Gaming Rig Parts Advice Help

Hello Raiddinn, many thanks for the reply, realy helped me make up my mind on a lot of stuff,

Only 2 doubts I still have,

I´m most probably going with the 3570k then, but you said "Z68s are about as good as Z77s for OCing if you are going to stick with the 2500k" so if I go to a 3570k would a Z68 be as good? or should i go for a Z77?


The big reason I´m considering water cooling is because i live in a very hot place in summer, and aircooling just seems (to me) to be pushing hot air inside, also after some hours of autocad or gaming my previous pc got realy hot, so I wouldn´t mind spending those extra 70$ if it would keep my parts safer in these condition, what is your opinion?

I also don´t like the risk of leaking and destroying everything... so if the hyper 212 is as good on hot places will probably go with that.


Again many thanks for the help

I can't guarantee you that a Z68 will work with an Ivy Bridge 3xxx chip out of the box. Maybe it will or maybe you will receive it only to find out that it needs a BIOS update before it will work.

If you have a spare 1155 chip laying around that is no problem, but if you had such a chip you wouldn't need one now either.

If you could borrow a processor from somewhere, it would be NP, but processors are a whole lot harder to borrow than PSUs and video cards are and most people have a tough time borrowing those.

I would highly suggest if you get an Ivy Bridge 3xxx chip that you pair it with a Z77 so you can have guaranteed compatibility right out of the box.

If you did get a Z68 and it did work, it would be just as good as a Z77 would be.

Hyper 212 vs H100 - High ambient temperatures suck, no lie. However, so does wasting $70 you don't have.

The water cooling would theoretically be the safer alternative since you can mostly disconnect from air, but from what I understand the Corsair water coolers are impacted a lot by air anyway.

What I think, though, and maybe others here will disagree with me on this is that ambient temperatures of 80F or something when you convert them to celsius are only like 30c. Processors can easily get up towards 60c so even 30c air going into the Hyper 212 is still going to be a whole lot cooler than the processor is.

Not that anyone should really enjoy running their processor at close to 60c, but it should be able to handle it. I like to keep mine at a frosty 35c myself, but I don't live in the Sahara Desert either. If I did, some sacrifices and risky behavior would probably have to be done on my end too.

That being said, if you are really worried about temperatures, I would go with the 2500k, because that will run like 5c cooler than a 3570k will and that extra 5c might make a big difference.

For that matter you might even consider dropping back to an i5-2400 because that will probably be another $40 cheaper than a 2500k and you probably won't be OCing anyway for temperature reasons and the tiny bit the 2400 loses in processing power vs the 2500k would be made up for by yet a further tiny decrease in temperatures.

Well I´m most defenitly sticking with the 2500 k (for easy of motherboard compatibility and being overclockable), so the 2400 wouldn´t be overclockable and I´m also not that worried about temps.

That said I´ll go with a Hyper 212 as you sugested, seems like a great cooler, and only during some days in summer are there days of + 90F (~30c)


Many thanks for the help, realy helped me a lot!

Best answer selected by Starmap.

Hope it goes well.

Setup HWMonitor and closely measure temperatures before you go crazy with the OCing stuff. The main thing that limits OCing is temperatures.

Also, it may be tricky, but there are a series of little things in close proximity to the CPU socket that do voltage regulation for the CPU. Probably in the shape of little black boxes. If you can somehow get air on those consistently, it would be a good thing.

The stock dispersal fans that push air down and sideways hit those things pretty well, but coolers like the Hyper 212 miss it completely.

Those little things are one of the biggest limiters of OCing and a big thing standing between people and a high OC.