During GTC 2014, AVADirect was on hand demonstrating a prototype gaming rig that was hooked up to three Asus PQ321Q 4K LCDs. These high-resolution displays were powered by four Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black cards, and provided liquid-smooth frame rates in Battlefield 4. Unfortunately, the rig itself was too big to fit into my book bag.
According to the specs, AVADirect's machine was packing an Intel Core i7-4960X CPU installed on an Asus Rampage IV Black motherboard. The ingredients also included 64 GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM, a 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, and Corsair H80i liquid cooling. Powering this rig was a Silverston Strider ST1500 1500 watt power supply.
As pictured on the right, all of this hardware was installed in a modified Lian-Li PC-P80N chassis with an authentic chrome finish and a few factory modifications. For example, the front door was remounted, requiring a custom elbow to connect it all together and provide a more sophistic yet elegant look.
The product sheet handed out during the show reveals that this gaming system supports up to Intel Core i7 or Xeon E5-2600 V2 series processors, up to 64 GB of DDR3-2800 memory, up to four GeForce GTX TITAN Black Ultimate cards, (6 GB GDDR5 each), and up to ten SATA hard drives or SSD drives with RAID 0, 1 and 5 capabilities. Operating systems include Windows, Fedora, Debian and several others.
Right now this beast of a machine is just a demo -- the company isn't sure if it will ever hit the market. However, that's what the demo is for -- to get community feedback and see if this setup is worth pursuing. I didn't get any potential pricing, but with four Titan Black cards, you can bet the price tag won't be cheap.
In addition to the gaming PC, AVADirect was also showcasing a workstation packed with two Xeon E5-2697 V2 twelve-core processors, two NZXT Kraken X40 liquid cooling systems, a Gigabyte GA-7PESH3 motherboard, and 128 GB of Kingston ValueRAM dual-rank PC3-12800 DDR3 memory. Also included were four Nvidia Tesla K40 GPUs (12 GB GDDR5), a 1 TB Samsung EVO SSD, a custom PC-P80N black chassis and a Corsair AX1200i Digital ATX 1200 watt power supply with modular cables.
AVADirect also had a mobile workstation on hand sporting Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 880M GPU (4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM), an Intel Xeon ES-2697 V2 twelve-core processor, and a 17.3-inch Full HD LED-lit screen with a 90 percent NTSC color gamut. The laptop also included 16 GB of Kingston DDR3 memory, a 120 GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, a DVD burner, Wireless N and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
As for the gaming desktop, should AVADirect sell this model? What should the company do or not do in regards to this "ultimate" gaming system?
