Looking to upgrade a 670 GTX, need some advice concerning older components and how they might work with a new GPU.

migokalle

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Jun 12, 2014
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Hey. I'm currently running on a rig that's about a year and a half old, custom built, and these days I'm starting to run into some games that pushes it to its limits. I want to change that, but I'm worried that I might run into some issues with my other components if I go for the wrong GPU.

Right now I'm also running with a 60hz monitor, so I'm locked to 60 FPS regardless. I'm getting a boost to my budget this month, of about 1350 USD, but I live in Norway so prices are a bit higher when it comes to hardware. My point is, I am hoping to get both a new monitor and a new GPU, and then possibly also upgrade the cooling for my CPU, which right now is hovering at 45-55 Celsius at idle. Anyways, I want to focus on the GPU for now, as I've more or less found my other two objects of desire.

I don't need the best of the best, but it would be nice to be able to run new games to their full potential. I prefer Nvidia, as that's what I've always used, but I'm not necessarily tied to the brand. I like silently running rigs, but I'm more concerned with the cooling, due to the heat levels that I get in my room during the summer months. I can go over my budget, but naturally I would prefer to stay below. It's not a huge worry though.

Like I said, my biggest problem here is that I don't know enough about this to know if a new GPU is going to give me any issues when running it with my older components. Now, they're not exactly old, but as far as I understand I'm not exactly running on a cutting edge rig at this point. Hehe.

Here's my current specs:

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V
CPU: i5-3570K 3.40GHz
RAM: 8,00 GB (Crucial DDR3 BallistiX Sport 1600MHz 8GB)
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB PhysX CUDA
Case: Corsair Carbide 500R Midi Tower

And just in case anyone has any ideas concerning the CPU cooler, I'm currently running with the stock Intel Core i5-3570K Processor-cooler. If there's anything I've forgotten that you need to know, then all I can do is blame my lack of knowledge, but we'll figure it out, I'm sure. :p
 

migokalle

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Jun 12, 2014
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Thank you for the quick response! I have one question though: I've had some previous issues with my EVGA 670, where it'd reach upwards of 100c during gameplay. Now, this happened while I was messing around with some heavy visual mods for Skyrim, so that might have had a part to play, but eventually I started getting some weird visual glitches so I RMA'd it. The new one has been running fine, especially since I started running Afterburner with a proper fan curve (without it, the card seems to run its fan with no change regardless of load).

I've read posts from multiple people talking about their issues with my card in particular, so I'm a bit hesitant to go with another EVGA card. Any thoughts on this, am I being paranoid, or are there alternatives I should be looking into instead?

Update:
The site I order my hardware from had everything you suggested, except a different CPU cooler model. This is the closest one I could find, but just to be sure it'd be great if someone could confirm if its differences is something I need to worry about:

https://www.komplett.no/cooler-master-hyper-212-evo-cpu-kjler/657097#!tab:extra

Hopefully you'll be able to get past the Norwegian gibberish, but I linked you directly to the statistics page, so hopefully it's clear enough. I'm pretty happy about the price everything lands on though, this is even a little less than I was expecting. Thanks again!
 
That cooler will work.

Each generation seems to get a smaller die and runs on a lower voltage.... for nVidia and AMD. I guess everyone has their favorite flavor when it comes to non-reference GPUs.

I am admittedly an EVGA fan-boy ever since I got an EVGA GTX 260 FTW, 5 years ago. I can say that the ACX cooler on my GTX 770 OC 2GB hasn't let my GPU get over 63C, so far. BF4 using ultra settings and Skyrim with the HD texture pack both get my GPU to that temperature, which I feel is quite impressive.

The GTX 780 may run a little warmer but should run cooler than your GTX 670 due to the generational architecture changes.

I had an EVGA GTX 560Ti before the GTX 770 and BF4 would push it to 83C+ easily on Medium and High settings to give you a little more reference.