Old system - Minimum upgrades to improve FPS while 5 boxing

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Noting from your original post; if you need to take the side of your case off to stop it from blue screening, then you have some other issues.
The ATX case form factor is designed to have an air flow path pulling air in the front of the case to the expelling of air at the back. If you open the side panel, the circulation around the passively cooled parts then becomes nearly non-existent and you end up relying on convection. Actively cooled parts fare better as they may have access to slightly cooler air, but they usually not as effective at removing of heat due to the lack of air pressure being generated - most cases run at positive or negative air pressure depending on the number of input or output fans.

Basically, open cases generally fare worse for cooling than closed cases, but if you are BSOD with the case closed, then one or more of the following probably applies:
1. you have a need to sort out the mess of cables inside your case, as these block the air flow
2. your fans are not suitable or no longer working effectively (e.g. worn bearings) for the number of heat generating devices
3. you have a dust/debris build up on your heatsinks or components
4. your thermal paste is old and in need of replacement
5. you have a capacitor or two that is at End Of Life so is extremely sensitive to a slight heat increase (this could be on any device, e.g. MB, PSU, GFX)
6. you have a short/grounding issue when you put your case together (I've seen this before).



As for your other queries (I'm going to ignore game settings as the other posts cover that):
A clean reinstall is usually a pretty decent idea as it removes all the applications and resident programs you no longer use, and you get back to basic setup. It also usually means bios and driver updates (if you go get the latest for your hardware before hand). This is also cheap, except for the time.

You should be able to get Windows 7 (I'd leave Win8.1 out of the picture, it's not worth it) and WOW on the 90GB SSD. The clean install would help with that. Make sure you disable hibernation (google it, there are a few steps) too as this will save 8GB of space (the same as your installed RAM). You only need the 1 install of WOW (ISBoxer magic helps here).

Between the two above items you should see some improvement.


8GB should be sufficient to 5 box on moderate settings. As others have pointed out, any issue probably lies with the CPU/GFX. Plus you have said future desired machine will have 32GB so the total 4x4GB you would end up with wont migrate to the new box which will only have 4 slots.

If you were to put some money into it, I'd look at the GTX 970, even though it may be a little overpowered for the rest of the system. As you said it will transfer to the new box so it is not throw away. If your BSOD is because of a bad PSU though this might backfire as the GTX 970 will probably draw more than your existing card (the PSU also might not have the right PCI connectors so check - nothing more annoying that finding you need an 8 pin when you only have a 6).
After that, if you wanted to throw some more money at it (and possibly down the drain), you could look at a new CPU, like an 8350FX, which seems to be compatible with your MB, and a decent jump in performance. Note: this will depend on the BIOS version, which might depend on the board revision.
If you really want more RAM, no they don't need to exactly match the existing RAM, but you would be aiming for similar or better performers than your existing RAM, although no need to pay through the nose for super high level performance as all the RAM will operate at the same settings set by the worst performing set. There is no benefit to identical sticks for your setup. RAM should also be installed in the correct banks (the slots are colour coded), so each pair would be in the same bank. Also worth noting that you would be removing the gaps between the existing RAM (if it is installed correctly), which would mean you need to make sure that the airflow is suitable.


And finally. Using basic stuff like Windows Task Manager will let you see if your CPU is pegging out at 100% or if a core is being loaded up and the load is not sharing. You can also see how much RAM each client is using, and what the total RAM usage is like. A tool like Open Hardware Monitor will show you a bit more in terms of temperatures and processor usage and you can see what your GFX card is doing in terms of GPU processing or Video RAM (graphics memory). Sometimes ATI cards don't show up the GPU value in OHM so you might need to find another tool (Process Explorer comes to mind).