kgrogers1979

http://gear.ign.com/articles/111/1118794p1.html

So apparently some company called Origin is making a massive gaming PC that costs $16,999.

The features:

dual Intel Xeon X5680 processors overclocked to 4.3GHz,
an EVGA SR2 motherboard,
liquid cooling,
quad SLI EVGA GTX 480 GPUs,
12 GB of memory,
four 50 GB SSD drives,
two 2 TB hard drives,
a built-in Blu-ray burner,
and a built-in 8 channel HD audio sound card

It also has a built-in Xbox 360, and I wonder if that is even legal to sell unless MS has approved of this.

There is also an "entry level" model that costs "only" $7,999.

I don't know but if I had $17k just laying around, I don't think I would spend it on a computer. I would buy something a little more practical, like a brand new car or a down payment on a house. But then again I am weird like that.

Groucho

In a year you'll be able to get a PC twice as powerful for less than $1000.

boredsilly

I was thinking the same thing.

The one thing about these crazy powerful PCs that is odd to me is that, games don't seem to be made to press PCs to the brink anymore. Sure, there are some, like Crysis, and you can turn up the specs on ports so they look better than their console counterparts, but for the most part it seems like this is the age of the mid-range PC. For $700 you can get a nice media center PC that plays pretty much every game out there now. For $100, you can play them all on max settings (probably).

kgrogers1979

Yeah, pretty much. Technology, at least gaming technology, seems to be slowing down compared to what it used to be like. The current generation of consoles is going on 5 years old now and is beginning to show its age, but it is still going strong with no announcements of the next generation yet.

I built a computer about two years ago for $500 that is significantly more powerful than the Xbox 360 or PS3. It can max out pretty much any game except Crysis easily, although it plays Crysis on all high settings decently with only minimal framerate dips.

Something like that $17k computer is just ridiculous overkill. A single GTX 480 card is going to max out Crysis easily. A quad setup is completely unnecessary.

fumanstan

$17,000? That's not even a real gaming computer. /Dr Mabuse

Michael Corvin

For $17k I expect a Wii, PS3 and 360 all crammed into the box as well.

Numanoid

If you had $17k "just laying around", you would already own several cars and your houses would be paid off.

glassdragon

As with most of these prebuilt monstrosities you can likely build this for a small fraction of that price yourself.

GoVegan

The totally silent liquid cooling is probably awesome until you fire up the 360's jet engine drive.

rennervision

I built a nice gaming PC, and what is very frustrating are games ported to PC that don't even utilize the hardware that you spent big bucks on hoping to see a difference. I wouldn't recommend buying the fastest/best/most expensive if you still can't play games like GTA IV smoothly with no lag.

Now the specs of this Origin machine are good, but there is no way that's worth $17K. I would think you could build a machine just like that for around $6K or so. (Which is still not worth it as I said before, but a far cry from 17 grand!)

However, the built-in Xbox 360 sounds very intriguing.

edstein

Fixed. You forgot a decimal.

Chris_D

The worst thing is when it all looks good on paper but then game x won't run properly because of some incompatibility (for example, the 4 gpu card setup).

RocShemp

K&AJones

If you wait for about two years you can probably pick it up for around $3K

PopcornTreeCt

Not even a 3D Blu-ray player. Pass.

Maxflier

Pre-ordered!

DthRdrX

I bought a new Gateway PC last year for around 700. I don't play games on the PC anymore but the thing can't play HD video to save it's life.