Rammy said:
Lots to talk about here. An i7 950 and a GTX570 while a bit old, are still pretty capable equipment. They aren't going to be winning any performance prizes, but I would have thought they'd have no issues running modern games, as long as you are happy to fiddle with settings a little.
While 75-85 degrees seems very high (and probably very loud) my understanding is that is fairly normal, if a bit unpleasant. If you haven't done it before, it's perhaps worth cleaning out the fan section of the card with a can of compressed air, it might improve your temperatures (and therefore noise) a bit.
I probably wouldn't advise SLI. Finding a well priced GTX570 at the moment won't be easy. If you really wanted to upgrade in this area, you'd probably be better off spending your money on a new card.
I own an old Antec 900 (using it as a footstool as I type) and I know it has a bracket for a fan on the side panel. Its potentially fiddly to install, but if you do want to try and improve graphics card temperatures, this might be worth investigating.
A 6year old PSU is probably not going to be in fantastic shape, depending on how it has lived. In the long term, it's probably worth replacing.
Doubling up your ram probably won't make a world of difference, you can always check your usage while gaming. I doubt that is holding you back.
An SSD can be a nice upgrade as it decreases load and boot times, but in sheer value for money, it's not going to be a great return, especially for gaming performance.
There is nothing wrong with getting another Barracuda, they are well priced. The difference between Caviar Black and Blue is not immediately obvious, as the ranges overlap at the 500GB/1TB levels. All Black drives offer 5 year warranties and 64MB caches at capacities from 500GB to 4TB, where Blue offer 3 year warranties and a varying cache size at capacities from 80GB to 1TB.
If you want a drive bigger than 1TB, you will be comparing the Barracuda with Caviar Black. At the 1TB level, there are both Blue and Black drives. There is no real difference in speed between all three really, so the difference is fairly academic, but if it is 1TB you are looking at, make sure to pick a 64MB cache version.
Thank's for replying.
Yeah in regards to the fans I do have a side mount but it was really loud, I'd like some advice on putting in a new one that might be a lot quieter and work well? What I mean by this is that I'd like actual suggestions for what fan to buy, as well as perhaps for my processor. I mean like whisper quiet or makes no sound preferably. I do try to spray air at the fans once in a while but that really doesn't do much because it attracts things like none other.
Decreasing the temperature so the graphics fan is on lower settings would be preferable. You think I should just go with another barracuda at 2 or 3 TB rather than a Black? I know the black is better but what percentage increase are we actually talking about? Same goes for a SSD. If I were to just put 1 or 2 games and the OS and system on the SSD what would be the increase in the form of a percent?
As for RAM, it seems I use 80-90% most of the time.