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If you're looking for a decent quad core, the i5 3470 Ivybridge is what I'm running at the moment, and it's great. Amazon don't seem to stock it, but you can get it from Micro Direct for about £150-£160, which is only £20 more than that old sandybridge you linked, and should last you, so long as you don't plan on overclocking it (Ivybridge CPUs run significantly hotter than Sandybridges when overclocked).

For other things, I assume you're going to be running a 64bit OS to take advantage of the 8gb of RAM you're sticking in it? If not, then I'd grab a copy of W7 Home Premium 64bit or, if you can't afford it yet and only have a 32bit OS, only 4gb of DDR3 RAM, because it's all your PC will be able to utilise (strictly only around 3.5gb of it due to Windows taking up 512mb) without a 64bit version.

That's the fella.

There is a difference between the 3470 and 3450, but it's only 100MHz of frequency (you get 3200 with the 3470 and 3100 with the 3450), so it's up to you which you want to go for.

For the PSU, I currently use this fella: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/52134/OCZ-PSU-ZS-650W-80--Bronze

Whilst it may be a little overkilly for what I have, it'll mean I can upgrade a few things before it needs stepping up a notch (if it ever does). It's quite quiet too, if noise is going to factor into the decision.

That can handle and Intel Core i5 3470 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX560 Ti without any issues whatsoever, and whilst it may very well be overkill, with a PSU, overkill is reasonably good to aim for.

 illuknisaa wrote:
Upgrading RAM is pretty pointless especially if you already have 4gb. The difference between ddr2 and ddr3 is abysmal.

The difference between them is unimportant, what is important is that upgrading the CPU will require upgrading of the Mobo, which in turn means that it's very likely the new one will NOT support DDR2. Whilst I agree that 4gb should do unless one is planning on using a lot of photoshop and digital editing or other similar activites, that does not mean that he doesn't need to get new RAM, in fact, if he wants a motherboard that can take an intel core i5, it's mandatory, since support for DDR2 was dropped with their introduction IIRC.

Long story short, his other upgrades require an upgrade to DDR3.