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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.