FED UP! Buh bye old rig, HELLO NEW!

techietaichi

Honorable
May 31, 2013
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10,510
So I've been yanking out what little hair I have for nearly two months now, since I loaded and am temporarily defeated by CRYSIS 3, and I emphasize temporarily. I played CRYSIS 1 with no problems and most of 2 until towards the end when things started getting a little hairy and I'm talking like 70's porno hairy, lol. Really ugly stuff. CRYSIS 3? Man, forget about it! Once it gets a spoonful of that it dies of a heart attack. The thing that's bugged me the most through all of this is not knowing what the problem is as I've done just about all I can think of, MemTest 86, OCCT Burn, Prime95, recleaning my rig, testing my memory one-by-one, unseating and reinstalling my processor, updating the BIOS, blah, blah, blah. You name it, I've done it and on it's own, every piece of hardware has passed, but pop CRY3 in and EPIC FAIL!!!!! I'm now prompted to believe that it's the mobo, but who knows? At this point, I don't even give a crap anymore. Well, I plan on trying to get this mobo RMA'd and then selling it off, like the rest of the innards of my current rig except for my 660Ti. That's too good to let go..."rainy day" hardware!

With that said, I'll pop on some "Lamb of God" and start my build thread. BRB!... Ok, so with the vastness of hardware available to us, I tried to stay in line with what hardware I already had and maybe coloring outside the lines a little bit. I don't know if I could totally attribute the build to a single processor, but it's what I jumped off of. I had an AMD Phenom II X4 965 tucked away in my spares box, so being an AM3 CPU and not a plus(+) which I was a bit bummed about(Would have loved a Crosshair V), I set out to get a decent board that would accommodate it, so I chose the Crosshair IV Formula.

UPDATE: Decided to scrap the Crosshair IV Formula for the CVF-Z as it was the board I'd originally wanted and now can retain my 660Ti.

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Being that it supported Crossfire tech rather than SLI(bummed again 'cause of my 660Ti...nice paperweight though), I decided to go with the Radeon HD7870 as I didn't want to incinerate my wallet with one item. Seems there were different iterations of this card though, so after looking at my choices, I went with the "CORE Edition".

UPDATE: I also canned the 7870 so I could stick with my hammer!

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Now before anyone points out that this is PCI-e 3.0, it is 2.0 backwards compatible. I made certain to confirm this before purchase and where did I confirm this info? HERE! I'll probably get another one later down the road.

To simmer down my CPU, I decided on a ZALMAN CNPS9900 Max. I've always used Zalman's and have enjoyed good success, so I stuck with it. I just hope everything pans out in terms of fitment within my case.

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For memory, I wanted to start with 8GB and maybe moving into 16 at a later date, so I bought a G-Skill Ripjaws X 8GB(2 x 4GB) 1600 Kit. Looks the balls and from what I've read, it should do the job quite nicely.

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I also decided that this go round I'd return to Western Digital's Raptor Line and kicked their/my old 7500 to the curb, so I bought a 600GB Velociraptor. In retrospect I should've went 1TB, but didn't want to get too wild.

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And to house all this and the rest of the little bits I've not discussed, I got the Raidmax AEOLUS case. Pretty generic, but I like the lines and the all the fan ports. Hopefully this won't sound like a freegin' jet engine, but if it does, I'll just toss my Sony's on!

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I would have loved to mod a case specifically for this build and actually have a case mod on the workbench right now, but I want....no, I NEED a new rig like yesterday. I know this has been a long thread all and please forgive my long-windedness moderators. You gotta start with a parts list before you build right? Cya's next time.
 
Edit: I was getting more ideas as I went along writing this. I don't feel like rewriting it to make it make more sense. For now this post is just ramblings.

A bit confused about a couple of things. First of all, grab a mobo that supports AM3+ and SLi. AM3 cpus will work just fine in an AM3+ board. Don't grab the 7870, if anything grab another 660ti since you already have one and SLi them. Don't buy that raptor drive, they just aren't worth the money compared to a SSD + hdd. I'd go so far as to say they aren't worth the price compared to even normal hdds. You can get a 3tb for about the same price.

Also for a bit more than the price of a crosshair formula V you could grab an i5 4670k + cheap mobo. (cheap mobos don't matter as much with haswell since the VRMS are on the cpu itself.)

I just checked prices and I suppose they are a bit expensive. You do still need a z87 mobo to OC and the cheapest ones are about 120... Well, its something to think about, plus with the money saved from the raptor and 7870 you can most definitely afford it.

Though a b85/h81/etc chipset with an 4570 would be quite a bit cheaper and still worth it.
 

techietaichi

Honorable
May 31, 2013
10
0
10,510


Hey, thanks for the reply mouse. Alas the wheels are in motion, but you've kind of got me rethinking this build. I'm no guru and will never claim to be, so input from those much more seasoned than I can weigh heavily as I learn new stuff all the time from folks like you. For instance, didn't know a regular AM3 works in an AM3+ board and didn't know there were Crosshair "SLi" boards either. What the hey?! Now I AM taking a harder look at that Crosshair V I initially wanted. :) On the Raptor drive I bent and yielded a little bit, could even call it taking a chance as the drive I bought was $75 since it was listed as "Manufacturer refurbished". No different than an RMA imo so I said, "what the hell..." As far as OC'ing goes, I've never actually ventured into the likes of that territory before. I've thought about it and wouldn't mind giving it a try, but to be quite frank, I'm a little chicken when it comes to tweaking my computer. Gives me the willies. I'm kinda weird as I'd like to see someone do it in front of me and explain along the way. I guess I'm just not confident enough to fool with things I could potentially destroy, lol.

UPDATE: Well, after much deliberation, I've decided to grab the Crosshair V Formula-Z mobo. Got it for just a tad over $200 smackers. BestBuy had 'em on sale and I had a savings cert. Saved about $30-40 bucks. So all is well in my world so far. Got my case in from the Egg and for such a cheap case, I'm rather impressed. Like I mentioned a bit generic, but nice. I won't start the build until a couple of weeks, since I have t wait on my board, but I'm motivated. I'll be keeping the 660 and will likely SLi later down the road. HOOYAH!