Currently I've got an older gaming rig that has served well but is starting to show its age.
Pentium4 2.4c
Soyo Dragon2 P4I865 Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
2GB RAM (nothing special here)
Antec 600W PSU (forget the model)

Now the kicker is, I'm saving up for a wedding/honeymoon so don't have a lot of disposable income until after that, so I won't be putting together a big bad gaming rig until sometime in 2009, but I'd like to upgrade to a PCIe board so I can start doing piecemeal upgrades as the setup I have now is pretty much as high as it can be pushed economically.

What are peoples thoughts on the following

ECS G31T-M
Intel E2180
(I've already got 2GB of RAM that will fit this board)
GeForce 8400GS 512MB DDR2 (no idea on this one as there are a ton of low priced options, would prefer to stay <$75)
Case, PSU, and drives should be reusable and I'm fine with onboard sound.)

Again, I'll be upgrading this piecemeal in the future, the main thing I'm concerned with is the ability to upgrade it later and the minimal price.

You'll notice a difference. But I overclocked my "c" p4 by 25%. Don't know if your soyo board permits this. I just set the cpu fsb to 250 in the bios, and the memory dividers in the bios worked. If you go ahead with the upgrade, ditch the ecs board for a different brand if possible. The difference in price is sometimes only $10. I like asus or msi. My current compaq uses an msi g31 board. For the video card, use the onboard video of the g31 until you can afford a decent card. Newegg has a gigabyte 256 meg version of the 8800gt for $77 after rebate that might work better for occassional gaming. It's a low end version of the 8800gt, so the price is about right for what you get. I use the "pin mod" for my e4300 for an easy 33% overclock without affecting the memory or voltage. You can use it on boards that don't have any bios adjustments, like mine.

I would doubt that you can overclock on the ECS mobo. The E2180 should get a 50% increase in speed with an overclock. That makes is a good processor. The E2140 or E2160 will perform similarly when overclocked on a good board.

The 8400GS is only slightly better than good integrated graphics. At ~$70, you can get a 8800GS or 8800GT-256, which isn't amazing, but does get to call itself a gaming card.

Is the RAM DDR2? If so, keeping is fine, but you can get 2GB DDR2 ram for $20 if you look about.

Gulp!!!!!!

Honestly, get a hp/dell/gateway etc etc on sale when your wallet permits and slap in a video card. Can get that done for like 250-400 depending on pricing and sale at the time.

That 8400 is JUNK unless we're talking $20. Even then I'd save my money.

Not really married to the card at all (just sorta picked one at random) more the board/processor. Looks like the short verdict is:

The processor is fine and can stand to be overclocked (Don't know if I'll do this, but eh)
The board is cheap (obviously) and obviously more expensive is better (who knew)
The card in the chipset there is better than the 8400, which I'm guessing is better than my current 9800 pro.


If this is the case, then even just the board and processor (which come out to <$100 btw, which is << whole new PC) will fit my needs.

Note that the wallet won't permit much more than $150 until next year due to the upcoming nuptials