Dumb hardware question

[Disturbed-Hell]

Ive been looking to upgrade my GPU recently and I have almost settled on a Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 but to be honest, I barely know my arse from my elbow in terms of hardware and would like to check if it is compatable with the rest of my computer.

My current system specs are:
PSU: LC-Power - 550W PFC v2.2
MB: ASUS P7P55D
RAM: 8GB (2x 2GB and 2x 4GB, DDR3)
CPU: INTEL i5 750

From what I have been able to gather from various other forums, it might work, but I dont know if it will fit into the motherboard or if my psu is powerfull enough.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah it will be compatible with those components but I'm a bit concerned about that PSU. It would be best to upgrade to 600w PSU that is 80+ bronze certified. Also you should save yourself a bit of money and get a GTX 670 instead. You can overclock it to the same performance anyway.

 

[Disturbed-Hell]

Ok, would a Aerocool Strike-X 600W be alright? And yeah, I see what you mean about getting a 670 instead of a 680. £100 differance, jeez.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah that will be fine.

 

[Supernova1138]

You're probably going to want to overclock your CPU if you get either the 670 or 680. I have the i5 760, which is slightly faster than the 750, and I do hit CPU bottlenecks in a few games with a my Radeon HD 7870, which is about 20% slower than the 670. Hitman Absolution comes to mind, though even Far Cry 3 has some slight bottlenecking issues on my system, it will be worse with a high end card like the 670.

Bottom Line, your CPU won't be able to keep up with your graphics card in some games, leading to degraded performance. Overclocking does require the purchase of an aftermarket CPU cooler, and you should definitely research exactly how to do it with your specific CPU and motherboard before you proceed. Failure to do those two things will likely lead to some catastrophic hardware failure.