scubasteve526 :
Well that's a nice mobo but it is a micro-ATX sized mobo so your hardware might run a little tight in there. I have no clue what the b3 stands for but the board I got(which you said you also got) is great. It has the z68 chipset which is great it also has support for Intel's new CPUs, code named Ivy bridge(not out until april), which will allow you to use the PCI-e 3.0 slots on the mobo(assuming you have a pcie 3.0 video card like the 7970, though there truly is no performance gain) The pcie slots run at 2.0 if no 3.0 support is available. Pcie is backwards compatible. Also your case is a mid-size so keep that in mind when picking parts, especially your heatsink as it is very large for a mid size case. I did watch a video on that case and the guy had a hyper 212 heatsink, same one I have and it fit fine. sorry about that mess up with your cpu. I would be pissed if they sent me the wrong one. I just bought my i5 2500k last week with the mobo and case and finally assembled the whole PC a few days ago. As soon as i was ready to buy Newegg ran out of i5 2500ks so I had to buy one off Amazon so it came one day later, no biggie though. Oh and I love xoxide! Their warehouse is only and hour and a half away from my home(in Florida) so when I order from them I always get the free slow shipping b/c it will always arrive the next day hehe. The one button overclock on the mobo put my i5 at 4.2ghz(which isn't bad at all. Thats still very fast) but I wanted more speed so I manually overclocked to 4.5ghz with all the voltages on auto. even with ivy bridge coming out those chips are supposed to be only 20% better, so they say. In my opinion the i5 will still be kicking ass. I have a GTX560ti 448 cores graphics card and before my i5 I still couldn't max a lot of settings and get 60fps. Now that I'm off my crappy athlon II x4 and put in my i5 I can max so many settings and get 60fps. I run BF3 mid-ultra settings and get 60fps and the lowest i got was 50fps which is amazing for me
Overclocking the 2500k isn't hard if you need some help don't be afraid to ask or hit up youtube. found a video for our exact bored for how to get it to 4.5ghz.
Yeah my board is g3 as well. I think the b3 is the same minus 3.0 as far as I can tell.
I have only 550ti right now in my recently built pc which I have listed on ebay for sale
http://www.ebay.com/itm/220947250375?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
I have asus maximus iv gene-z mobo with 2500k and have overclocked to 4.4 as you can see in the pictures.
I get pretty good frame rates with the 550ti on bf3 but is prob. because my monitor is 22" widescreen for 1600x900 res. and have gpu o.c.'d to the max
I am looking for 560ti for the new build but will have to settle for used or cheaper brand like evga. evga is good even tho cheaper.
I am looking at msi 560ti frozerIII hawk and have seen it on ebay go for as low as $169
Would like it better to go with msi mainboard and blue theme looks better with silver than the black and yellow of evga.
I don't think I will keep either computer if I can get them sold,just because I have a hobby of building and the only way I can keep it up is to sell them and start over LoL
Trying to sell is the reason I want to match things up.
Since I chose the asus board for the last build is why I chose red for the theme.
The coolermaster v8 cooler is a monster as well and barely clears with like a 1/2 in or so clearance from side panel in my coolermaster storm scout case.
If my research falls true My tuniq cooler will barely fit in case I picked with similar clearance