Should I buy an I5/I7?

[ClickityClack]

I bought an I3 with my new pc, because it appeared to be the cheapest and most powerful processor at the time. However, this processor quickly reaches the maximum temperature (100C) for gaming and I wanted to get something more powerful. I was planning on buying an I7-4770k or I5-4690k to replace the current CPU I have in my rig.

Is it worth it to make the upgrade?

 

[ohyouknow]

Depends on what you do other than gaming. It'd be more worthwhile to upgrade your graphics card~power supply more than anything for serious gaming firepower as a bump from the i3 - i5 or i7 won't really affect your gaming experience unless you run tons of programs in the background. If you do modeling or what have you then a CPU would be a real consideration.

What do you have now?

 

[ClickityClack]

I have an EVGA 500W power supply and a GIGABYTE GTX 660 3GB. The CPU is a i3-4360

 

[Arindel]

If the processor indeed hits 100C max temperature, it's very very bad. I strongly recommend changing the CPU Cooler and with a new thermal paste applied (after the old paste is removed of course). High temperatures causes the CPU to throttle and lowers performane overall.

If you really want to upgrade, the i5 4690k is worth it, but if you want to overclock, you must have a Z97 chipset motherboard, but otherwise any motherboard should work as long as it's socket 1150 and with BIOS updated to support newer Haswell CPUs.

Edit: Realized you have a EVGA 500W PSU. For non-overclock is good, but don't try to overclock on it, just for safety and stability.

 

[ClickityClack]

If the processor indeed hits 100C max temperature, it's very very bad. I strongly recommend changing the CPU Cooler and with a new thermal paste applied (after the old paste is removed of course). High temperatures causes the CPU to throttle and lowers performane overall.

If you really want to upgrade, the i5 4690k is worth it, but if you want to overclock, you must have a Z97 chipset motherboard, but otherwise any motherboard should work as long as it's socket 1150 and with BIOS updated to support newer Haswell CPUs.

Edit: Realized you have a EVGA 500W PSU. For non-overclock is good, but don't try to overclock on it, just for safety and stability.

Are you supposed to apply thermal paste while using the stock cooler? I didn't do that, so that may partially explain why my CPU is so hot under any load at all.

 

[Arindel]

Nope, most stock coolers have pre-applied paste. Once you take the cooler out after first time mount, you have to apply paste again after you clean the old paste every time you remove the cooler.

If you want to keep that CPU for a long while, I recommend to re-apply the thermal paste after cleaning the old paste.