Computer Upgrades - Looking for bang for the buck

[Lissa]

Got one for $135 after mail in rebate and an instant rebate ($150 after the instant), it's a PowerCooler that is shipped overclocked at 875. The special on it made it cheaper than other cards I saw, so I figured I'd go with it.

OK so the video card is ordered and I'm not really going to be changing that at this time. However my computer has hard locked three times now in the last 4 days. Once while using it, once while I wasn't even in the house and it was sitting idle.

So there could be several things, but I have no indications of what the issue is so far. I stopped the overclock on the processor yesterday after the 2nd lock. But it locked up again tonight, while I was out and about.

So advice on a motherboard and processor? I may be accelerating the whole process (by dipping into savings). I have to have a functional home system for work reasons (even with the work laptop, I don't always bring that home and sometimes I have to do some small things for work) so if this one is indeed dying, then I can afford to make sure it's working sooner rather than later (and the processor is 5 years old at this point).

I will run a memtest on it here soon as I have had a stick of this old stuff fail before and I'll run HDD diags as well. But if anyone has some advice. I'd like the CPU/Mobo/4GB RAM for under $300 if possible, but I've seen that RAM is getting a bit more expensive again.

If you're looking for low price and good capabilities, I'd say go with an AMD Athlon X3 440 Rana with a Gigabyte UD3 AM3 MB. Then you can pick up 4G of RAM for about $100. Total cost of about $260 + shipping (probably around $275 after shipping).