Given unlimited funds, which components are "best" for gaming?

johnboy3434 · Nov 25, 2011

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next month or so.

Budget Range: Essentially unlimited, but I might ask you to slow down if we get over $30,000.

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, streaming movies, super-intense math calculations, internet surfing, typing.

Parts Not Required: None. I'm replacing everything.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: No preference. Wherever the deal is best and the shipping is reliable.

Country: United States.

Parts Preferences: No brand preferences at all, as long as each part is reliable and compatible with the other parts chosen. However, not interested in "collector's piece" parts (deliberately manufactured in limited quantities, certificate of authenticity, etc.).

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Yes

Monitor Resolution: As high as they make it on a single monitor.

Additional Comments: I apologize for this ridiculously open-ended question, but I am not versed in what constitutes quality among computer parts. Which is why I came here. Please express what you would see as the ideal combination of consumer-grade parts if cost were no object. Motherboard, CPU, hard drive, RAM (and how many), graphics card (and how many), audio card, power supply, cooling fans, monitor, speakers, subwoofer, keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, fax, everything you can think of. I want this to be a highest-graphics-setting system for an obscenely long amount of time, if possible. If that means a 24-core CPU, 40 GB of RAM and two copies of the most ridiculously powerful graphics card out there set up in crossfire, so be it. I just came into a boatload of money and I want to do something nice for myself. Oh, and could you also recommend a reliable place to have it put together? I'm not about to trust myself handling these components.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Outlander_04 · Nov 25, 2011

See the tomshardware system builder marathon $2000 machine .

after that there are only tiny fractions of gain no matter how much you spend

johnboy3434 · Nov 25, 2011

Outlander_04 :

Oh, I have no doubt that such a machine would be top-of-the-line now, but I'm thinking a bit towards the future. Obviously such things are difficult to say, but would it still be an awesome system in a few years?

Outlander_04 · Nov 25, 2011

Hardware doubles in power every18 months or so . Moores Law

Your computer is future proof for about 6 months ...TOPS
and it doesnt matter how much you spend on it

dominyon · Nov 25, 2011

I would recommend you give a call to a boutique PC manufacturer such as Cyberpower PC, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Maingear, Origin PC, ibuypower, etc. They can do ridiculous things like $1,000+ custom paint jobs with your own face on them, painted like a ferrari with ferrari's own paint, etc. Those can easily get up to $10,000-$15,000 machines.

As far as what you'll want in them would be something like liquid cooled and heavily overclocked i7-2600K, 16GB-24GB RAM, 512GB or 1TB SSD, multiple 1-3TB storage drives if you need to store data or movies, blu-ray burner, 2, 3 or 4 graphics cards in SLI or crossfire (can even do the ones that are already 2 GPUs in one card so you get a ridiculous amount of cores). You get the idea.

That would be about as "futureproof" as you can get right now. You'd be very multi-thread ready as that is the shift in computing as opposed to throwing more raw processing speed at things.

They could even go multi-monitor (even though it seems you may not), which if you don't would make adding in too many GPUs pretty unnecessary, they can do 3D glasses, all kinds of crazy crap if you go look on their sites.

austinwillis81 · Nov 25, 2011

four gtx590s good for a long time

dominyon · Nov 25, 2011

Outlander_04 :

It wouldn't be top of the line hardware given the cycle of how often processing power advances. However, I think what he is looking for is "will this machine still be able to play games at full settings for X amount of years". And to be honest yes it would. Hell right now you can play all the latest games launching now on 3-4 year old machines...thanks to consoles.

Onus · Nov 25, 2011

There is no such thing as future-proof, only future-resistant. Too much changes in the world of PC hardware to be certain what you buy today will still be great tomorrow.
I do have a few suggestions though. When building for future-resistance, the best ways to bolster that are with a top-quality mobo and PSU. The former should be able to provide any port you're likely to need, and/or have a PCI or PCI Express slot available to add it. Most "better" mobos available today use all solid caps, ferrite chokes, and other quality components, so you won't find much difference there. Number of ports, slots, and how many of those it can use all at the same time (e.g. does it have a NF200 bridge on it?), as well as warranty period and company reputation will set it apart. There are a few companies from whom I'd buy motherboards without much hesitation, but you're looking for an absolute premium product, and IMHO that means Asus.
You want an efficient PSU, able to run whatever you're likely to throw at it. There are other good OEMs out there too, but right now, I'd say the best of the best is going to be an 80+ Platinum Seasonic like the 1kW model they recently released. Likely to be overkill, all the same it was tested and found to be extremely efficient even under very low loads. Their 80+ Gold "X" line is also rock solid.
You mention "super intense math calculations;" that can have a huge bearing on what GPUs to get, as AMD and nVidia products are each better suited for certain types of problems, OR, the software you plan to use may only support one or the other. That is something you will absolutely need to find out before deciding what to get. If it were me, I would anticipate either a pair of HD6970 or a pair of GTX580 cards. I would avoid the dual-GPU HD6990 and GTX590. Not only do they offer horrible price/performance, but games that have problems with Crossfire (or SLI, respectively) may not run well on them. A premium motherboard will likely support three GPUs, four if the case is big enough.

Outlander_04 · Nov 25, 2011

dominyon :

maybe

but chances are buying a $2000 machine every 12 months will give a better gaming experience

Sailor Moon · Nov 25, 2011

Well,

Quadfire HD6990 $1500 or Tri-Sli GTX 580 $1400
Intel Core i7-3960X $1000

Not sure about the rest.

dominyon · Nov 25, 2011

Outlander_04 :

You're most likely right and depending how ridiculous his spending is it could even be cheaper.

OP you might want to consider waiting until next year as new highly anticipated CPUs and GPUs will be launching, hopefully in the first quarter. Namely Ivy Bridge, radeon southern islands (ie HD 7000 series) & nvidia kepler (ie GTX 600 series). The jump in GPU power could be significant as they are skipping an entire manufacturing process and one of the next gen cards could be near or better than two of today's better cards in SLI/Crossfire...so imagine those in SLI/Crossfire!

DelroyMonjo · Nov 25, 2011

Like dominyon said, Cyberpower PC, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest. Have them build a bada@@ computer for you then do something nice for mankind by donatiing a similar amount of $$ to Toys for Tots, Salvation Army or a charity of your choice.
No, I'm not some 'bleeding heart, lib. That's just my perspective on life; it's too short to think only of me, me,me.

Outlander_04 · Nov 25, 2011

When you look at games like BF3 you see that even midrange cpu's produce the same FPS as top end " gaming cpu's like the 2500k .

And hat while 2 cards in SLI produces improvements adding a third card often cuts frame rates

That suggests there are serious limits to how much you would spend unless you are just really stupid , or get $2 million a week from your cocaine dealership

Mind you I did see this .....and get a bit impressed
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/technology/102560-boss-all-simulators.html

RaptorHunter · Nov 25, 2011

Sailor Moon :

If your'e willing to sacrifice a 2% gain, you can save $500 bucks on that cpu and go with the 3930k

RaptorHunter · Nov 25, 2011

kingstontech2003 :

dominyon · Nov 25, 2011

Outlander_04 :

While that is technically true it is nowhere near worth the price premium, but hey if he's got the money...

Dunhill79 · Nov 25, 2011

How about 2 display card ASUS MARS2?...Is that good enough?

johnboy3434 · Nov 25, 2011

DelroyMonjo :

Don't worry. The charity contributions and tithes were the first things on my list.

Thank you so much for your suggestions, everyone! I'm enjoying the discussion you're having among yourselves.

de5_Roy · Nov 25, 2011

austinwillis81 :

afaik no platform supports octo-sli. 4x gtx 590 =8 gpus. tri-sli and quad-sli are the highest one can go. 2x gtx 590 = 4 gpus in quad-sli.

JackNaylorPE · Nov 25, 2011

ojas · Nov 25, 2011

johnboy3434 :

So am i

Just to pep this discussion up further, maybe you could also look at 2x 1 TB SSDs in RAID1 + 5x 256GB SSDs in RAID0 + 2 pairs of 2x 3TB HDDs in RAID1. Or something else, since they're the only two RAID modes i actually understand properly, i guess the others could help out here.

As someone else said, you may want to wait for ivy bridge + nvidia's 600 series + radeon 7000 series. Or the present extreme series sandy brigde procs.

Another person said something about high-grade materials for the mobo, and i'd agree. Also, platinum rated PSUs will help you help preventing energy wastage and greenhouse gas emissions (same can be said about the next gen CPUs, GPUs and solid state drives in general), they're very efficient.

get a nice big mobo to put all your stuff in, and remember, "your case is your base", so get a real premium one. Corsair comes to mind here. Enough modularity and enough space for everything should be priorities.

p.s. promise me you're not trolling us like this guy.

angry12345 · Nov 25, 2011

Outlander_04 :

where did that threat go.. i actually just was looking for it. i remember they had some good alternatives to stuff like ripjaws memory instead of dominator

CaedenV · Nov 25, 2011

As others here have stated, after ~$2-3000 then it is all bragging rights without any tangible performance increases. If you wanted to go completely nuts there are some neat server-board style builds you could do for truly extreme performance capacity... but the sad fact is that if the software does not take advantage of the hardware you throw at it then there is little point in buying it. Video games and movie watching are not exactly hard to do for even budget computers, so there is little point in blowing money on something crazy huge.

If I had the money, and wanted to build my own system instead of having one built for me, then I would do a triple GPU configuration (most likely nVidia 580) with a high end quad core processor (HT unnecessary), and 8-16GB of ram, and then a very large SSD (perhaps one of the PCIe Card style ones). I would then build a server on the network with a RAID 10 or larger RAID5 to store pictures and files on (no local storage except for programs). Throw extra money on getting the thing to shut up (water/liquid cooling), and have a silent performance machine. Then every year I would upgrade the core components (mobo, proc, GPUs, Ram) as better things come along. But the total cost of the initial build would be roughly $4-5K, with a $1-2K refresh every year or so as parts become available.

If you were doing video editing, or content creation you could easily blow more money on a system using duel CPUs, and 64+GB of registered ECC ram, and mass amounts of local storage. But being limited to a single monitor and only doing gaming the whole concept of 'extreme' has lost it's meaning. Hopefully this will change in a few years when consoles do a refresh.

johnboy3434 · Nov 25, 2011

ojas :

Don't worry, I'm not. I fully intend on buying this PC, whatever it ends up being. It's nice to know that it won't cost as much as I thought it would, though. I was preparing for a five-figure pricetag, but now I see that that's unnecessary for my purposes. I may take your advice and hold off, though, especially if we're on the cusp on something big and bad.

angry12345 · Nov 25, 2011

what happened to that thread where everyone posted their builds that were over 1500.. had some nice specs of stuff to look at and think of..

Given unlimited funds, which components are "best" for gaming?

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