500 ???  just my $0.02   mmk

That's exactly what I was thinking on the processor, the raised the price because the only people that would be ordering them now would be people who already have a 32 bit setup and they want to upgrade their processor or need a replacement.

Thanks for your advice.