Let's dream a bit - Infinitive Budget

[Cerb]

With an infinite budget, I'd start by having a motherboard designed, so that I could have my cake and eat it, too (MicroATX, USB 3.0, PCie 16x, but with ECC RDIMM support, big passive heatsinks, etc.). Everything else is easy, without a budget--selecting an existing high-budget mobo is almost impossible.

 

[amerifax]

>>Ken g6<<
If your trying to scare the HHHH out of me you just did! And what in the world is a SSD : OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 800GB PCI-E PCI-Express 2.0 x8 $4700??

Reluctantly I still will be buying a P8Z77-V Premium tomorrow. But not as assured as I was.
Bob

 

[Sleepingforest]

I think the starting place would be to invest in the case, which is something that can last over several builds. Aluminum with a sandblasted finish, and a 200mm intake with room for radiators and a bottom mounted PSU. Probably some 5.25" drive slots just so I can put fan controllers, LED controllers, or a port hub there so the case won't go obsolete. The next thing would probably be a cooling system that has some degree of modularity, allowing the builder to adapt to nearly any new sockets (assuming that this infinitive budget can be stretched across time rather than all at once). Custom fans for the whole thing.

The next step is to build the proper environment to use the computer. I'd probably start with a million dollar sound system (Wilson Alexandria XLFs are $200,000 per pair so $600,000 there, five Constellation amps for $140000, a Bryston surround processor $9500, and a boxful of speaker cables for $26000 a pair [and four pairs are required], interconnects for another $26000). Then a monitor setup appropriate for such an amazing device. I think six 30" 4K IPS monitors, designed without bezels, and running 120Hz is pretty good for now (and with enough engineering talent and money, totally possible). Probably a custom built ergonomic chair and desk.

Then a desk house for the computer. Yes. A house built around the computer. It would have it's own room, nicely situated in the corner, and it would have an air lock to prevent dust from getting in, and massive but quiet fans cycling the air to keep the ambient temperature nice. No windows.

Listen, I hope you realize by now that spending a ton money on the computer itself is pretty foolish. I haven't named a single part that goes inside the computer yet. You want to invest in stuff that won't obsolete so easily. Even then, if everything is custom made and being designed ahead of the curve, then the costs are going to quickly rack up. I mean, a custom house? That's going to be a fair chunk of cash. And I haven't even gotten to the furniture yet.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I would be too busy traveling the world and having sex with anything that moved (or stood still long enough) to play video games any more.

But that's okay, I would play chess - and you all would be my chess pieces. Muhwahahaha!

 

[Ken g6]

>>Ken g6<<
If your trying to scare the HHHH out of me you just did!

Why did that scare you? Remember, this isn't what I have, or even plan to have. I might dream of driving a Tesla Model S (someone else might dream of driving a Ferrari), but I actually drive an old, beat-up Ford.

And what in the world is a SSD : OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 800GB PCI-E PCI-Express 2.0 x8 $4700??

An enterprise-level SSD. SSDs are capable of operating far faster than a SATA port will allow. So the highest-end ones use the PCIe bus instead. That's the fastest one I found on NewEgg: It beats four RAIDed SATA3 SSDs!

Reluctantly I still will be buying a P8Z77-V Premium tomorrow. But not as assured as I was.
Bob

Again, why not? Actually, assuming you have a finite budget, that actually looks like an excessively high-priced mobo.

 

[amerifax]

>>Ken g6<<
I have posted under motherboard a question about P8z77-V Deluxe. It's the LGA part that is scary. That does not show up in Asus name. But newegg does have a good price, to good compared to what is listed above. And its the $4700 for the OCZ that scars the most. That has to be tong in cheek. I hope.

Anyway I hope to post my pre purchase tonight.
Bob

 

[Torn Mind]

I'd wait until the biggest, baddest, most awesomeest Ivy Bridge-E comes out.

Liquid nitrogen is a must because I'm gonna overclock HARDCORE. I''d obviously get the warranty, because I'm pushing voltage to the limit!!!! 2 volts if it can be done!!! It'd die every 3 days, but I got infinite money. :awe:

l33t Ivy Bridge-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157327
4 x 16 GB 2800Mhz RAM
2 Samsung 840 Pro in RAID0
2 more Samsung 840 Pro
4 Velociraptors in RAID0
Triple Crossfire 7970s
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-x1250
NZXT Phantom 630
Windows 7 Ultimate
Coolaboratory Liquid heatsink material

Oh, and I'd buy a Piledriver rig for benchmarking. :awe::awe::awe:

Oh, I'd also pay a COMPETENT hot chick to pour the liquid nitrogen for me while I do the trivial task of browsing the web and scanning Newegg and Tigerdirect like a girl shopping for clothes. I'm a parts addict!!!!

 

[BrightCandle]

Given infinite money I would start a CPU and GPU design company. We would focus on high end parts that assumed they would be run at water cooled TDPs at full load and focus on high clock speeds in the CPU with a small number of cores. On the GPU we would build very high memory bandwidth and really push the transistor budget to the utmost extreme to put as much performance in a single card as possible. We wouldn't be providing a sli/crossfire solution at all. The GPU would work without much buffering so that it minimised the latency.

I think in parallel I might also need a monitor company that focussed on the very latest screen tech. We would build 120HZ+ screens with zero scalers and as little processing as possible to reduce input latency. I think we might also want to design our own interface between screen and graphics to reduce the 16ms of transfer time as well. We would also build 5-7 inch panels with high Hz for VR headsets, again with almost no input latency.

So then the ultimate machine is clearly an x86 compatible machine with a custom CPU that has 4 cores where budget was no compromise, a single GPU again focussed on games and utilising very high bandwidth ram and a custom 27" monitor running at 240Hz and a vr headset for games that supported it.

Anyone want to give me infinite money? I suspect I only need about 50 billion to do it all.

 

[Ken g6]

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd get what I listed above; then, since I'd like to not limit myself, I'd get another set. That way I'd have a split infinitive budget.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Realistically money not being an object:

3770k or 3930k based on trying both, most probably 3930k
Asrock Extreme11 or better
4x8gb ddr3 Samsung 30nm or if not available then 2133-2667 cas 9 1.5v ram
2x512gb Samsung 840pro
4x4tb hitachi hdds
4x3tb external Seagate
titan, if not released 7970 matrix, I don't like cf or sli
seasonic x1050 plat
cm cosmos 2
dell u3011 I don't like multi monitors
corsair k90
Logitech g500
the best speakers I want
a blu ray writer
1.5kva ups apc
asus xonar top end sound card

 

[BrightCandle]

Being slightly more realistic about the only thing I would change on my current rig is the monitor, I would get a Benq 2411 or 2420 120Hz monitor. Surround is just messed up right now in most games so I am done with it.

 

[Gunbuster]

Dell T620 with 32 2.5" SSD's, Quad video cards, 768GB RAM and dual E5-2690 2.90GHz, 8 core CPU's

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-t620/pd

 

[Hubb1e]

I have a pretty infinite budget and I built an i5 2500K at 4.5ghz with a 256GB Samsung 830 SSD and an Nvidia 7970 video card gaming at 1920x1200. Total cost was maybe $1000. Beyond that I don't see much value. I'd rather save or go on a trip or not spend anything at all because why bother? If you have infinite money it still doesn't make much sense to spend it needlessly. I'd rather give it away. I do tend to donate my old computers to friends and family and build new ones from old leftover parts only to give them away. So I guess that's what I would do. I'd build myself a $1000 box and build a few more basic machines for friends so they could play too.

I've thought about going to a 3 monitor setup but I'm not really a fan of the break in the screens. I'd like a real wraparound screen for sure and then I'd probably need 2 or three 7970s.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Actually, with an infinitive budget that can only be spent once, I'd immediately bail out AMD and give them a huge amount of cash for R&D, enough to match Intel for the next two decades. That should be enough for them to rise up and become a real competitor again.

At the same time, I'd start my own computer business that produces literally every part--monitors, speakers, addon cards of all kinds, GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, hard drives, SSDs, and so on. Because my budget's infinitive (but only for one set of transactions), I would create a huge fund that can only be withdrawn from by so much each year for each department. The competition will stir up the CPU and GPU areas at least, and promote more competition (an oligopoly is pretty close to a monopoly in terms of cost to the consumer).

Then I'd do the things I said I would do earlier.

If you wanted an actual build suggestion, I'd do something like this:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($319.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Prolimatech PK-1 5g Thermal Paste ($9.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($182.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($135.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Sandisk Extreme 480GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($339.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($370.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($370.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Lian-Li PC-B25FWB ATX Mid Tower Case ($185.98 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Silverstone AP121-BL 35.4 CFM 120mm Fan ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Silverstone AP121-BL 35.4 CFM 120mm Fan ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Silverstone AP121-BL 35.4 CFM 120mm Fan ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 750W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($87.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB DVD/CD Writer ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 Professional Full (64-bit) ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Dell U3011 60Hz 30.0" Monitor ($1099.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Ducky DK9087S2 Shine II Wired Standard Keyboard ($128.00 @ Mechanical Keyboards)
Mouse: Corsair Vengeance M60 Wired Laser Mouse ($55.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $3590.80
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-02-14 20:18 EST-0500)

It can game, it can edit videos or photos. Good enough.

Add in a custom water cooling loop and a million dollar audio setup and we're good.

 

[Skott]

I think some of you guys thinking way beyond the scope of the OP's question. 'gaming rig specs'

 

[mfenn]

I think some of you guys thinking way beyond the scope of the OP's question. 'gaming rig specs'

He did say "infinitive" budget. It's perfectly reasonable to start your own CPU/GPU/SSD/HDD/Monitor/Mobo design house when you have an infinite budget. Hell, it doesn't have to be infinite, just arbitrarily large.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Yeah, with an infinite budget, you could probably construct an artificial island and create a new self sufficient society, give them all PCs made by an in-house company, and have diligent coders optimizing games for your computers.

All for the biggest, least laggy LAN party ever.

 

[lehtv]

Yeah, with an infinite budget, you could probably construct an artificial island and create a new self sufficient society, give them all PCs made by an in-house company, and have diligent coders optimizing games for your computers.

Good idea, but that actually is beyond the scope of the question...

 

[Yuriman]

Unfortunately even an infinitive budget can't buy miracles or create genius. I'd probably start by crashing the economy.

__

Food for thought, imagine if your racing sims were attached to a real turbocharged V10 mounted behind your seat (just for sound and vibration), with a motion simulator and a full cast to play the audience in the stands.