Back in 2004, when I was working at a small private company, I built a “God Box” gaming rig at work. I shipped all the parts to the office versus my apartment because that was easier for the shipper. Coworkers stopped by and oogled at the parts, we fired up some Nvidia demos. It was pretty stunning at the time running a single core AMD FX-57 and 7800gtx with DDR400. It cost about $3100. It was expensive and fast back then and now it’s not.

Fast forward to this past weekend when all my new parts came in for a brand new gaming rig. The parts were much less money and much faster. It’s a hilarious cycle. And even as shiny as my new toy is, I know it will return to dust when FPSTechDemo 2012 requires a house-glowing flux capacitor to run.

Here are some quick stats.
BOX: Antec P182 Case
CPU: E8600 3.33ghz dual core
MEM: 4gb DDR3-1600
VID: ATI 4870X2 2gb
MB: asus rampage extreme x48
evga 790i ultra

It was a dramatic build. I spent 16 hours straight (skipping dinner and lunch the next day) putting it together. At first, I cabled it all up. Then it would just turn on / turn off. It wouldn’t even stay on. So piece by piece, I dismantled it trying to figure out what was wrong. I thought it was a short, I thought it was the CPU, it could be anything.

So then I dismantled everything and put the motherboard on a towel. I had the power supply in the case powering the board with a single cpu fan hooked up to the motherboard. The board has a power button on the board itself so I didn’t even have to hook up the chassis jumpers. Nothing else (no cpu, no memory, no cards) were hooked up. Eventually I replaced the power supply and the motherboard with retail-bought replacements. This was annoying because ripping out a motherboard and power supply is like removing your skeletal system and then your circulatory system.

After making these swaps, everything seemed to run fine on an EVGA 790i Ultra motherboard. I lost the ability to do crossfire but I was fine with that for now. About 3 months later, I wasn’t quite done with this thing. I ordered another 4870×2 to do quad gpu. I put the asus crossfire board back in. It was a tight fit in the case and the heat coming out of the back really did warm the room. It was a bit louder too (the whole thing was loud by itself). It was marginal gain for the titles I play so I returned it.

Yes it plays Crysis. Although Very High still isn’t playable. High looks just fine. Even the developers said that they threw that setting in for future systems.