Upgrade advice

[KaMoS]

I'm busy upgrading and I have a few decisions to make.

I'm want to get the following:

Intel ivybridge lga1155 i5-3570K

Corsair XMS3 8GB x 2 kit

OCZ 120GB Vertex 3
OCZ 120GB Agility

Is the extra R100 for the Vertex 3 really worth it?

Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H
Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H

I'm wasn't thinking of overclocking but with the 3570k I thought I might as well since the z77 boards allow it. I'm a gamer and I will be using my current HD4850 GFX Card. Question is, is it worth paying the R500 for the Z77 board over the H77 if I decide not to overclock?

Lastly, I'm getting a cheap new case, Coolermaster ELite 370, and I'd like to know how loud it is out of the box? My buddy got the Elite 311 and I was quite impressed with how light and quiet it was.

[NAG - Wesley]

Here's what I would recommend for you:

Intel Core i5-3570K @ R2311
ASRock Z77 PRO3 @ R1184
TEAM Xtreem Dark 8GB @ R476
OCZ Agility 4 128GB @ R1216
Antec One S3 @ R536

Total: R5723

Its not worth getting a K-series chip if you're settling for a H77 since you're not going to be overclocking, and that's all the K-series nets you. Moving to Z77 does allow you to use Lucid Logix Virtu MVP technology for your games, and you're getting more SATA ports and the chance for a higher overclock even on locked processors.

However, your HD4850 is getting a bit long in the tooth, aren't you looking to upgrade that? If you are, then I'd suggest you go this route:

Intel Core i5-3450 @ R1904
Gigabyte B75M-D3H @ R813
TEAM Xtreem Dark 8GB @ R476
Club 3D HD7770 @ R1544
OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R713
Cooler Master Elite 311 Plus @ R425

Total: R5875

You're not compromising too much there, as you're still getting four Ivy Bridge cores with plenty of muscle. Use the SSD either as a boot drive or as a cache drive. The HD77770 is exactly three generations ahead of your HD4850 and will easily outperform it while also using less power.

As for the chassis, its not too loud, although the side panels are slightly thinner and have more fan mounts that let noise escape. The difference is likely very tiny, but fill the Elite 370 with fans and there'll be a lot more noise.

[KaMoS]

Wow, thanks for the advise. I will definitely consider those options. The B75 mono's, are they as good as the H77's? Also, why do you recommend the Agility 4 over the Vertex 3?

[NAG - Wesley]

Wow, thanks for the advise. I will definitely consider those options. The B75 mono's, are they as good as the H77's? Also, why do you recommend the Agility 4 over the Vertex 3?

The B75 chipset is the same as the H77 with the cheaper chipset chucking out PCI-Express 3.0 slots. Its mainly focused towards use in business machines, hence the Intel Smart Connect software the board is bundled with to control it remotely over a network. The rest is mostly the same and its the better bet if you're trying to save a few bucks in your budget. The biggest thing though is the Intel Rapid Start Technology (RST) which is required to run SSDs up to 64GB in size as cache drives.

The Vertex 3 is based on the Sandforce SSD controller and is previous-gen technology. The Vertex 4/and Agility 4 families are based on OCZ's in-house-designed Indilinx controller and its special for two reasons: 1) write speeds to the SSD don't take a knock when you're working with incompressible data like videos. If you copy regular, compressible files to a Sandforce drive it does so at close to the specified speed stated on the box. When copying incompressible data to the same drive using a Sandforce controller, write speed just about halves itself. Indilinx doesn't have this issue, and write speeds remain the same regardless of the kind of file you're copying.

2) regular firmware updates to the vertex 4 familiy have improved speeds in the 128GB and larger models by as much as 50MB/s, with some benchmarks showing improvements in the 110% range for sequential read and write operations. No other drive controller has allowed that kind of improvement because they are licensed to the manufacturers, and cannot be customised like OCZ has done.

[KaMoS]

Thank you so much for the advice, here's what I've ordered:

Intel ivybridge lga1155 i5-3550 1937
Coolermaster 311 Plus 405
Corsair CX430 430
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 588
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB 1473
Asrock H77 Pro4-M 935
Gigabyte HD7850 2GB OC 2624
Shipping 75

Total 8467

I've bought some from Rebeltech and the others from my local supplier.