What could I upgrade?

[dball37]

I am planning on building an ITX gaming pretty soon. I have about $95 left in my budget and was wondering what i could possibly upgrade. This is the system right now:

i5 3570K

16GB DDR3 1600 (8GBx2)

Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI

Corsair H80i

Bitfenix Prodigy

Silverstone 600W 80 PLUS Gold PSU

EVGA GTX 670 2GB

I am using my existing ODD and 320GB 7200rpm HDD.

What could I spend more money on to improve performance? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[wanderer11]

I would suggest a bigger hdd. That 320 GB will get full fast. If you don't want to do that you could add a 120/128GB ssd. Other than that it looks great.

 

[g-unit1111]

I'm not sure if that H80i will fit in the Prodigy or not. You might want to go with a top-down air cooler like the Noctua NH-L12P instead. You don't need 16GB of RAM for gaming.

 

[mohsan456]

IF you can quickly grab the Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz LGA 1155 Processor for &189 at microcenter ..best deal you will find anywhere..save you like $50

 

[JustLurking]

SSD. I'd always recommend shaving other parts down to make room for an SSD. It's shocking how much pep it gives.

Also with the 3570 (Ivy's), I wouldn't bother with an aftermarket cooler. There are tons of articles on the web describing how Ivy's can't be OC'd as well as Sandy's due to internal heat issues.

I'd probably stick with stock cooling and OC for a few hundred mhz until I reached decent max temps.

 

[g-unit1111]

SSD. I'd always recommend shaving other parts down to make room for an SSD. It's shocking how much pep it gives.

I don't personally. I think of the SSD like getting the Navigation system on a new car - sure it looks pretty and adds some much needed functionality, but you can get one later and it will do the exact same thing.

Also with the 3570 (Ivy's), I wouldn't bother with an aftermarket cooler. There are tons of articles on the web describing how Ivy's can't be OC'd as well as Sandy's due to internal heat issues.

A good 90% of those articles are BS. It's only when you change the voltages on the processor that you will get those heat issues. And it's not just limited to Ivy Bridge either - every single CPU on the market will heat up when you start messing with the voltages.

 

[JustLurking]

Of course it can be added afterwards, so can't an aftermarket cooler and 16 gigs of RAM vs 8.

I think the OP would notice an improvement from an SSD well before they'd notice one from an aftermarket cooler or 16 gigs of RAM (depending on their use cases).

That's a nice statistic you made up there btw.

There's a substantial amount of research on the Ivy OC cooling 'problem' on a large number of hardcore sites and forums. I'd suggest the OP do his due diligence.

Of course pumping more volts into a CPU will heat it up. The question here is, how much difference will an aftermarket cooler make in speeding up his system vs an SSD.

Due to changes in Intel's process with Ivy - whether the die shrink, changes in TIM under the lid, the alleged 'gap' under the lid, or even a combo - there's enough empirical data showing a difference between Sandy and Ivy re: cooling.

[edit: spelling and missing words.]

 

[g-unit1111]

Of course it can be added afterwards, so can't an aftermarket cooler and 16 gigs of RAM vs 8.

Yup that's certainly true.

I think the OP would notice an improvement from an SSD well before they'd notice one from an aftermarket cooler or 16 gigs of RAM (depending on their use cases).

That's a nice statistic you made up there btw.

Yeah I did make it up. :lol:

But the thing is all CPUs will heat up once that happens.

Due to changes in Intel's process with Ivy - whether the die shrink, changes in TIM under the lid, the alleged 'gap' under the lid, or even a combo - there's enough empirical data showing a difference between Sandy and Ivy re: cooling.

The thing is though is that a lot of people were quick to give Ivy Bridge a lot of crap in the beginning without realizing this happens to every CPU. If you look up temperature charts there's really not *THAT* noticeable of a difference between CPUs. Especially since most of the charts I've seen never start at zero, they usually start at like 50 or 60. If you took the temperature numbers and put them on a more even scale that started at zero, you'd see there's maybe an extra degree or two - not that much when you really think about it.

 

[dball37]

Best answer selected by dball37.