Gents:
 
Has anyone tried to build kit using the NV Tesla C870 card ?  Yep, this would be for a home-brew scientific number crunching application. Home-brew C-code running under UBUNTU Linux.

No, but have fun spending that $1300 on the card alone.    

ubuntu sucks... the latest build defaults to pulse audio *yuck*

Hummm:
 
NV is currently "giving away" the card for $640. Yes, the  kit is meant for scientific polymer-folding problems for which an "extreme" gamers-box is little better than a 6502.  
Yep, *nix is not for everyone ... tho my current amd5400+/DDrake_6.06  system has performed effortlessly and without issue for  2-y. OO handels my lectures, GCC my code and U-Tube ... well, I can watch "muski" fishing videos just fine.

I agree...its for a specific segment of users.  Its like reading all those forums of people finding the msot expensive cards and yelling "I'm getting one of these to play Quake 3 with!!"  ...buddy, that's a Quadro/FireGL card...not meant to game with...
 
So, yes, I agree, it has specific purposes...just dang expensive, but I'm sure worth the cost for those using it.  Good luck...get it while the 'sale' is on.

Another potentially excellent market for this would be for render-geeks. A very nice affordable "render-farm-in-a-box".