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Processor suggestions

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datora:
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As much as I usually like AMD, I don't see that as a good option for you here.  The energy & heat use are higher, and even when overclocked they will not push the envelope for cutting edge games.  I go with AMD when gaming performance is not at a premium.  Since that is your highest priority here, Intel is pretty much your option, and that performance/efficiency premium is not free.  Also, you don't seem interested in linux options.


You can keep the GPU, for now, and plan on upgrading it "later on."  What you probably should look at is a mobo+CPU combo for "right now," as in the next couple of months if you don't want to wait.

Your DDR2 RAM can't be migrated; you will have to purchase new DDR3 RAM.  2 x 4GB kits = 8GB is cheap and powerful and plenty right now.  You should be able to get a 1600 or even an 1833 kit for under $50, maybe as low as ~$35 (I don't know the EU market right now; I'm estimating by U.S. prices).


The entire budget can be dedicated to mobo+CPU+RAM and you can scavenge the remaining parts from your old rig (the SAS drive probably an exception).  This will get you a new rig that's actually running now, but you'll want to be planning a few more upgrades in the six or so months following that.

The mobo will want (at least) the following features: USB 3, SATA III (6 Gb/sec), support 1800 (or even 2100) DDR3 RAM, ability to overclock.  It will be "premium" price because it's Intel, but some budget boards are out there with everything you need.  Many boards have expansion capacity that you'll never use; since you're on a budget, look where you can make acceptable sacrifices (e.g.: Do you really need 7 expansion slots?  Maybe 3 or 4 are enough.).  Sound off most modern mobos is quite good, so you don't need to worry about a soundcard, and make sure you find a mobo without an onboard GPU ... no sense paying for that if you already have one to drop into an expansion slot.

kitamesume has solid Intel-based knowledge, so I'd start with his suggestions to learn what specifications are important there.  One upgrade I would look at is at least an i5 processor, and make sure its a new generation, like a 2550 or something; not one from last year.  If you get one that runs native at 3.5 GHz, you can overclock to 3.7 or 3.8 GHz with very little impact on system heat/noise but get a very solid performance bump.  If your CPU is so strong that your GPU becomes your bottleneck .. that's Very Good, because you're going to keep shopping and budgeting for a new GPU about six months or so from now.  Live with your 550 for for now, but it's headed into its final days and you should just plan for it as one of your next upgrade projects.

You can get a better cooling block cheap, even better if you get a bare CPU with no cooling block and you can invest your savings into getting one you can really use, like can mount 2 x 120 mm silent fans on it.  Don't worry about mad overclocking, like trying to push one of those up into the 4.2 or 4.5 range; not worth it.

And, this means your case has to be able to fit all this gear.  Make sure you take that into account to decide if you recycle the current case or need to move to a new one.

Look for fans that run at under 20 dBA, even under 18 and down to 16 for extremely silent cooling.  Many fans run at 25 or 28 and even higher.  Some move ~75 cubic feet air/min (CFM), but are sound-rated at 22 or 25 dBa noise levels ... better to get three fans pushing 55 CFM and rated <18 dBa than 2 fans pushing 82 CFM and rated 25 or 28 dBa.  Creatively mount your fans to push air across your hottest areas (CPU, GPU, RAM in that order).


Power supply: once we know what you have better advice can be given.  Generally, you should probably plan on upgrading it.  The only question will be how fast ... like "immediately" or is six/eight months down the line acceptable?  Newer PSUs are more efficient, cooler, quieter.  Also, yours has been in service for "a while," so it's chances of failure are increasing; a new one appropriately matched to your needs will be insurance of likely service for three to five or more years.  Should you look at a new case, look for bottom-mounted PSUs that draw cooling air from outside the case (usually through the bottom with a filtered intake).


A Solid State Drive (SSD) used as your main OS & applications drive will boost you madly in speed, so look seriously into that.  Most people I wouldn't push it, but for data-intensive/cutting edge games, it will make a big difference.  Side effects: your OS will zoom along, as well as any other major apps you run.  A 120 GB SSD is a generous amount of space, and the 120/128 sized ones right now are hitting the $1 per GB price point for 2nd gen SATA III drives (very fast, much more reliable).  They use extremely little energy and are very cool, as well as being as silent as a dead brick.

The SAS drive .. any possibility to put that into an external enclosure and dedicate it as storage ..?  It's probably your hottest, noisiest component.  Worth considering to get rid of it for whatever you can sell it for & replace it outright.  I've nearly a terabyte of PATA drives that I've filled with anime & music & other backup data that I rarely access and placed them into dry, cool storage with a PATA external USB 2 case.  Occasionally I drop one of those drives into the case & plug them into a computer ... maybe once every 2 months.  An option for you to look into here, especially if your SAS doesn't just drop into your new build.

Large capacity drives are finally dropping a little bit in price again, although nowhere near as "near-free" they were last summer.  Recently saw a 2TB drive for $110 on newegg, though it wasn't necessarily a brand I'd blindly trust; considering I got some much better 2 TB drives for $60 last year, that price is still relatively outrageous.  Slate that out for upgrade "in the future" and figure out how to utilize what capacity you have now & "get by."


At the end of all this, the base system you have now stands the potential of being re-built into a functioning system after you've scavenged off what you need for the new system.  There will be a mobo+CPU+RAM combo that all works together, which you decide if you want to make a back-up system or sell it off.  Possibly a PSU & case will also be leftover, &/or the SAS drive &/or the case.

kitamesume:
well since this is getting detailed might as well jump in.

(note: currency is in US dollars, and shipping costs excluded.)
[$124.99 - $15(promo until 4/2)] Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
[$104.99] ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
[$44.99] Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL : $259.97

[$128.99] Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
[$19.99] APEX SK-393-C Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (note! careful with cheap cases, some of them are cheap enough to be called a junk.)
[$44.99 - $8(promo until 3/29)] CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 (CMPSU-430CXV2) 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAND TOTAL : $445.94 or €334.14


========================================================================================
going into details
========================================================================================

[$124.99 - $15(promo until 4/2)] Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
*place holder for the ivy bridge i kept mentioning.
*superior to the athlon you opted in both efficiency and performance.
**inferior to the phenom II x6, BUT has the advantage of being cooler in temps on most occasions. vastly more energy efficient, specially in idle.

[$104.99] ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
*supports ivy bridge
**supports PCI-E 3.0 when an ivy bridge processor is installed.
*built-in USB3 & SATA III controller, a very useful feature.
*on-board audio ALC-892, a priceless component when you aren't opting for an audio-card and you value sound quality as well, on-par with value audigies in sub $50.
**only bested by $100+ audio-cards, debatable.
*supports up to 4 rams, a priceless feature when looking from a lower budget point, specially if you value ram capacities, very useful to video/image editors.
*has plenty of expansion slots, and has both pci-e and pci, quite a useful feature when opting for add-in cards like audio-card, pci/pci-e to sata or even raid controllers.
*solid capacitors, more durable than your average capacitors, though recent motherboards are usually equipped with these.
*combo cooler option, this is native to only asrock, debatable, it is a feature where even though its an lga1155 motherboard, it supports both lga775 and lga1155 cpu coolers.
*Z68 chipset, supports intel Smart Response Technology, as previously explained, it uses an SSD to cache a regular HDD's read/write tasks, effectively boosting it's performance.
***for a price of $105 with these much features, its hard to find any other option.

[$44.99] Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop
*no comment, its just your average branded bling ram thats being sold for a cheap price.
**i kinda liked it's high newegg positie feedback.
***if you know of anything better than this then go ahead.

[$128.99] Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
*nearly $1/GB.
** one of the most rare occurrence of getting 75+% of five stars in newegg feedback, considering its an SSD.
*SSDs in general are crowned to be the fastest drives in current date, with a max read/write speed of 500MB/s for new models.
*SSDs are also designed to be power efficient, running well under 5watts during read/write tasks and well under 1watts during idle.
*SSDs are practically silent, since no moving parts are present whatsoever.
***the OS isn't the only thing that benefits from fast SSDs, programs that tends to read/write files occasionally benefits greatly when installed on an SSD, games that tends to load scenes frequently, or change maps/scenes/location/etc. benefits greatly when installed on an SSD.

[$19.99] APEX SK-393-C Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (note! careful with cheap cases, some of them are cheap enough to be called a junk.)
*it's cheap.
**might as well call it junk?

[$44.99 - $8(promo until 3/29)] CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 (CMPSU-430CXV2) 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
*it's an efficient PSU.
*placeholder for the corsair VX series, or even other PSU that is more efficient.
*it's one of the most cheapest PSU that doesn't cut quality.

rostheferret:
Like others have said, I would go for an i5 processor; games are using multiple cores now and getting anything less is just going to mean you'll be upgrading sooner rather than later. The clock speed on the RAM barely makes a noticeable difference; look into G.Skill. They pretty much only do RAM and even their lower end models come with decent heatsinks. You said your PC occasionally crashed; I'd attribute this to the RAM more than the CPU tbh. No RAM = using pagefile, and that aint ever pretty to see.

Look for a mobo with USB 3.0 and a couple of 6Gbps SATAIII connectors (you'll be wanting to upgrade HDD memory at some point, but it's not urgent for now), in fact I got nothing against the one Kita mentioned, but if you can wait a few months for the ivy bridge processors to become available it'll be worth it in the long run. If not, you're probably looking at something like an i5-2500. I disagree that SSDs are worth it right now, I'll probably look into one when my current windows drive dies on me but not before. Spend that money on a decent fan the processor instead.

datora:
.
Agreed that the SSD is not necessary for your immediate budget.  But, you do need to "look seriously into that" because it will be just about your top bottleneck in system performance, probably even before looking to upgrade your GPU.

SSD is a critical upgrade you will need, and finding a reliable SATA III / 2nd gen model for under $1/GB is probably going to be higher priority than a massive storage (such as 2 TB) drive.  Take your time & shop hard for one; Patriot, Samsung, Intel, Plextor all are good names to look at.  This is based entirely upon you placing priority on game performance upgrade, and it is assumed one that has legs to it, instead of being crippled next year.  That's why I suggest aggressively looking for an i5 CPU option, if you can afford it.  If you can't, settle for an i3, but make sure you have a mobo that can take an i5 or an i7 next year when you might very much want to upgrade at low cost then.


Yes, memory speed is not paramount, but don't try to save $5 by going with 1033 DDR3.  You can get 1600 or 1833 for the same price these days, and it supports better options to adjust clock speeds/timings and voltage in the BIOS.  Don't waste money on 2133 or 2300 RAM; that's a performance edge that will not make a difference.  Look more closely at the best timings that you can find.

Basically, 1833 RAM running at CAS 9 is common and about as cheap as memory gets right now.  If you can get it to CAS 8, even better.  However, 1600 RAM running at CAS 7 is at least as fast, if not slightly better.  If you have 1833 RAM, you can underclock it to 1600 and get better timings (such as CAS 7) and have it perform more efficiently than running it at 1833 w/ CAS 9.  For one example.  No sense settling for ultra-budget 1033 RAM and running it at CAS 8 or CAS 9, then finding out it's part of your performance bottleneck when you get that SSD or upgraded GPU.

G.SKILL is great, I have it, use it & love it, but you won't go wrong with Mushkin, PNY or Patriot, either.  All of them have excellent performance memory, and their budget lines are all solid ... just shop these out by price and try to find something at ~$35 or $40 for a paired 2x 4GB = 8GB kit.  Depending on your  location, you may have to go higher.  I don't know what your local options are.

rostheferret:
Random idea I had, another option to an SSD might be a raid 01 configuration. Essentially you take a partition half the size of each hard drive - you'll be needing two for this - and RAID0 it (meaning it's distributing the information to both HDDs). Then you RAID1 it with the the remaining half of each HDD. That way information is backed up and you're using the read/write speed of both HDDs. It's solid to my mind in theory, but in practice I don't know if it would mirror that way (or randomly distribute amongst HDDs making any backed up information incomplete, and thus doing little more than effectively halving your HDD space) or how well it affects read/write speeds.

*Awaits someone to explain why it won't work*

EDIT: Writing to both HDDs simultaneously means write speeds won't be improved at all (damnit) but read speeds should be.

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