Forgot a cooler

[ripkurrle]

So I ordered some parts and realised that I forgot to get a cooler, will I actually need one with this setup?

CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 2GB
Memory: Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3
Solid State Drive: SanDisk Extreme Solid State Drive 120GB
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB SATA DVDRW
Case: Corsair Graphite 600T Special Edition White Case
Power supply: Silverstone Strider Plus 750W ST75F-P

Also if so, Corsair Hydro Series Liquid cooling or CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Cooler?

[Deleted]

nothing wrong with getting a good cooler (unless you don't want to OC at all)

[russ555]

CPUs come with a cooler anyway so its all good

[chazus]

If you aren't OC'ing, and the CPU comes with a stock cooler, you're fine. You definitely need a cooler of SOME kind, you can't simply 'go without'

Unrelated, any specific reason for getting the i7?

[ripkurrle]

If you aren't OC'ing, and the CPU comes with a stock cooler, you're fine. You definitely need a cooler of SOME kind, you can't simply 'go without'

Unrelated, any specific reason for getting the i7?

Yeah sorry, I meant should I get a better cooler, my mistake.

For the i7, I looked at different places and it seemed to be on most of the builds in my price range ($1800 or so). I understand it is overkill (from what people have said).

Honestly I haven't looked too much into overclocking, but given the setup, will I need it (for gaming, I don't do video processing or anything of the sort)?

I'll get one, can't hurt.

[chazus]

Yeah sorry, I meant should I get a better cooler, my mistake.

If you aren't OC'ing, then stock cooler is perfectly fine.

For the i7, I looked at different places and it seemed to be on most of the builds in my price range ($1800 or so). I understand it is overkill

You're confusing "Overkill" with "Not Useful"

The i7 has no benefit for gaming over the i5. It's like saying having a 5th wheel in the trunk of your car makes it go faster. It has a PURPOSE, yes. But not for that. Most games do not benefit from hyperthreading and increased virtual cores. The increased cache has also not proved to be very useful in gaming.

Unless you're doing video/graphics rendering (You said you aren't), save $100 and get the i5. Or put the money into something else. Bigger SSD, bigger HD, a nice set of headphones. Whatever!

[ripkurrle]

Cheers, I'll look into altering the CPU, but would getting a cooler and overclocking help performance in gaming?
Clearly I have very vague handles on computing, which isn't going to change much. I would want the option to overclock there however if I get my cousin to tinker with it.

I'm not too fussed about the hard drive, I barely fill the 450gig I have on the 2006 relic computer I have now. Is there a better graphics card I could put the off $100 into?
I'm fine for peripherals, besides perhaps a new monitor which I will be getting soon anyway.

Or perhaps I should take up video/graphics rendering.

[Deleted]

meh you already got almost the best gpu within $100 only thing you could swap it to 4gb vram, if that be usefull is another question similar to i7vsi5 :P

[Deleted]

The i7 has no benefit for gaming over the i5. It's like saying having a 5th wheel in the trunk of your car makes it go faster. It has a PURPOSE, yes. But not for that. Most games do not benefit from hyperthreading and increased virtual cores. The increased cache has also not proved to be very useful in gaming.

I would not support that statement in such a general way, since heavy multi-tasking is something I myself and many other gamers I know do nowadays. A second screen with a browser rendering a twitch stream is just as common as Outlook hogging your system resources in the background while indexing your viagra junk mail.

Sure, if you just run a game and have a streamlined system, you're right. If you actually have a buckload of applications open all the time, like me, the core and pipeline count or cache size will yield a more stable system in any case.

[Cyanotical]

the problem with the 1155 i7 is that it is not going to give you an extra bonus to gaming, it will allow you to do some extra tasks in the background without a major hit to the gaming performance, but it doesn't really have the L3 cache to support heavy multi tasking smoothly

taking that extra 2MB of L3 into account, the i7 is better than the I5, but not in a very measurable way, it provides for a smoother experience, and maybe an extra frame or two on the fps meter, but for 1155, it really is wasted given how cheap the i7-3820 is, which is why the i5 is almost always recommended for 1155

also, the H80 is a good cooler, but its a bit on the loud side, i would recommend the NH-D14, but i think your ram is too tall, with that case i would get a H100 and Corsair SP120 quiet edition fans

[Vayshan]

I would not support that statement in such a general way, since heavy multi-tasking is something I myself and many other gamers I know do nowadays. A second screen with a browser rendering a twitch stream is just as common as Outlook hogging your system resources in the background while indexing your viagra junk mail.

Sure, if you just run a game and have a streamlined system, you're right. If you actually have a buckload of applications open all the time, like me, the core and pipeline count or cache size will yield a more stable system in any case.

You don't need 8 cores (4 physical and 4 virtual) to run a game ánd run a browser/Outlook. A second screen is handled more by your graphics card anyway. It's still pointless to have an i7 just for a browser or Oulook to be run next to your game which wont use the 4 cores 100% of the time in the first place. Remember the days when there were no multicore CPU's (for the consumer market)? Yh it was perfectly possible to run more than 1 program at the same time on a single core CPU without any problems and it still is today (better architecture and more power overall). Having a browser open in the background costs RAM, not CPU cycles anyway. If you're using the browser, the game will be in the background.

We've become WAY TOO spoiled these days with multicore CPU's. More is only better if it's being used properly.

[ripkurrle]

also, the H80 is a good cooler, but its a bit on the loud side, i would recommend the NH-D14, but i think your ram is too tall, with that case i would get a H100 and Corsair SP120 quiet edition fans

Cheers, I'll look into them.
Even with my paltry research I've been doing over the past week or so, I can see your rig is absurdly powerful haha.

[chazus]

I would not support that statement in such a general way, since heavy multi-tasking is something I myself and many other gamers I know do nowadays. A second screen with a browser rendering a twitch stream is just as common as Outlook hogging your system resources in the background while indexing your viagra junk mail.

It's pretty much assumed that MOST gamers have dual screens, and run a bunch of crap. The i5/i7 statement is made with that in mind. The i7 and HT specifically benefits a select few activities. Multiple programs, unless done in literally stupid excess, does not provide benefit.

[Lemmiwink]

For some people, price doesn't matter. The best/most expensive parts will be bought just for the sake of it. These people know it's overkill/waste of money but choose to get the most expensive alternative even for a 3% gain or a slightly higher overclock than your second best CPU. And some people run autocad while gaming, and we need the i7. When I could afford 2400$ for a program, I don't see why I shouldn't spend 350 on a cpu. (not american so don't know the exact prices)

If he or anyone else wants an i7, just nod and smile knowing that they blew 100$ on something completely useless that will give them 0 benefit over the i5 unless they start heavy rendering (which is barely noticable too imo).

[yurano]

For some people, price doesn't matter. The best/most expensive parts will be bought just for the sake of it. These people know it's overkill/waste of money but choose to get the most expensive alternative even for a 3% gain or a slightly higher overclock than your second best CPU. And some people run autocad while gaming, and we need the i7. When I could afford 2400$ for a program, I don't see why I shouldn't spend 350 on a cpu. (not american so don't know the exact prices)

If he or anyone else wants an i7, just nod and smile knowing that they blew 100$ on something completely useless that will give them 0 benefit over the i5 unless they start heavy rendering (which is barely noticable too imo).

I would also add that the computer the OP linked is rated at $1500 and he already has the best graphics card available, barring the 690 which has a price difference of $500.

All of the i7 naysayers are assuming the player will ONLY be running the game by itself. They're ignoring a number of background processes that require CPU time such as: browser, ventrilo, streams, your logitech/razer macro programs. When you're playing the triple threaded WoW on a i5, the first 3 cores are dedicated to compute WoW's primary threads. That doesn't mean that WoW only has 3 threads. In fact, it has many many minor threads that will be sitting on the 4th core, competing with other programs for computation time.

While thats all fine and dandy, there's one program everyone uses that just chews through system resources: Adobe Flash Player. A 3 minute 1080p Youtube video consumes 120 Mb of RAM and a ton of CPU resources, even if it isn't being rendered. On my dinky 2.53 GHz Core2 Laptop, running a Youtube video consumes 30-50% of both cores. This would translate into 50% of a HT core. Moreover, many websites utilize flash to display their content or ads. Are you sure you want flash decoding to be competing with the minor threads of WoW?

If you're on a budget, you can argue that the $100 is better spent elsewhere due to diminishing returns. But in the OP's case, his choice is to spend his money in areas that have all hit severe diminishing returns. Instead of an i7, he could have gotten 16 Gb RAM, switched to a more expensive motherboard, bought another/larger hard drive, a nicer $300 case, a BluRay drive, or a $200 power supply. The OP decided on a i7, there is nothing wrong with that.

As for the cooler, I would recommend getting at least a $20 one with higher thermal mass than the stock cooler. Even if you aren't overclocking, it would keep temperatures down. With a Hyper 212 EVO, I was able to get 4.2 Ghz @ 75C and 4.5 Ghz @ 85C. A nicer cooler like the Noctua D14 would probably knock 5-10 C off the temps.

[chazus]

All of the i7 naysayers are assuming the player will ONLY be running the game by itself. They're ignoring a number of background processes blah blah blah

It's not 'naysaying'

It's statistical information gathered from numerous sources. Go look up information from credible sources. Do your own research. i7's provide almost no benefit in gaming, even while running other programs.