Need Guidance for Buying a CPU

[Baby Lee]

Newegg online, and Microcenter Brick and Mortar, are your best safest bets.

You have a wide range of options.

Just guessing, your most economical option will probably be a motherboard CPU combo upgrade.

You might find a 1:1 replacement processor, but usually the sweet part of the tech curve has all the best prices. ie, whichever CPU MOBO standards are selling at highest volume right now will be cheaper overall than even going back and getting a slower processor whose price has curved back up since it's not on the high production burner at the moment.

Catalog the standards for all the pieces and peripherals you want to/can reuse, video cards, Ram, Hard Drive type [IDE/SATA].

Make note of your present MOBO socket standard. If your MOBO is new enough, there may be some economical processors that still fit in that socket, and that'll be a big savings.