BMX

Vinyl that looks like hardwood fits the bill

Why not get a new chainset if you are replacing it anyway instead of using a 3×9 or 3×10 and taking a ring off. You still have the problem of cross chaining with those

I don’t think it’s worth it. If you are going to upgrade you might as well change motherboard to 1155 and get a major performance boost with the 2nd and 3rd gen stuff. Saying that a first gen i5 is still more than capable and better than 75% of the CPU’s you can buy new right now