Sanity Check

[Eradan]

I'm downsizing my massive Ikea Galant desk to a less massive Galant desk and looking to bring the PC in my sig up to my desktop from the floor. I'd like to move everything into a smaller case with a window so I can get excited every time I look at it. Considering a Corsair Carbide Air 240. I'll need to either find a used Z77 micro ATX board or upgrade to something current. Does it make sense to bother upgrading from an i5 3570K that's been running flawlessly at 4.2GHz? Also planning to upgrade to much larger SSD when Windows 10 drops and a new video card as well.

 

[Armenius]

Moving to another motherboard means having the chance that your CPU overclock will no longer be stable. Used motherboards also gets into the realm of possibly having badly used components with no warranty. Upgrading to a Haswell or Broadwell platform also means spending hundreds of more dollars than you probably should be spending just for aesthetics. Ivy Bridge processors are still beasts, and there really is no reason to move from your 4.2 GHz 3570k at this moment in time.

Did you know that Corsair offers a windowed side panel for your case for $19.99? Does the 300R have too big a footprint for it to sit on top of your new desk?

 

[Eradan]

Moving to another motherboard means having the chance that your CPU overclock will no longer be stable. Used motherboards also gets into the realm of possibly having badly used components with no warranty. Upgrading to a Haswell or Broadwell platform also means spending hundreds of more dollars than you probably should be spending just for aesthetics. Ivy Bridge processors are still beasts, and there really is no reason to move from your 4.2 GHz 3570k at this moment in time.

Did you know that Corsair offers a windowed side panel for your case for $19.99? Does the 300R have too big a footprint for it to sit on top of your new desk?

I'd be comfortable buying a used board from most [H] regulars but eBay is kinda scary. And I did some reading after my original post and it looks like the performance increase between my current CPU and what's available new does not even remotely justify the cost.

I wasn't aware of the windowed side panel for the 300R. I just moved it up to last week so I could easily swap drives while working on a Hackintosh project. It's a little bigger than I'd like but not too bad. Going to poke around in FS/FT and see if I can find a mATX Z77 board, but I'll probably order a windowed side panel as well. Can't go wrong for $20. Thank you!

 

[Quix]

Moving to another motherboard means having the chance that your CPU overclock will no longer be stable. Used motherboards also gets into the realm of possibly having badly used components with no warranty. Upgrading to a Haswell or Broadwell platform also means spending hundreds of more dollars than you probably should be spending just for aesthetics. Ivy Bridge processors are still beasts, and there really is no reason to move from your 4.2 GHz 3570k at this moment in time.

Did you know that Corsair offers a windowed side panel for your case for $19.99? Does the 300R have too big a footprint for it to sit on top of your new desk?

It could also be better, when I moved boards with my 2500K it opened up 200Mhz of headroom. But that was for stability reasons, not aesthetic.

 

[Eradan]

I'm not an extreme overclocker. The only reason I'm running at 4.2 right now is because doing so was effortless. My day job is in IT and after 20 years of it, I prefer to keep it simple with my personal stuff.