Last minute question

you need to go with noctua or hydrolux lite and change your oc to stage 1.

the onboard sound is pretty good these days but if you know for a fact you need a sound card then go for it, I'm not a huge sound guy so my experience here is limited.

here is your mobo's sound info:

Realtek® ALC1150 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC featuring Crystal Sound 3
- Supports : Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking
- High quality 112 dB SNR stereo playback output (Line-out at rear) and 104 dB SNR stereo playback input (Line-in)
- High-fidelity audio OP AMP(s)
Audio Feature :
- DTS Connect
- DTS Studio Sound
- Optical S/PDIF out port(s) at back panel
- BD Audio Layer Content Protection
- Audio Shielding: Ensures precision analog/digital separation and greatly reduced multi-lateral interference
- Dedicated audio PCB layers: Separate layers for left and right channels to guard the quality of the sensitive audio signals
- Audio amplifier: Provides the highest-quality sound for headphone and speakers
- Premium Japanese-made audio capacitors: Provide warm, natural and immersive sound with exceptional clarity and fidelity
- Unique de-pop circuit: Reduces start-up popping noise to audio outputs
- Top notch audio sensation delivers according to the audio configuration
- EMI protection cover to prevent electrical noise to affect the amplifier quality
- Power pre-regulator: Reduces power input noise to ensure consistent performance

Your case has 2 usb 3.0 and 2 usb 2.0. you are going to find most cases will have about 4 usb ports, you need to remember your mobo will have 5 usb ports in the back., that is a total of 9 usb ports.

The heat is not gonna shorten the life span as you will be well below the limit of the cpu.

a high vcore will shorten the life of your cpu real quick with constant use/load.

on stage 1 oc you don't have none of that to worry about.

Keep in mind your cpu is the brain of your pc. If I could make you think faster so you could solve problems faster would that be a big deal? well that is what ocing a cpu does, you are making the cpu run at a faster speed and thus everything goes faster. OC is the single biggest performance gain in your system since its making the brain of your system run faster.

Not all cooling are the same, in LC what matters is the quality of your water block and the performance of your rad. These closed system or aio system like the corsair don't have a great block or a rad so their performance is nothing like a real lc system, which is why they are pretty much either the same as noctua or tiny bit better if that, for the most part at that level noctua is best choice for next level cooling you need to go to a better cooling like hydrolux. Some say aio is better but I have not seen it, I mean if you want to tell me that aio gives me 78c while noctua does the same or say 80c then no in my book at 78c you are not making enough of a difference for me to distinguish.(assuming everything else is the same).

bottom line is that the aio and noctua will give around the same performance, next level cooling will need real lc system, that kind of performance aio can't reach.

Just to be clear, your case has its usb ports and then of course you have your motherboard's usb ports. After looking at your mobo properly, I see I made mistake, you have more then 5 usb ports on the mobo, it looks like you have:

2 x USB 3.1 (Type-A + Type-C)
4 x USB 3.0
4 x USB 2.0

keep in mind that the mobo connectors are in the back.



Edited by DST4ME - 15 Jul 2016 at 11:22pm

My pleasure and good luck