For the \

[Clotty]

to all you builders.......... whats the best setup for "strictly gamming" mother boards to cards to processors. now I'm certainly NO xspurt! BUT prepared to pay for the best rig available today............

 

[FtsArTek]

Well... Best value setup, would be an i5-2500k, try to OC that to 4.6, for the motherboard would, imo, be an Asus Z68 Pro series mobo, single GTX590/6990 or two GTX570s or HD6950s (make sure for a xfire/sli compatable board)and you should get 8 GB DDR3-1600 or faster RAM, an SSD primary drive, a Black series WD performance storage drive, and somewhere around a 1000w PSU for all that, particularly if OCing or for possible upgrades.

Of course, if you really want to spend money, get an X79 system with an Intel 3960X, 16GB DDR3-2133, two 6990s or two GTX590s, a top of the line ASUS Maximus X79, a full SSD system (multiple SSDs in RAID), and a 1250w PSU

 

[kajabla]

No way on the LGA 2011. You just can't get a good enough setup to warrant those CPUs.

The best possible system? Tri-SLI 580s.

If you care about aesthetics as well as performance, a Murderbox. http://www.murderbox.com/gallery.html
That just might run you $15000, though.

How much are you actually willing to spend?

 

[refillable]

Balanced best performance (price to performance ratio): i5-2500k, crossfire 6970, LGA 1155 Motherboard that supports Crossfire (preferably ASUS or Gigabyte), CM HAF 932, SSD and HDD, Corsair TX750, 8GB Ram 1600 (Corsair or G.Skill), BD burner, Noctua coolers.

Best performance (can be considered as overkill): i7-3960X, Tri-SLI GTX 580, LGA 2011 Extreme motherboards that supports Tri-SLI, HAF X, Dual SSD and HDD, Corsair AX1200, 32GB 2133 RAM (corsair or gskill), Dual BD Burner, And Crazy Liquid cooling.

 

[kajabla]

For the balanced one, I'd say 912. 128gb SSD, ADATA or M4. Mugen 3 heatsink.