Hi everyone. I'm in a bind. My CPU and Motherboard got fried by a lightning storm here in good old Florida so now I've got to replace it all. I'm only concerned about the CPU at the moment. I figure I can work backwards from there in picking a mobo. Well I'm not rich and I can only spend very close to $120.

What makes matters worse, is that I haven't purchased a cpu for 3 years and everything is new technology of course. That's where you come in. I need to be educated on what is the latest class of processor in my price range. It's looking like an Intel i3 or an AMD FX series, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing at this point.

I would be so thankful if you could get me up to speed on both the AMD and the Intel cpus. Any advice you can offer would help.
Thanks for any help.

Was your RAM damaged too? Was it DDR2 or DDR3 RAM?

Yup. Not to mention were other parts damaged? I mean, if it fried the mobo, there's a good chance the PSU was damaged too. Also we need to know what kind of case you have to know what motherboards will fit in there. Finally is that $120 for BOTH the CPU and the motherboard? Because that's like only possible for Atom CPUs and the like... If it's not, what's your total budget for both motherboard and CPU? You can often get good deals by bundling the two.

Also, if this is a prebuilt PC from the likes of HP, Dell, Acer, etc, then you also need a new copy of Windows as the window install on there is tied to the motherboard (BIOS, actually) for their PCs.