Love these threads, and it just so happens that I got bored a few nights ago and asked myself what is the best PC money could buy right now. I defined best as completely utilizing enthusiast hardware and the result of 3 hours of tinkering is
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=28408487 This is the best computer money can buy right now and would require a custom loop to top it off.
As far as performance is concerned you could considerably slim down the cost by dropping the ram to 16GB, reducing RAM flashyness to Corsair's Vengeance Pro 2400 vs the platinum, use 2 EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 Golds instead of Corsair's overpriced digital nonsense PSU (BUT THE CORSAIR THEME! What's more, you could buy a smaller second PSU to just run 2 titans and 1 1300, but I would 2 x 1300 it) Drop to a 3930k, drop to 1 SSD, 1 cheap 4tb HDD just for raw storage and you're left with the same performance at a bit more than half the 12,050$ price.
- Prax
P.S. When I get out of basic training in April 2014, I head to my A school to learn my job. I am going to build this
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=28408287 which is the best bang for buck. Of course with haswell 8 core extremes a few months away from that date, I will hold off on an x79 board/cpu/ram because those 3 things are changing a few months after April 2014. But that's the price, just imagine a Haswell 8 core, with a X99 motherboard, DDR4 Ram, and 2 gtx 7 or 890s. Because I'll need a rig come April, I'll probably temporarily substitute that build for an i5 4670k/2x4gb ram/cheap 1150 board while I wait for X99 to drop. The main point I want to raise is that you can have a god-tier PC for 5k