Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA 1155 - BX80637I53570K

Replaced the trusty, but aged E8400 Wolfdale with this and am extremely happy. The 8400 never missed a lick, and probably logged a million hours of gaming. So far, I have nothing to suggest any lesser performance from this newer workhorse.Runs everything - and I mean EVERYTHING we throw at it, runs it well, and runs it smoothly at stock settings. Finally went with water cooling, and while the old system ran fine, it did run hot - a couple of times SO hot it started artifact-ing and 'sparkling' under stress until we blew out all the cooler fins and plugged it back in for another year. This chip runs 24/7, games for a good percentage of that time, and has NEVER exceeded 42c. (Normal idle is mid 30s) Not a stutter, hiccup or bump since it was installed, powered up and booted the first time.Should the need arise, according my motherboard, it will OC like a big dog (preset on my MB will crank it up to 4.8), LUCID has reduced GPU temps as a bonus, and I'm a happy camper ... oh wait - I hate campers, but you get my drift.It runs Photoshop and Premiere like it's strolling a beach, encodes x264 in several iterations in a tiny fraction of the time I'm used to, and mutlitasks MUCH better than I do.Thought about going to the dark side (AMD), but held fast and very happy I did. Thought about the 3770, but my research indicated there would be no improvement in gaming, so the extra $ could not be justified. I'm all about best bang for the buck, and fully believe THIS to be it if you're even a part-time gamer. If all you do is render video, the move up might make sense, but for me, it did not.I can't think of any way I could be more pleased with the performance (obviously unless it were free), and I'd buy it again without a thought.

I recently upgraded from an AMD 955 CPU to an i5 3570k CPU, and I must say that Intel has gained another convert. This CPU will chew through any game, and I get much better performance than I ever did with the 955--the 3570k simply blows AMD out of the water. I do not do any sort of image editing or video encoding, so this review is written entirely from a gamer's perspective.PROS:-Great for extremely CPU-intensive games like the Total War games (Empire and Shogun 2 in particular). These games are fairly difficult to run smoothly at very high graphics settings due in large part to incredible (but demanding) particle effects, high unit density, shadow effects and many others, but the 3570k has no problems handling Empire at max settings (assuming you have a decent GPU to boot).-I get much higher frame-rates and better performance in games like Crysis, Crysis 2, BF3, Max Payne 3, Empire: Total War, and Deus Ex 3 as well as older games like FEAR, Half-Life 2 and Rome: Total War.-Achieves an overclock of 4.3-4.6GHz without much trouble at all (I've got mine at 4.5 GHz), at least on a Gigabyte Z77-UD3H motherboard.-Using the Gigabyte Z77-UD3H MB I managed to OC to 4.3GHz with no stability issues at stock CPU Vcore voltage (1.13 V).-Built-in Turbo boost feature clocks the 3570k up to 3.8GHz--which is a pretty decent boost and would be a good option for gamers who are uncomfortable with messing with BIOS settings to OC their CPUs.-Almost identical to the 3770K in terms of gaming performance. Benchmark scores for a number of games show marginal (if any) improvements for the 3770k. Other benchmarks and certain games like the Total War series actually see improved frame-rates with the 3570k versus the 3770k.CONS:-It does run somewhat hot--I get temps in the high 70s, low 80s (deg C) with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (with Arctic Silver 5 TIM) at 4.5GHz and 1.35 Volts. However, IB CPUs are designed to withstand more heat, so this is not a huge issue, but it may warrant considering a pricier cooler if you want to OC to around 5 GHz or higher.OVERALL: The 3570k is an excellent CPU for any game on the market with a great performance-to-price ratio. Virtually all gaming performance benchmarks that you will find give near identical results for the 3570k and 3770k, so I would save yourself $100 and take the 3570K over the 3770k and put that money into a better graphics card or an SSD. If you already have a 2500k I would say that a 3570k is not worth the upgrade, but if you have anything older or are looking to switch over to Intel from AMD I would highly recommend it!My PC specs:Gigabyte Z77-UD3H MBi5 3570k OC'd to 4.5GHz with Cooler Master 212 EVO + AS5 TIMEVGA GeForce GTX 680 2GB on stock settingsCrucial M4 256GB SSDCorsair Vengeance 1600MHz 8GB DDR3 RAM

The 3570k is one FAST CPU. And it's highly overclockable. I have my 3570k at 4.5Ghz right now and with this overclock I'm normally faster than a 3770k in most benchmarks, even multithreaded ones. And I'm a whole lot faster in single threaded benchmarks.The reason I love the 3570k is because it's the most powerful CPU, per core, on the market. Meaning one of a 3570k's cores are just as powerful, if not more, than any other CPU on the market. The 3570k is even faster than a 3970x if your only using one core.So in single-threaded programs, or programs that use 4 cores or less, and a lot of programs and 99.99% of games use 4 cores or less, this CPU will perform better than ANY other. The only time a 3570k's performance is less than a 3770k or 3970x, is when you start to use 5+ cores. Like in rendering and things of that nature. But even with rendering and multithreaded applications the 3570k is no slouch. In fact, a 3770k only gives you about a 20-40% performance gain, but only while using all 8 threads. 40% may seem like a lot but that's the absolute maximum it can be. On average the performance gain is around 25%.This is exactly why I love this processor. For people like me who only game and surf the internet and use iTunes and do all the normal things people do, your processor absolutely can't get any faster than this 3570k can. That's just a fact. And for only around 200$ you can't beat the price/performance ratio. Sometimes it can be worth going with the 3770k, or 3930k, or 3970x, but for me, I wouldn't see any performance improvement with any of those. Sometimes I could actually see less, since the 3930k and 3970x are Sandy Bridge processors that aren't as powerful per core as the 3570k.My advice is to buy this CPU. You can't get any better of a CPU for all of your day to day tasks. Especially gaming, this thing is beastly. Before I got this CPU I was thinking if I should spend the extra 100$ on the 3770k and I wondered if it would be worth it. And for what I do, it's not worth one penny more. In fact, nothing I do on a daily basis would be faster on a 3770k than a 3570k. The 3770k may make sense for some people, but for most, the 3570k is THE way to go.