Also, take a look at Zalman CNPS10x series coolers. They're cheaper than both the Noctuas and the H series and they move heat phenomenally. The drawback to using an NHd14 is the system you're using it on. If you use it on an AMD system you can only mount it one way and it may or may not interfere with your memory slots.

Yup P67/P55 motherboards support both SLI and Crossfire like the x58 except you wont be able to run the cards at full x16 just x8.Hekynn

Wrong, actually. For a board to support SLi, it has to be equipped with Nvidia's NF200 chipset. That board does have it, and if it never says in the description, look at the photos for an SLI bridge in the contents. That board does support 2 way SLI, not sure how many lanes are used, but the difference between x16 and x8 are pretty minimal anyway.

6. 980X ftw

MSI makes great AMD boards. I've had a 790FX board with the 965 Black Edition processor for a year and both are still going strong, even though I recently upgraded to LGA 1366. For memory, G.Skill is what I'd reccommend, they're always reliable and have very very low memory failure/doa rates. Buy an aftermarket cooler for the 965 and you should be set, although you might want to consider an i5 build as well, around the same price, motherboards are just a bit more pricy.

[QUOTE="ATLReppa770"][QUOTE="NamelessPlayer"]I'd be pleased if I could run everything on Very High/Enthusiast DX10 and still not dip below 60 FPS at 1600x1200 or even 1280x1024, but the cost is just too prohibitive if it takes SLI/CrossFire to do it. (Partially because I built my system with the intention of only using a single graphics card.) Still, very nice performance...that's basically what I'd hope to accomplish, but a single GTX 480 or 570 likely won't do it.Gambler_3

What exactly is there to cut costs on? If you're buying a board with 2 PCie x16 slots, both at x16 it's gonna be a pretty damn good board anyway. Hopefully most people have enough common sense when building a pc to know that you can't skimp on a PSU. In all honesty, anyone who knows anything about building a pc will know that the system won't run without a proper psu. If you buy a good psu, any board that sports 2 pcie 2.0x16 slots both running at x16 is going to be a good board, more than likely. Aside from that, there isn't much to skimp on.

To the OP, my system pushes Crysis running 1920x1080 at a constant 80fps with 3 gpu's. When I had my 5870's, the constant microstuttering was annoying whilst running in crossfire. Warhead is obviously a little better optimized thus runs a little better than the original game. Usually 5-10fps difference between crysis and warhead. I haven't tried to run Warhead with my new rig but I highly doubt I'd have any problems.

Here's my 3dMark11 run in 3 way before the fan on my 3rd gpu died. Sending it out to RMA tomorrow.

You can't SLi a GTX 560 with a 460, different gpu cores. As for cards, if you're only doing a single card setup, go with whatever you feel like really, although I can't say anything against Nvidia. However the HD5870's in CFX in my previous rig gave me trouble from Day 1. Crossfire acts retarded with AMD's driver package for whatever reason, always has and probably will for quite sometime until they get software engineers that know what they're doing. I'm currently running a 3 way sli setup now and it runs beautifully. No microstutter or anything. My personal reccommendation would be Nvidia, and for multi gpu setups strongly reccommend Nvidia, but it's really all in what you want and how much faith you have in what you buy.

Probably an Asus Maximus 3 or an EVGA Classified 200

I don't really see how it would make a difference but install your ethernet chipset drivers and make sure in the control panel that your ethernet ports are both enabled.

DX 10 has better lighting and a little better textures and shadowing I think.