Birthday Upgrade gone completely wrong.

[rylasasin]

I need some major help.

 

 

Okay here's the deal: for my birthday I ordered four things to upgrade my computer:

 

EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P3-1469-RX GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (to complement the one I already have from best buy)

 

ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS Because my current board doesn't have two PCI-E 16x 2.0 slots, and because of the choice in Processor

 

LEPA G700-MA 700W SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply (To power this new SLI thing)

 

AMD FX-4170 Zambezi 4.2GHz (4.3GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor FD4170FRGUBOX (because since my current one is a 3.2GHZ quad core phenomII, why not?)

 

Well as you could probably already tell, first fuckup was that the Board was not SLI (something I didn't find out untill I saw the lack of SLI bridge with it. I know, i'm a fucking idiot for not seeing that.) And to make things worse it's not as simple as replacing the motherboard (there's no SLI compatible motherboard for AMD3+ FX that I know of) There is, apparently.

 

So now i'm stuck with a nasty conundrum: Do I Return the CPU and Motherboard for something Compatible with my current processor while keeping the GPUs, or do I TRY to return the GPUs (well one of them, I lost the box to the best buy one) for two equally powerful ATI cards to make crossfire. (if so, which ones? I'm not at all familiar with ATI cards) I'm a moron. Apparently there is such a board that fits the requirements after all. Though how this didn't show up on the search is beyond me. That still leaves the last problem though.

 

And this story gets better. I thought I could get away with just having one card in there (while I figured out what to do with it.) But apparently windows won't start with that mobo/processor in there either. When I started the PC, went to the windows boot screen (with the flying colors) and then booted me right back to the Bios screen and then told me some thing about trying to auto repair (which it failed).

 

It was only after sticking my old Mobo and GPU back in that I was able to get the PC to work agian.

 

So please, I need some advice on what to do here. What I'm going for is the ability to run FONV and Skyrim Warzones mods (and other spawner mods) unhindered while having great graphics.

[Dreamer102]

Man, that stinks.

Personally...I would:

 

1. backup my OS-HD data with Acronis.

2. Wipe aforementioned HD

3. Install new mobo and cpu and set them up with ram

4. Reimage HD with Acronis image using "Deploy anywhere" for hardware compatibility.

5. boot into windows and update drivers.

6. Enjoy new hardware without missing a beat.

 

[cyb3r]

basically what dreamer said personnally i would advise to have all drivers for the new stuff ready too and my personall note that has saved me loads of times when doing redeployement of os's / complete formats (i wipe my server every 3months for speed), you can save em on a different harddrive or when your like me you got em in a bootdvd iso (damn handy btw )

 

Is to have a notepad handy with programs installed even though it's not allways needed to use sometimes it's handy due to programs going haywire and stuff, especially when you don't use said program alot then find out when you need it it doesn't want to work due to a dll missing or a certain registry key missing (thank you bfg networks crap drivers (grmbl))

 

ps note about asus boards if they don't boot it's usually caused by the bloody ram being in the wrong slots even though the manual states they're correct (dunno if they fixed that by now but it used to be an issue with earlier boards)