Dream Gaming PC

[osh]

Hello everyone!
It's my first post here ;)

So I was a PC gamer since ever. My current machine is 4 years old and still works ok, but it shows its age.
On top of that I just changed my job and I have much better income, letting me spend it on what really matters (to me) :D

So I have a fairly high limit of around £10,000 to spend (I can spend more if I fell it's worth it and it can be less if I feel like I'm needlessly throwing cash away) for my dream PC.

And here's my question to you guys. Please don't go too far into discussion, cause it's endless, but what should I go for?
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- real life application - so going for a much more expensive component, just to have a few extra points on a benchmark doesn't seem like worth it for me.
- I can fairly easily put it all together myself (I did that a number of times in the past)
- when I do play, I play mainly FPS, RPG and MMO
- upgrade options in the future

So what do I need:
1. Mainboard
This is quite straight-forward
2. CPU
Does any gamer go AMD nowadays?
3. RAM
Is 32GB ok? What's the max with great speed.
4. Graphics card and Monitor
As the games play (read above) run only on 1 screen, I'd use a second one (and third one?) only for work (they don't need to be 4K...).
Then again - is it worth to go for 4K, where FPS is crutial.
Is it better to have a higher resolution over higher details?
How many card would I need over SLI/CrossFire - 2? 3? 4 seems unrealistic for gaming
Then on top of that a 4K monitor - I don't know much about them - what type of panel, what frequency and ports etc...
5. PSU
I have 700W, but I guess I need more for multiple GPUs
6. SSD
Is M2 something that I should be looking into?

Optional
7. Sound card
I am a music lover, but fairly deaf - is it worth to go for a separate one rather than a build in 5.1 or even 7.1?
8. The tower
I guess I can use my old one ;)
9. Cooling
I heard that water cooling is only for O/C. I don't really mind fans. Should I change my mind?

Anything else worth of notice is welcome.

Best regards,
osh

[Meladath]

£10000 is far too much. You couldn't build a PC that costs more than £5000 without just needlessly throwing away money.
New Intel chips are coming out soon, but their enthusiast platform won't be out for quite a while, and with a budget that high, you will want to go on the enthusiast platform.
Right now AMD really is not competitive at the budget you are talking, any CPU over £120 Intel wins for most people. Specific use cases and budgets over that can use AMD better than Intel, but most do not and certainly not gaming.

With that in mind, maybe something like this:

1. Gigabyte X99-Gaming 5P
2. Intel i7 5960X
3. 16/32GB of the fastest RAM you can find. 16GB is enough for anything right now, although you might as well spend it on 32GB given your budget and the fact that X99 has 8 DIMM slots, get at least 4 sticks to utilise quad channel memory.
4. Given your budget, you would be insane to not be playing games at 4K, or at least 144Hz 1440P. Personally I would go for 4K, as I run 4K myself and the details are just amazing. On the GPU side of things, I would go for 2 980Ti's.
4K requires a lot of horsepower, but its not too hard to push, 2 980ti's should handle most games at 4k with ease.
I would recommend an IPS panel over a TN panel. The vast majority of 4K monitors use DisplayPort.

5. I would go for an EVGA SuperNOVA 1200 P2. One of the, if not THE best quality PSU you can buy, with a large maximum output, enough for pretty much any system you can build.
6. Currently M2 and SATA express haven't really taken off sadly, I would recommend just buying a 256GB Samsung 850 PRO for now.
7. Motherboards have very good sound now-a-days compared to what they used to, especially very high end ones such as the one I suggested. For the vast majority of users, you do not need a soundcard, pretty much every motherboard now supports 5.1 and 7.1
8. If you can, great, nice savings. If not, I would recommend the Phanteks Enthoo Primo, even more so if you are planning to water cool.
9. Water cooling isn't ONLY for overclocking, but pretty much everyone who is water cooling will overclock, just for the free performance. Honestly on this budget with this build, you would be crazy not to overclock.

[EndlessWaves]

The first thing is definitely to decide on what screen setup you want. Multiple screens in an SLS setup (Eyefinity/Surround), VR headset, GSync or Adaptive Sync, High DPI ('4k' etc.), ultra-widescreen, high refresh rate.

There's a lot of options there at the moment and that'll determine the stuff inside the box.

EDIT: To answer specific questions:

AMD are pretty much out of the desktop market at the moment. There are some old chips that will do if you're on a budget but nothing you'd pick for even a £1000 machine, let alone a £10,000 one.

8GB is sufficient ram for gaming, you might want to go for 16GB if you're keeping it a few years. The current Intel chips aren't generally memory bound so speed increases are in the order of a single percent.

Crossfire/SLI is pretty much only used for Gaming as far as I know. Quad crossfire would certainly be an option if you wanted to push plenty of pixels.

I don't know how big a difference HighDPI monitors will make with gaming, I suspect it's a nice to have rather than the big jump it's going to be in other areas.

I'd definitely go for an Intel 750, SM951 or similar SSD when you're spending that sort of money. They're the only thing worth having over the cheapest possible models, I discount any 'pro' SATA models unless you specifically want/need the business features like power loss protection and OPAL.

These days there's not much use being made of hardware sound processing in games so I wouldn't be too bothered about Sound cards, see whether you have an expansion slot free.

If you end up going for a system pumping out more than 700W of heat you may need a new tower.

Air coolers tend to perform better at the same price. Closed loop coolers are often more securely mounted though, an advantage if you move the system around a lot.

[osh]

@Meladath Thank you so much, cause you're answer was right on the spot! I was so afraid that my question might be too general
@EndlessWaves Thank you too. Eyefinity and Surround look sweet, I wasn't aware that it's just so general. Gonna have to look more into it. VR? I'm not sure... I guess it might be worth to give it a go, but it feels like it's a bit too early for that. If I were to go for 3 QHD monitors and newest graphic cards to support that I imagine I can reach my budget quickly

[MrRockliffe]

8GB is fine for gaming if you're not using chrome at the same time

Just from Chrome, I fill up my memory (8GB).

Bit of a fun build I threw together:

http://prntscr.com/7tx03e

~£3800!

[abaxas]

Issue is, for just over a grand you could build a PC that is 90% as fast as anything else you can build.

Don't rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish your money away, buy at the price point and then buy another one later.

10k is probably the rest of your life in PCs

[Obie]

Haha epic! I'd love to see what you end up getting. My word, that budget though...give that man 980Ti sli!

[EndlessWaves]

If I were to go for 3 QHD monitors and newest graphic cards to support that I imagine I can reach my budget quickly

3840x2160 monitors can be had for under £300 each and GTX 980tis for £500 each. You could happily build a respectable Triple 4k & Quad GTX 980ti system for four grand. You could bump that up a bit with stuff like a watercooling system that would make it quieter but it wouldn't get anywhere near the top of your budget following your noticeable improvements dictum.

For a full 10k system you're essentially either looking at exotic tech toys (Intel DC P3700 SSD etc.) or custom work like having your own case designed and built. In short, you should ignore prices and look around and see what technology you fancy trying because everything is within budget.

For example instead of three 16:9 '4k' screens you could go for five 21:9 screens (3440x1440 probably) which would give you a much wider wrap-around picture. Or multiple projectors if you fancy going big.

[Obie]

Also, just released are Samsungs 2TB SSDs which I reckon would be right up your alley.

[Alex2303]

With that kind of budget I would actually consider buying "The Bear" from SCAN. I wouldn't trust myself to the the water-cooling properly.

[Obie]

With that kind of budget I would actually consider buying "The Bear" from SCAN. I wouldn't trust myself to the the water-cooling properly.

That 'Bear' looks amazing I have to say but even if I had 10k I wouldn't buy that, Tri-sli just isn't worth it IMO considering the drop in scaling. but hey, DirectX 12 might have something to say about that so who knows..

[Bonebreaker777]

1150 socket i7 Haswell (as value) with excess RAM for a RAMdisk?

SSDs in RAID?

A single GPU to avoid and SLi/Crossfire shenanigans?

A very, very nice monitor?

[osh]

Thank you all for your contribution!
Sorry for the links, but I hope you understand.

I'd like to go back for a second and say that even though my budget can be really high, I don't want to build a beast just for the purpose of having the best gaming PC there is (for a short while I guess).
Talking of beasts - The Bear - quite a cool machine, but looks horrible White Tiger is much better.
Quite possibly I would be buying at Scan, so perhaps they would create a machine for me as a new leader - that would be really amazing (gamer's wet dream lol)

As usual - the more I know - the more questions I have
Let's go down a little more into details:

1. I think this is the best what I can get to support top components, over-clocking and be future-proof
MSI X99A Godlike Gaming
scan co uk/products/msi-x99a-godlike-gaming-intel-x99-s-2011-3-ddr4-sata3-satae-pcie-30-m2-sli-crossfire-ac-wifi-usb-31-
2. The differences in prices are quite staggering. What is 6 vs 8 cores (12 vs 16 threads) and 5MB cache worth?
drive google com/open?id=0Bzswb6_UiEemTUlEN2c5UURBbk0
3. RAM
I'm a little confused about RAM speed and CAS
16-18-18-36 3200 MHz 1.35V £262
16-18-18-36 3333 MHz 1.35V £425
16-18-18-40 3400 MHz 1.20V £588
According to the MSI MB specs, the last one is not even supported. Massive difference in prices like with CPUs and not that much difference.
Is lower voltage better?
drive google com/open?id=0Bzswb6_UiEemUUFOdjZJcmg3djQ
4. Graphics card and Monitor
I think I'm convinced to go for a 4K already. Although @Bonebreaker777

A single GPU to avoid and SLi/Crossfire shenanigans?

What shenanigans are you talking about?
6 vs 12GB? Yet again the difference in the prices are biiiig.
drive google com/open?id=0Bzswb6_UiEemZXI3c1gtWEttQ3c
drive google com/open?id=0Bzswb6_UiEemYmZYVXFiRWYtMDg
This is the only G-SYNC and 4K monitor available on Scan, but it seems like the perfect choice, no? Then multiply that by 3 for Surround :3
scan co uk/products/28-acer-predator-xb280hk-4k2k-g-sync-led-gaming-display-displayport-3840x2160-300cd-m2-100m1-1ms-usb
Can you just confirm for me, please, do I need glasses for it?
nvidia com/object/3d-vision-surround-technology.html
5. PSU
I guess I'll need to get a new one if I go the SLI way
6. SSD
RAID in SSD? Is it really worth it?
I think this drive would be just perfect.
scan co uk/products/12-tb-intel-750-series-aic-ssd-hhhl-pcie-30-(x4)-nvme-intel-nand-read-2400mb-swrite-1200mb-s440k-290
Would a RAMdisk still be beneficial to this drive?
7. Sound card
Nope, not going for it.
8. The tower
After rethinking it over, I guess I'd go for O/C and water cooling done by specialists, then I will need a new one.
9. Cooling
Water and O/C then

[peter_gray95]

just personal opinion:
1. asus rog x99 rampage v extreme
2. intel i7-5960x
3. corsair dominator platinum ddr4 3333 (motherboard has 8 dimm slots so could go up to 8x8gb)
4. for x3 monitor, if you're going overkill x4 titan x's, if not x4 980ti's or x2 titan x's
5. definitely corsair ax1500i, titanium efficiency, will cover everything
6. agreed on intel 750 series pcie ssd, 1.2TB or 2TB (will need 1 less gpu to run this)
7. may aswell for the surround sound setup - asus rog sonar phoebus perhaps? (again need pcie port)
8&9: for non specialist corsair 900d + corsair H110i GT but yeah go specialist and get some crazy water cooling - even phase change if you really wanna splash
8.

[EndlessWaves]

2. For gaming? Approximately nothing. The lower clockspeed will even be a slight disadvantage although you'd have to check to see what Intel seems to be doing with their binning.

3. The very best bits always have huge price hikes for a percent or two extra performance. They're expensive because there's nothing better, rather than because they offer significant benefits. Memory ratings are what they're guaranteed to run at and it's generally that lower voltage is better because it means higher clocks at raised voltages. IIRC 1.2V is standard for DDR4.

4. You don't need glasses for SLS (Single large surface, multiple monitors presented to the game as one large one) but Eyefinity/Surround marketing did get tangled up with other technologies. In this case '3D surround' is using SLS/'Surround' together with nVidia's stereoscopic glasses (Cinema-style 3D) support. The latter has gone out of fashion and requires a special monitor.

5. Yeah, PSU depends on how many cards you end up with.

6. Gaming never benefited that much from SSDs anyway, so not a big deal here.

9. Seems a bit odd not to go for something exotic (liquid nitrogen etc.) when you're spending £400+ on an ultimate overclocking motherboard. I'd ask the specialist communities for advice on overclocking as at some point it becomes trial and error with multiple chips and I've no idea where that point is.

[peter_gray95]

but seriously dont spend that much on one, spend around £2000 then be able to always update when new technology arrives - cpu and gpu. There will always be improvements in these areas, dont go all out now and not be able to upgrade for 5+ years. Reserve cash to keep upgrading cpu + gpu (maybe mb too) every 2-3 years. Spend serious money on the things that wont be needing upgrades (psu, case, custom cooling)