My 2 cents, this is basically the rig I run with a couple of different options. Monitor Dell 3008-wfp Motherboard Gigabyte UD9 CPU i7 980x GPU's 4 x GTX 580's PSU Silverstone Strider 1500w Personally I run 2 x 1200w PSU's 1x enermax revolution and 1x silverstone decathlon 1200. Case Lian-Li Pc-P80 Boot Drive C300 Crucial Storage Drives Samsung Spinpoints in raid x 2 Cooling would definitely need to be some kind of water, recently i've gotten into chilled liquid cooling, purchased a chiller, dropped an evaporator into a 50 ltr reservoir etc etc. I purchased the Hailea hc-500a but it is not powerful enough to keep my temps as low as I would like especially during a hard gaming session, I got an AC from homebase and dumped the evaporator into a 50ltr res and it cooled a lot better than the hailea chiller but it was pretty uncontrollable, res just iced up after a while. So i just purchased this from Nitrix and the guys at aquatuning Hailea titan 4000 . It's a lot bigger than the 500a model and has a lot more heat dissipation, it also uses a different cooling gas, but it's pretty extreme! Now the chiller cooling is really only for big overclocks, it also utilizes a lot of space and if you are planning on getting into it i would highly recommend buying one, this one in fact is what i would recommend over the 500a though Hailea titan 2000. Current build with chiller I am going to be rebuilding the system in the new year, once the new chiller arrives, i've got the ud9 board and lian-li pc-p80 case on the new rebuild. If you are planning on doing the normal everyday at home overclock stuff then a standard water cooling system is all you need, I'd run 2 loops something like. 2 x 3x120mm rads, there are a lot of options out there, thermochill, swiftech, black ice, EK, they all do varying quality of rads, i personally used the black ice GTX rads, I've heard very good things about the equivalent thermochill ones as well. Reservoir EK spin bay Dual GPU blocks EK acetal + nickel blocks GPU adapters 4x EK geforce links and a EK quad parallel bridge CPU block heatkiller Rev.3 or swiftech apogee I own both blocks and they perform almost identical, the swiftech is about 1 degree cooler Fittings I am a personal fan of compression fittings all the way around, something like Compression fitting You will need some 45° fittings, like 45° compression fitting or 45° compression fitting Pump Laing d5 x2 With 2x EK x-tops If you do go down the chiller route, you will only be running 1 loop, I would still recommend 2 pumps though along with an ek dual top while it won't increase flow it will increase head pressure in the loop. Tubing Primochill LRT 1/2" a lot of people recommend Tygon and while it is good it clouds up and looks horrible, I personally also found that the primochill stuff is a lot better on bends and doesn't crease as easily. XSPC do some ok tubing, you can see it in my earlier pic running from the chiller to the PC but it feels cheap and kinks a lot easier in comparison to the Primochill stuff I think that covers everything, it's Xmas day and i've got a mean turkey hang over. QFT. People severely underestimate 2560x1600 high AA gaming Obviously each to their own, but I've never played a board game i've enjoyed as much as a good RPG like Ultima 5, or a Square game etc. Computer games will always be more epic than board games, more like reading a book. I agree that looking at games simply as graphical eye candy invites just all kinds of fail, I still play a lot of old games and the graphics if they even have any are terrible in comparison. But having a great game with good graphics certainly does add more than it takes away. While you say the hardware will be out of date in 3 years, you also say that games aren't going to advance as quickly, so from a pure technology POV the hardware will be dated but it will still be running games at max settings. There are a lot of games written solely for PC and those games do look stunning, I will take a bland generic example, L4D2 on my xbox on a 1080 screen looks terrible in comparison to the same game at 1080 on a PC. There are a lot of developers out there that do cater to gaming enthusiast and I personally see this number increasing, I think consoleification is going to end up being more of a fad than anything. also http://www.bluesnews.com/s/112875/pc-hardware-outsells-consoles
I really hate it when people start calling others here stupid for wanting to spend crazy amounts of money on computers... I mean really... Who are you people to put someone down for wanting a $10K computer? Do you even know what his monetary situation is? Maybe he's got more money than he knows what to do with and $10K on a computer would be no more than a minor expenditure for him. If this were a car enthusiast board and someone came in asking what car to buy with a $300K budget; would you scorn them for wasting money and instruct him to get a Ford Focus and save the remaining $280K? To the OP: Spend "YOUR" money whichever way you please. If you want a $10K computer; by all means go ahead and build yourself one. With a budget like that; you're looking at something like this guy put together: Basically: Motherboard: EVGA SR-2 --> $600 CPUs: 2 x Intel Xeon 5680 --> $1700 each --> $3400 Total RAM: 2 x 12GB Kits (3x4GB each kit) --> $250 each ---> $500 Total GPU: GTX580 x 4 --> $500 each --> $2000 Total SSD: 1 x Crucial S300 256GB --> $550 Storage: 5 x WD Caviar Black 7200rpm 1TB/64MB Cache --> $90 each --> $450 Total Optical: Any BR Reader/Burner will do --> $100 Case: MountainMods Ascencion --> $500 Sound: Xonar Essense -> $200 PSU: Corsair AX1200 -> $300 That comes out to around $8600; which leaves your $1400 for cooling; which should be more than enough to get all your cooling bits... Say: $200 for CPU Blocks $600 for GPU Blocks $200 for Motheboard Full Cover block $300 for Radiators $100 for Tubing, Fittings, etc. That puts you right there at the $10K mark.
Look at this article. Personally, I would agree with you - I think 4 way SLI will do well in future DX11 games. I also agree with Lysaers's comment on the power supplies, it'd be best to get two 1000+W units.
Bit late into the mix but... Pretty much this and maybe stick a few more bells and whistles on should you desire (WC for a bit of fun). For gaming you aren't really going to get much better atm although the new 990x is coming out soon.
I give this a +1 Thats what I would do if i had the kind of money to spend on a PC. I think very few people on here should be criticizing someone for wanting the best PC they can build this is an enthusiast forum I thought! P.S. Some people have more money to spend than others so you shouldn't hate on him.
Pretty much this. It doesn't matter how much cash you have, the rig you should get remains pretty much the same. Unless you're doing something really special it's the i5 950 + 6 GB + SSD + TB + GTX580 or whatever. If you want to keep playing the latest games, you buy a new PC next year. If you want to try and see how long you can make your e-peen on a forum, you may as well waste the 10 grand on a rig that (in real life) is hardly any faster. And don't come calling me a partypooper, I'm just being realistic. Bottom line is that you can WASTE just as much money as you wish on PCs, but if it's GAMES you want and not a 10k grand pile of hardware, you really don't need to spend all that much. Not at once, anyway. EDIT: And if you really want to get rid of 10k, just go to a specialist shop and get a Computer. Doesn't really even matter what they slap in there.
Don't forget the brilliantly comfortable chair. Preferably with massage and a minifridge installed. And also the necessity to fill the fridge.
I'm not criticising him for wanting a 10k computer - it would definitely be amazingly kick-ass. I'm just advising that beyond the 4k mark, the returns on investment in the computer start to drop off rapidly since the extra money spent doesn't translate as well into MOAR POWAH!®. Quite often, it's better to just wait 6 months and spend the money on the newest shiny thing that's released. Alternatively, invest the money in the environment and peripherals, perhaps a Herman Miller Aeron chair, a room-shaking sound system, or converting a spare room into the ultimate gaming den. 10k goes quite a long way If, on the other hand, you have even more money left for these things and can yet dedicated the 10k solely to the computer, Custom PC did a review of two ultra-spec pre-built systems a couple of issues ago. I think one of them was called Quark or something, need to dig through my back issues. You could take a look at those for inspiration.
Second what Jipa and r3loaded (surely you should have another 3 in that, at the end? ) said. Don't bother spending all of that. I'd personally not go above around £2.5k if I had that money. To be honest, I'd be looking at i7 950, GTX570s in SLI (it's a much cheaper option yet more than fast enough), Asus P6X58D-E, with all the other bits on top. Power consumption for the whole system would also be far, far lower. EDIT: Okay, just put this together, this isn't really an "optimal build", though looking at it, there isn't really much wrong with it. It's only really to show that you don't even need to spend more than £1700 for a very very fast system:
Working on it. I took out the chair's right armrest. It'll take some heavy modding, but I think I can install the fridge there somewhere, and strap the water dispenser behind the chair's back or something.
Just a couple of points: What is your level of skill? Will you be ok with watercooling and the like? Would you prefer 1 massive screen or 3 smaller ones that make a bigger screen? Are you wanting to show off the system hardware, or tuck it away so it's a hidden beast? PSU: Enermax Revolution 85+. By far the bext PSU's out there. Get the 1050W model so you have plenty of future proofing. CPU: i7 950. Great CPU for a great price. OC the hell out of it!!!! M/B: Asus Sabretooth. (why would you want the UD9??? It's rubbish, just looks at the CPC extremeboard test) This board keeps up with the R3E in most tests. And it's SATA 6Gb/s ports run faster than any other boards. 5 year warrenty too!!!! RAM: I prefer OCZ Reapers personally, but Corsair Dominators are great too, so 6GB of either at 1600MHz+. GPU: If you want one big screen you'll want a Nvidia 580 (or several); but if you want 3 monitors then your want crossfired 6970's. HDD: Raid0 of 2+ Samsung 1TB F3's will give you plenty of space and mean that if a drive dies then your data will be ok. SSD: The thing I have my eye on is the OCZ Ibis. It makes standard SSD's (like the C300) look like HDD's!!!! Your budget will allow for a large one too. A Dream drive by far! I've left the case off as it's to your taste and how much space you have. I've used a ATCS 840, and it is an amazing case with great cooling. It is massive though. The fortress case is the one I'd go for if space was limited. Cooling it about what you feel you can handle, so what do you feel comfortable doing?
I truly don't get some of you people... If someone starts a project log here showing that they have built an entire case out of solid aluminum that they machined and tooled to perfection (at a cost of a few thousand dollars in raw materials) you praise them for being innovative... But someone wants to build a computer that has $10K worth of components and all of a sudden you're all into saving money. One more thing... Why do I keep on seeing the old "wait six months" line... He will have the same situation then as he has now... There will always be new things "coming soon"; and if we all waited for those; who would buy today's components? You people assume that the whole $10K computer for the OP would be something where he'd have to sacrifice on some other aspects of his life to be able to afford this "luxury"... But he clearly stated on his first post that he "Kind of won the lottery" So I would venture a guess that the $10K computer will not really hurt the OP's budget at all... The whole argument that past the $4K mark you're just wasting money is getting old too. Your definition of performance gain vs investment may just be different to that of the OPs... Maybe for him a gain of 20fps at 2560x1600 in Metro2033 with max settings is worth the extra $5K to the OP... Maybe he just wants the bragging rights... Who knows; and who cares? I remember having read somewhere on this site that "we're not here to show you how to save money on PC parts, but rather to make you feel better about spending too much on computer parts"... Where is that attitude now? I go back to the car analogy.... A $20K Focus will get you from A to B just the same as a $300K Lambo... And yet you see tons of people buying Lambos; they don't race them; they don't "need" them; the hardly ever push them past 50% of what they can do... And still Lambo sells thousands of units a year. Why? It's simple... Because people that buy those cars do so because they can and not because they need to. @ Anthias ===> Dude... If you have the moolah to spend on a $10K computer; go for it. Build the best damn $10K computer you can and ignore the nay-sayers here telling you that you should save your money or wait six months. Rant done!!! Sebastian
a couple of these will soon eat away at that 10k budget i think you need to find a controller as well that would handle them the specialist controller comes in the package
OK. I asked myself what I would really like to have without going overkill. I looked at the suggestions. Thank you guys for everything so far. Here's what I got. It's by no means definite: Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Extreme CPU: i7 980X (I'll just overclock this to around 4.0Ghz or maybe more, just for kicks. Won't wait for SandyBridge because I don't think today's games really utilize the six cores anyway, maybe in around a year or two). GPU: 3 x EVGA GTX 580 PSU: 1500 Silverstone Strider Memory: 6GB Corsair Dominator GT 1600Mhz SSD: 1 x 128GB C300 HDD: 1 x 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green Optical Drive: Pioneer 12X BD Burner Sound Card: ASUS Xonar D2X I have no idea for a case right now. The same for cooling. I'm a noob on that front. I'm not comfortable with setting up liquid cooling by myself, as I'm behind in the latest developments and lack the experience (also I think I said before that it's been almost a decade since I built my previous rig, and it kinda melted on me). I know there are easy to install options, such as the Asetek LCLC. Is something like that OK for such a rig (and the overclock on the CPU?)
