Change that Caviar Green for a couple or three 1TB Caviar Blacks and set them up in RAID 0 for increased performance of your storage drive.
Damn straight, have some rep. I'm glad that I had the guts to spend a lot on my system. Yes and no. I'd put no more than two mechanical drives in RAID 0, but putting four drives in RAID 0+1 could be interesting.
@Seba I recommended that he wait for LGA2011 before dropping serious cash because LGA1336 is a couple year old now, and IMO worth that kind of investment. Given that the LGA1366 i7s are still the fastest CPUs around even after that much time, imagine how kickass their replacement will be. Anyway, IMO with this budget you should really be going to town on peripherals. Topre keyboard, kickass external DAC over a sound card, high end headphones or speakers, a cushy chair, new desk..
@ Pete J --> Two 1TB HDDs in RAID 0 should be more than enough for storage. @ docodine --> I understand your point, but my argument is that even if he were to wait for LGA2011; by the time that comes by; something better would be on the horizon... So you can't really play that game... Or your will always be waiting for the "next best thing" and will never have a computer to play with. My rant was more towards those people saying... "Why waste so much money when a $4K PC will be more than enough?".... What do they know what "enough" means for the OP? ... I'll tell you... They don't know, and yet they argue over the validity of a $10K build. If I had money to burn; I'd build me a $20K computer and mop the floors with all those people thinking their $5K 980x build is the "Top Dog".
and you'll feel great for about 3 months, while your children will forever mourn their inheritance i jest of course, but it is very foolish to build a computer in order to brag to people on forums that you'll never meet. if you feel you need a 20k computer thats fair enough, if you bought one to impress people thats a travesty, because you could have had a round the world trip, or a car, or a thai bride, or got pissed for 1000 days straight, or bought your mum a new kitchen, or got plastic surgery, or had an E.P. professionally produced, or paid for a dying child's operation (in america; here we treat dying children), or paid for you and four friends to go to ibiza, or on a trainspotting holiday or a "fact finding" mission in the phillipines. all these are things you could do with the change from buying a very capable PC with 20k. but hey those 20 extra frames look amazing on that 3 monitor set up right?
Now if this was me I would go for the 12 gb (4gb x 3) Corsair Vengeance kit so that you can add another 12 gb (!) if you got in to video/big picture editing. I would also look at getting a good sata 3 raid card with battery backup and 12/16 ports. To this, i would add 4/6 1tb drives, either WD black or Samsung F3 in a raid 0+1 array for storage and 2 SSD's in raid 0 for a main drive. Finally i would get a red Lian Li PC-X900R or V2100 with a custom side window. Then i would get water blocks on the cpu, graphics cards and mb all cooled with a watter chiller if i was going for a big overclock or a 9x120mm external rad for quiet. But thats just me!! Anyway enjoy the new machine and do a log of the build for us to enjoy!
Dont you think that this is a) a bit harsh b) not really any of yours or my business for all you know, he may have given a million to good causes, bought his mum a house and work in a hospital saving kids all day long! Lets be honest, most of us dont need the machine we have got. we only get them for faster frame rates in games or because we enjoy them!
Crompers I suspect this is the wrong site for you, as it's about building custom pc's if someone wants to spend 10-20k they should be allowed to without unhelpful comments, instead suggest what components they could purchase to help them make their ideal custom machine
Hence my preface... "If I had money to burn" The problem with your argument is that you make the assumption that this is being done by someone that would be sacrificing any or all of those other things you list in order to build his $10K computer... When the reality is that someone that has $10K to spend on PC parts has probably already done all those other things a couple times over. The OP did say he had sort of won the lottery; so that implies that the $10K would be no more significant to him than say a $2K build for us mere mortals. As for building a $10K or a $20K computer... Does anyone really "need" that kind of power? Some people do. 3D Artists, CAD Designers, Engineers, etc. Would building a $10K or $20K computer just to be able to say you did be a travesty? Not really... Most of us on this site don't really "need" the power that our computers can provide. Most of us here don't need a custom made "one off" case that for all practical intents and purposes is too expensive... But we still build scratch made cases, we still mod cases, we still buy TJ07s when a plain old HAF32 would suffice, we still have aluminum panels laser cut and plexy sheets machined, we still do all those "unnecessary" things. Why? Because we want to; and because we can. The only difference between the OP and you, or I, is the size of his budget. Would spending that kind of money to impress people be a travesty? I really don't care about what people think of me; and much less my computer. But there are aspects of computing (Competitive Benchmarking) where a $10K or $20K build would come in handy. As for my kid's inheritance... They get the best education money can buy from me.... After that; they have to go out and make their own money. I think that pretty much covers it. My guess is that all this back and forth is now a mute point since the OP has long ago decided on a 980x build... But it is nice to see people's take on how others should spend their money. Sebastian
My suggestions for someone planning on spending that much on a computer would be to think long and hard about the upgrade path. If it were me, I'd get triple 30" LCDs on a really nice gaming desk with a killer keyboard and mouse setup, a killer sound system, and a really awesome chair. I'd also get a really high quality case, power supply, and watercooling setup. And get a HTPC or server with 10TB or more of hard drive space. I'd take the remaining money, and get a decent set of components. Right now, it would be an i7-950, 12gb of RAM, and crossfired HD 6970s. Then, next year, I'd get a LGA 2011 rig with 16GB of RAM and Geforce GTX680s or Radeon HD 7970s or whatever the bees knees is at the time. You hit a point of significantly diminishing returns once you get past high-end and into the crazy stuff. Either way, it will go out of date. 2010's no-holds-barred $10k dream rig is 2011's top-of-the-line $5k rig which is 2012's $2.5k high-end rig which is 2013's $1.5k enthusiast rig which is 2014's $800 midrange rig which is 2015's $500 emachines.
In the world of computer hardware bragging harware only lasts for 3 or 4 months. Is 10k worth 3 or 4 months of an E-Penis? IMO i dont think so. Stick with a good i7. But if you must, I suppose an SR-2 build would be the way to go. Although with little little benift to the avarage user. EDIT: @Altron +1
I guess we're beating a dead horse now... But I still add my last comment. The part of this whole thread that I have an issue with is that the OP came in her asking what he could build with a $10K budget. He did not come in here asking anybody to tell him what he should or should not do with his money. Some people gave him builds that totaled up to the $10K; including myself... Some others simply started bashing him for wanting to spend so much money on a computer. This is what I have issues with. @ Altron --> Your argument that today's "Top Dog" computer will devalue to the point of being the "run of the mill" computer in a few years; although true, has the main flaw that if we all lived by that no one would buy anything today because we'd all be just waiting for tomorrow's components... The problem is that when tomorrow comes; we'll be then waiting for the "day after tomrrow's" components. @ murraynt --> ePenis has nothing to do with it. Why did I build a $500 computer? Because that is what I "could" afford. If somebody else has a budget twenty times larger; why should they stick with my $500 computer just because people here think that anything beyond that is a waste of money? I go back to the car analogy... Try telling a Lambo owner that he's an idiot for spending $300K on his car when a $20K Focus would take him from A to B just the same... They'll look at you and just give you that "You just don't get it" smile.
I take you haven't got a computer then? Because the money you spent on that could have gone towards "a round the world trip, or a car, or a thai bride, or got pissed for 1000 days straight, or bought your mum a new kitchen, or got plastic surgery, or had an E.P. professionally produced, or paid for a dying child's operation (in america; here we treat dying children (wow - way to go on the moral stance there dude - congrats on getting to heaven...)), or paid for you and four friends to go to ibiza, or on a trainspotting holiday or a "fact finding" mission in the phillipines" By your statement, I should expect you've never ever spent any money on yourself or anything that YOU wanted to do. I mean, come on - you'd rather he had plastic surgery than built a PC? You'd rather he did a plane-spotting holiday? ANYTHING except build a computer that HE wants to build with HIS money which he can spend any way HE wants...? You've got a serious case of the green eyed monster I'd say... Don't be such a baby.
I'd like to elaborate a little more about my situation here. I'm a college student. My college is in the West Coast. I live in Istanbul, Turkey. That's a long goddam way. I intend to carry my PC (just the chassis, nothing else) between these two places twice a year (to Istanbul when the summer begins, and then back to San Fran in late September). I have the means to do so. However, since I'm moving dorms every year, and I'll be leaving any big accesories behind, I cannot accomodate huge configs such as multi monitor setups, home theater systems (or any speakers, really), chillers etc. I've not sold my unborn child for the money or anything. I've just set a certain percentage of the money I earned from working + the money I received from my parents for the past ten years. That certain percentage is actually more than my budget here, but that's for future upgrades of CPU, GPU and maybe another motherboard + accesories (though I've never found a better mouse keyboard combination than a Lycosa and a Deathadder). The possible rig I've posted a few posts ago doesn't even reach 7k, let alone ten. I'm not blindly wasting money. If I did, I would have opted for an SR-2 with dual Xeons and 4xGTX580's while it actually performs worse than a triple SLI+980x config when it comes to gaming. I'm confused about the cooling, here. I don't want to use my chassis to keep my enemies mangled corpses fresh or anything, but I don't wanna screw up installing LC without any ideas. How about them EVGA GTX 580 Hydro Copper 2's? If they have their own LC, then that only leaves the CPU, which makes things a little bit easier . Bit of a noob, here.
Rumours suggest Sandy Bridge is gonna murder both 1156 and 1366 (except maybe the 980X) in the performance stakes
The 980x will still be ahead of sandybridge in game threaded for six core from the benchmarks I've seen. If you want to move the rig around a lot drop any idea of liquid cooling and make sure you buy a very solid case with lots of fan slot instead. Your hardly going to need to squeeze out every last drop of power from that build in order to achieve decent framerates.
Nope. Had one. Was heavy as hell, and, not worth the money for only two trips a year. As for the case, I have a way to safely transport it with me.
I didn't mean it that way. What I'm saying is that it will be a waste. It's like buying a lambo as you said and only using it for shopping Would you be better spending it on something like an i7, chiller and loads of SSD's? If you go down the SR-2 road you will need a special case, which immediately rules out some of the nicest cases on the market. If you buy an SR-2 rig you wont be able to utuasie all the core for everyday use for years, by which time a 800 pound rig will S*it on it. We are all Hardware enthusiasts here and we can see when something is of waste. For example laptops with 8gb of memory and a lonely 2ghz CPU. This is the same thing only on a larger scale. It also comes down to how easy it is to live with. Would you like a rig in your living room that looks like a server? Or would you like a perfectally silent Animal of a rig that wont stick out like a sore thumb? An SR-2 rig is without doubt very powerful, but in the wrong way. To put it in car terms its like buying a GT3 RSR for every day use. You will only see the drawbacks and will get sick of it very soon. Just in case you think, I'm not Not trying to belittle you Sebas.
