Best configuration possible as on April 2009

i7 rig...

Intel i7 920.
A simple i7 motherboard (EVGA and Asus are my favorite)
6 GB or DDR3 (anything really above 1600 is a waste)
EVGA GTX 295 gpu
Need a good 850-1000watt PSU. Id grab a Corsair TX 850, HX 1000, Enermax Revolution, Antec Signature 850w etc.

Case is personal preference

^^and raided intel X-25 SSDs, as many and as big as possible... lol

well if money is not a problem then a rig built around the core i7 extreme (overclocked to at least 4.0 ghz) would do everything you want and more

there are very powerful motherboards out there for it (check newegg, i am an amd guy so i am not too familiar with it)

6 gb of ddr3 ram (1333)

two nvidia gtx295 in SLi

a western digital raptor HDD for the OS
and a 1tb harddrive for storage (or multiple solid state drives in RAID but you would be fine either way)

advanced water cooling

a 1000 watts power supply

and a solid full tower case (those you can find easily anywhere)

this is probably the best possible system you could build you could always have more ram or more cards in tri sli but it won't bring any real world improvement over this,a system like this is pretty much impossible to beat and it would rape crysis at max settings (multiple times)

if money is not an issue then you shouldnt bother building, buy the phobos,made buy bfg systems, that's probably the best computer money can buy and even an experienced computer builder would have a hard time putting those components together,plus when you buy it they come to your house and set it up for free. it comes with customized features and high end i7 processors,the computer has a small lcd screen on it that runs on a separate OS and controls everything within the system,you can oveclock the entire system with one touch on the lcd montior on computer and the machine will overclock itself and check for stabilty.....i am yet to see a machine that can beat all that.

SKULL TRAIL MOBO FTW With Best Compatible Processor(Xeon Maybe)
2x GTX295 SLI
6 Gigs RAM Highest Speed As Possible
1300 watts Corsair or antec
Personal preferred Case

What?

$8000 for an i7 965 rig with two GTX295s? No thanks, I'll build the same system for half that price and just OC it using the bios. Paying that much money to save yourself a few minutes is a waste, imo.

Screw that.

If I was to ever buy a prebuilt, it'd be a Falcon Northwest Mach V.

Dual 3.2ghz Xeons with one of the CF supporting motherboards.
Dual 4890 X2's oc'd to 1.05ghz when they come out
dual 480mm Radiators with four high CFM fans, one to cool the CPU's, the other to cool the gfx cards.
An OCZ 1TB PCIe SSD for storage and 6 OCZ Vertex Extreme 120GB's in RAID 0 as a boot drive.
192GB 1333mhz CL5 ECC ram
Xigmatek 1500w PSU
Silverstone Raven completely kitted out with Fans.

I don't know if you can get much better than that which is available to the general public.

well if you want the best of the best, go with their choices... but IMO thats just a waste of money.. intel will come out with new processors every few months and why people would spend $1000 for a i7 965s when you can OC to just about as far with 920 on air..

I7 920 (OC to 4ghz+ (Watercooling with a 920 can go just as far as the 965s and be cheaper n look a tad more badass with your case more than likely)

a MOBO that has NB watercooling capabilities and 3-way SLI capable

6 gb of mushkin 6-7-6-18 1600 mhz DDR3

4 caviar blacks in raid 5

PC P&C silencer 910W PSU

3-way SLI'd gtx 280s


thats more than anything you'd ever use it for and for a far cheaper price than any other build with quite close performance... and should i add that you should buy a 60' TV and rock *** out on a big screen?