Right. Those are a but pricey being a college student w/ no job making 400$ truck payments haha

I honestly don't think you'd have a problem with the CSS headers. The 5.3L didn't change in size or shape or configuration. The exhaust still runs down the passenger side. The cats are still a part of the Y-pipe.

TBH, if I were you, I'd give it a shot.

broke college student doesnt go along with wanting to go faster. the custom tunes are better than "boxed" tunes, like blackbear performance can tune out your downstream o2'* so you can get rid of your cats, get rid of all the torque management, etc... where are you from?

Lots you can do without forced induction! Headers like mentioned, programmer. If you want to dig a little deeper do a cam swap and port the heads.