It's basically a toss up between the Skulltrail with two CPUs but no DDR3 and a cheaper setup that allows for 3x SLi and DDR3, my main concern would be passably running Crysis at 2500x1600 with very high detail settings on Vista.  
 
eVGA nForce 790i Ultra 3 PCI-E slots  or Intel Skulltrail
Core 2 Extreme 3.2 GHz 775 yorkfield or 2x the same thing but with 771 pin for Skulltrail
4x 2GB OCZ Reaper DDR3 PC310666 1333MHz or 2x 4GB FBDIMM DDR2 667MHz  by Kingston for the Skulltrail setup
 
Most importantly:
 
3x Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 or 2x Nvidia GeForce 9800GX2 for the Skulltrail setup.
 
The Skulltrail system is still more expensive but is having 8 cores worth the cost of sacrificing DDR3 memory and 3 way SLi for Crysis?

That's a lot of money for a PC. For that money it should be making beer, not even coffee would do.
 

Beer and other services for that price.
 
The 3x SLI system will give you the best Crysis system.
Assuming that is GTX 280 SLI, that is.
9800GX2 SLI dose not scale as well as GTX 280 SLI.
 
Why anyone would spend $5000 on one mediocre game is beyond me...

Assinine if you ask me.

Crysis @ 2560x1600 with eyecandy? You must be joking. Wait for even faster/cheaper technology to be released. Come back between 2009 and 2010 please.

s/he must have money to pass...  thats money for a nice big screen home theatre setup

I haven't seen a lot of skulltrail benchmarks, however, one of my biggest decision making factors doesn't seem to be a factor for you; cost.  I'm not really impressed with Skulltrail and QuadFX, I think they're more gimmicky than anything.
 
Crysis is not as good as FarCry.  I'm really disappointed with that game.
 
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5000 bucks just to play crysis with max setting.......that game doesnt deserve such honor........if u have 2 much money to spend, give some charity...that will be money well spent.

Two things.  First, if someone can afford a $5000 system then help them choose the best setup available and leave off the color commentary.  Some people CAN afford it even if you can not!
 
Second, the point that Crysis is a mediocre game ( and I agree) may be valid but he/she may like it.  Unfortunately; it is actually poorly coded for multicore/multithread capable systems and that would make 8 cores basically useless for Crysis.  The tri SLI with the fastest, best scaling cards would give the best results.  Combine this with the highest OC'd C2D available, quad or dual, as the game is more depended on mhz than number of cores.

That is just a waste of money in my opinion. You get a prime setup for half the price. And all this for Crysis? *shakeshead*

And I must agree with sarwar: give the money to charity - that would make you feel better, help some people that need it more that you do, and it would make you look a lot less decadent. That's my humble opinion however.

I guess most people just cannot understand that to some people, $5000 is not a whole lot of money. There are people who will spend $5000 as easily as many would spend a couple hundred, or even a couple of $20's. Maybe he has already given a substantial amount of money to charity, and he feels this is his personal reward for being such a humanitarian. Point is, you never know.  
 
You should not judge other people if you are ignorant of the facts surrounding the circumstances.
 
The fastest single Quad core you can find and triple SLI will net you the best you are gonna get in Crysis for now.

Geez, what is it with you people?  
 
It's as if someone asked an automobile forum what they should look for when buying a new Jaguar, and a bunch of douches chimed in telling him to buy a second-hand Toyota because 'it has much better value'.
 
The man wants to spend his money for a top of the line system, and some advice on how to do it best, so don't go about just giving some smug lines about donating the money to charity instead or some crap like that.
 
Anyway, back on topic, I suggest you take a look at this article, if you haven't already:
 
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/ [...] index.html
 
It shows that even Tri-SLI with GTX 280s won't let you play Crysis at 2560X1600 - the third card just doesn't scale, and it appears that one might reach a CPU bottleneck that just isn't surmountable with current CPUs at those settings.  
 
Future drivers or CPU advancements might fix this to a degree, but I'm not sure if what you're proposing is realistic at this point in time.

I think I saw a video of the game being played on a prototype Nehalem system back before crysis came out. I think It had 2 SLI Ultras. Wish I could find that video again. They said it was playing "butter smooth". Maybe we all just have to wait until Nehalem to fully unlock the potential for the lastest video cards and this particular game.

Wouldn't 2 X 4870X2 do even better, and be cheaper; provide DirectX 10.1 support, which the GTX280 won't, and be a better multimedia system with the HDMI audio which only the ATI cards have?

If I were you I would wait it out for the benchmarks on ATI's 4870X2 in Quad Crossfire before deciding. One 4870 comes close to the GTX 280 in terms of performance already, and it is *Probable* that when the 4870X2 is released, ATI will hold the performance crown over Nvidia. If that isn't the case, you can always look at the GTX 280 tri-sli option with ddr3. In either case I wouldn't recommend Skulltrail, the excessive size (EATX) and use of fully buffered dimms doesn't make it a particularly attractive solution for everyday gaming, being more suited to cpu intensive work such as rendering. It might be an idea to read the article on it if you haven't already.                                
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1768.html
 
Good Luck!
 

I'd wager that 99% of the $5k builds we hear about ARE NEVER BUILT... or if they are, they're built 2 years later as $1k builds.

 
I think that is the case with posts like this. OP has 1 post and hasn't replied. Probably won't . I could be wrong though.

 
Well said. And for a "open" game I got bored with it fast.
 

 
I agree. But for $5K you can build that system add water cooling to OC the Quad and still have $2K left for other stuff.
 
But as said a Skulltrail system is overkill and the GTX280s are your best bet since they scale better than the 9800 series.