I currently have an i5-6500 paired with a GTX 1070. Even when the system was new, the CPU often felt like a bottleneck, especially in more demanding games. I was given an i7-13700T for free and would need to spend about €130 on a compatible motherboard and cooler. My power supply and 32GB of DDR4 RAM are usable for now. Is this a worthwhile upgrade, or would it make more sense to sell the processor and save for something else?
3 Answers
I’d install it unless you urgently need the money. The 13700T is massively faster than the i5-6500 and will improve gaming, multitasking, general responsiveness, and demanding applications. Get an LGA1700 motherboard that supports DDR4, along with a suitable cooler, and you’ll have a much stronger system even with the GTX 1070.
Use a decent cooler because the 13700T can still draw around 110W under heavier loads despite being the lower-power model. A good dual-tower air cooler such as the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE should handle it well without the expense or complexity of water cooling. Your mixed RAM should generally work together, but all four sticks will normally run at the speed of the slowest pair, and mixing kits can sometimes require manually setting conservative timings.
This is a huge generational jump. The i7-13700T has 16 cores and 24 threads with far more cache, while the i5-6500 only has four cores and four threads. The older CPU was already a limitation in some games, so using the free processor is easily worth the motherboard and cooler cost.
That settles it—I’m going to put the 13700T in the system.
I have 32GB as four 8GB sticks: two rated for 2133MHz and two rated for 3200MHz. Can I use them together? I’m also looking for an affordable air cooler rather than liquid cooling if possible.