Budget is non-existent...

[4Flat4Life]

Without any thought of a budget... What is the greatest, fastest MoBo, CPU you can think of today for gaming, and multitasking projects like spreadsheets and word and music etc...

Whats your idea?

 

[jpiniero]

Celeron 300A. OC to 450, baby!

 

[Sequences]

I think this is a silly question, like asking what the fastest car is without specifying conditions.

And fastest CPU for word...?

 

[ultimatebob]

Heh... if money is no object, why not go for multiple processors? Two 10 core Xeon's ought to be a good start.

 

[Headfoot]

The fastest is a 4960x overclocked as far as it can go. That is the fastest for games if you are including the new games that use up to ~6 cores hands-down. 4770k overclocked to the max gets close and will win in ~4 core games. Every other workload you listed is less intensive than gaming

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Heh... if money is no object, why not go for multiple processors? Two 10 core Xeon's ought to be a good start.

Ha, I was thinking 4P myself ()

 

[Headfoot]

For gaming, the highest frequency ~6 core is still the best since core count puts negative pressure on top clock speed you can get. Since games wont use more than 6 cores, gotta have those 6 cores be as fast as possible: eg. OC'd Ivy-6 or Haswell-4HT

 

[Morbus]

Battlefield uses 7 threads on an i7, as far as I know. That's Battlefield 4.

 

[daveybrat]

Yes there are faster cpu's and mb's like the 2011 socket 6-Core cpu's but i'd say the best cpu/mb combo for today would still be the Intel i7 4770K and a good Z87 motherboard.

No reason for the tasks you asked to go any higher than that....unless you have so much money you use 50's to blow your nose with.

 

[Grooveriding]

4960X & Rampage IV Black.

Because is best!

 

[4Flat4Life]

4960X & Rampage IV Black.

Because is best!

This sounds good... And honestly hate all you want I have a lot of money doing nothing, want a hobby. It looks like a lot of fun to build a computer for show but I want it to do anything possible too... I love the black motherboards so that's def. An option... Currently have a 3820k i7 lga 2011

 

[chimaxi83]

Sounds cool bro.

thx gg gl hf,,,,, gg

 

[4Flat4Life]

Why the 4960x? Curious...


Also, anyone know a way to paint a mobo? Or even hydrodip?

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I've seen threads like this before and people always reccomend something like a 24 core Xeon. Where do you get those? I want to know how much they cost.

 

[erunion]

I've seen threads like this before and people always reccomend something like a 24 core Xeon. Where do you get those? I want to know how much they cost.

Here are some 40 core servers on newegg.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ED&PageSize=20

 

[Headfoot]

Money would be best spent on getting better graphics cards, then the 6 core if you can afford both. Until you have dual 780 ti or 290x, that will increase your gaming power the most

 

[NTMBK]

A pair of E5-2643 v2 http://ark.intel.com/products/75268

12 cores, 24 threads, 3.5GHz with 3.8GHz turbo.

 

[moonbogg]

4960X & Rampage IV Black.

Because is best!

That's it right there.

 

[BSim500]

"Multi-tasking Word & music" is typically <5% CPU usage on even the most basic Celeron CPU these days, so really it's only gaming that'll need the speed. And if money is no object, then for realistic gaming use, just go for an i7-4770K with top of the range GFX card. For most games though, an i5 4670K does just fine at +4GHz.

TBH though, unless you spend all day running artificial benchmarks, all this talk about blowing vast sums of money on 12 cores or 40 core servers, etc, just for the sake of it, is pretty much pointless even on the newest "next-gen" games. It's like buying a Ferrari but instead of taking it on a race-track, you only ever just drive around a crowded town never doing more than 30mph and never driving on any straight stretch of road longer than 200m...

Spend vast sums on an extreme machine if you want, but be aware that unless you have heavy usage needs of easily parallel threaded apps (eg, +10hrs of video encoding per day, or heavy 3D rendering, etc), it simply won't run many games faster at all vs a "normal" i5/i7 quad-core at +4Ghz because games do not scale very well beyond 4-8 threads (which is unlikely to change for at least another decade). 4 cores at 4.2-4.4GHz are still going to run many games faster than 1,024 cores at 3.4Ghz (unoverclockable Xeon's) in reality. You're far better off buying a normal i5/i7 CPU and the best GFX card and large 512GB-1TB SSD than wasting it on enterprise server hardware just for gaming.

 

[moonbogg]

Also, PC hardware is kind of funny because you can only spend so much and you'll only get so much regardless of cost. As far as gaming performance goes, a moderate budget build will do about as well as an extreme budget build in most cases, except for extreme resolution gaming. Its not like you can buy something that doesn't exist, and the fastest CPU is within the budget of a lot of people (4960X). Most of us get the "K" version, because we have a dirty little secret. They are the same chip but cost half as much, but shhh! Don't tell!

 

[BUnit1701]

How much is it 'for fun' vs how concerned you are with top-level performance when your done? A high-end AM3+ motherboard and an FX-9590 will give you opportunity to learn about cooling component selection and setup, and provide some challenges. For pure performance, Intel is the way to go.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This sounds good... And honestly hate all you want I have a lot of money doing nothing, want a hobby. It looks like a lot of fun to build a computer for show but I want it to do anything possible too... I love the black motherboards so that's def. An option... Currently have a 3820k i7 lga 2011

Well, the wise man doesn't try to tell others what to do with their money, unless they have practical -- even severe -- constraints.

I had a next-door neighbor who had an income windfall that he didn't report on his taxes -- wouldn't have been an inheritance. He purchased a top-end replica of a Duesenberg. Then -- he kept it in a garage, and maybe drove it around three times a year. Eventually, somebody took note of it, and IRS auditors came knocking. So one had to ask "what did he gain?" His problem wasn't the Duesenberg: it was his tax-reporting.

I could easily build an LGA 2011 system with the Rampage IV "Black" and the $1,000 IB-E 4960X. That would be about $300 in excess of the motherboard costs for my Sandy Bridge system, and $500 to $700 more than I spent on my SB processor. Nothing I couldn't manage, or take an extra month to pay for without tapping savings.

The practical Bang-for-the-Buck marginally declines to near-nothing. This, of course, tempered by my practical usage.

If you have lots of visitors, it might be a conversation-piece. "Welcome to my supercomputer Man Cave!"

ADDENDUM/EDIT: Let's explore this a bit further.

Back in 2005, Maximum PC Magazine unveiled their "Machine of the Year." It used a dual-processor motherboard with [if I'm not mistaken] two dual-core Opteron processors. It featured a prodigious RAID-5 array, and as much memory as they could fit into the board. It cost $15,000, and it was touted as "future-proof."

But "future-proof" is a finite concept. Three years later, Intel unveiled their Kenstfield C2Q -- a year later, the Yorkfield. Now, eight years later, with 500 MB/s SSDs, SATA-III and nominally priced SB, IB and Haswell processors, what happened to that $15,000?

"Future-proof" involves a trade-off, balancing "foreseeable" needs with unforeseeable technical progress and price-per-value reductions. Beyond that, it's your choice. If you were NSA, you'd hire a contractor to build a parallel-processing system with several of those 4960X processors. (No telling what they're doing these days at Fort Meade, and they have other functions and more important priorities than eavesdropping on your phone-sex with some babe in Reno assigned to answer some "Christian-Tingle-dot-com" phone number.)

 

[DigDog]

bonzai said it perfectly.

put the 15k in the bank, buy a 3k machine, and draw money from the 12k pool to keep up to date.

 

[JDG1980]

Honestly, if you want an 'ultimate' high-end system, I'd wait six months or so for Haswell-E to replace Ivy Bridge-E. This will provide a small (though measurable) bump in performance, might get you more cores, and will definitely get you a better high-end chipset. The biggest problem with Intel's current LGA 2011 offerings is that the X79 chipset is getting very long in the tooth; it lacks internal USB 3.0 support (so boards have to resort to add-on chips which may not be as reliable), has limited SATA 6Gbps support, and runs much hotter that other chipsets due to its outdated 45nm process. There is supposed to be a chipset refresh with Haswell-E, which should help fix these issues.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Honestly, if you want an 'ultimate' high-end system, I'd wait six months or so for Haswell-E to replace Ivy Bridge-E. This will provide a small (though measurable) bump in performance, might get you more cores, and will definitely get you a better high-end chipset. The biggest problem with Intel's current LGA 2011 offerings is that the X79 chipset is getting very long in the tooth; it lacks internal USB 3.0 support (so boards have to resort to add-on chips which may not be as reliable), has limited SATA 6Gbps support, and runs much hotter that other chipsets due to its outdated 45nm process. There is supposed to be a chipset refresh with Haswell-E, which should help fix these issues.

I casually admit that I'm not keeping up with current and future "gen." Last time I looked, I saw a development path through Haswell to Broadwell.

The Haswell-E is touted as a socket-2011-"3" CPU. I'm assuming that there's no upgrade path with the SB/IB socket-2011. Even if there were, it would seem imperative to buy the board with X99 chipset, given the X79 shortcomings you cite.

But as you say -- it all makes sense. The Mobile-Hot-Dawgs treat their devices as even more disposable than desktop components.