Finally got the beast built, turned out better than i thought it would. MOBO,RAM, Cooler, GFX card combo look great. Also pleasantly surprised with a 74.9 ASIC on the GPU. Also had to run out and buy a PSU from bestbuy, other one got lost in the mail...

^Nice build, and that CPU cooler is a looker.

Franky I don't even see the need to overclock CPUs these days for gaming. In most games the GPU is still the bottleneck, not the CPU. So why overclock the CPU, if it is fast enough?

Overclocking often also means reducing the lifetime of the overclocked component... it doesn't mattered in the past, if you replaced your CPU every two years anyway for a faster model. But with the slow performance gains since sandy bridge, i5/i7 CPUs can be used for many years without the need of replacement... and in this scenario a shortened lifetime due to unnnecessary overclocking does matter eventually.

Many illuminati-PCs in this thread. ;)

The only thing illuminated on my PC are the displays (when they are on) and the letters on my keyboard. The top of my mouse can glow in different intensities or even pulse, but I chose to turn that light off via mouse driver.

My PC case is an unobtrusive "black box" from Cooler Master, which keeps the noise down (at least the PC is more silent than most of my consoles). I bought it in 2006, when I built my last PC from Ground Zero and I still like it a lot... I will probably use it for another decade. ;)

The internal hardware changed of course in these 10 years, but necessary hardware upgrades are much rarer and cheaper these days than in the past:

The Core2Duo E6600 from 2006 was first replaced with a Core2Quad 9550 in 2008 and then with an i5-4670K in 2013, which should suffice probably to 2018/2019 (or whenever the PS5 hits the market with demanding nextgen games).

The mainboard and RAM were only replaced once in this decade (from 8 GB DDR2 / socket 775 to 16 GB DDR3 / socket 1150) and that Haswell/DDR3 setup will probably be good enough for a few years to come.

The boot drive was replaced from HDD to SSD (biggest general improvement ever!) and the HDD for the rest of the data got a 4TB companion. I'll probably buy a bigger (and even faster) SSD next year.

The only component I switch more frequently to keep the PC up2date for new games is my GPU: the 8800 GTX from 2006 (best GPU upgrade ever!) was first replaced with a GTX 275 and later with a GTX 460 (which wasn't much faster than the GTX 275, but I wanted DX10 and my brother wanted my old card). Then Nvidia 3D vision came and doubled my GPU needs, so just a year later there was no alternative to the GTX580. In September 2014 I upgraded to the GTX 970... a great stopgap until the long overdue 14nm/16nm graphic cards finally arrive.

And here is a brief look on my desktop:

Two monitors, both with their advantages and disadvantages.

My good old Dell 2407WFP from 2006 (16:10, 1920x1200, S-PVA panel, 60 Hz) is still my main display. It has better color accuracy, better viewing angles, better black level and a (slightly) higher resolution than the other monitor. Therefore it is used for most non-gaming tasks and most "slow" games.

The Acer GN245HQ (16:9, 1920x1080, TN panel, 120 Hz, integrated IR transmitter for 3D vision) is the specialist for stereoscopic gaming (2 x 60 Hz) or fast games (120 Hz).

If I need more screen space (mostly for Excel), I can use both displays together in extended desktop mode.

I can also send the GPU data via HDMI2.0 to my AV receiver... so the PC has the same access to the TV and the projector for relaxed gaming on the couch as my home consoles.

Yeah i was gonna go with the 110Hi from Corsair, but got this for one for $59.99 after rebate!!! Also for anyone looking the MSI GTX 980Ti Golden Edition is only $639.99 and also has a $30.00 rebate on Newegg. Its the cheapest non-refrence Ti i was able to find and it looks sick. Oh and you get a bad ass MSI themed Mouse pad and a free copy of the Division.

https://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx

At that price, it's a steal (the cooler, but the card is also tempting).

How does it perform? I need more efficiency at work and I'm thinking of buying a similar PC next month and I wonder if I'll be able to play some games on it as well. This is what I plan to buy:

CPU: i3 6100
RAM: 8 GB DDR4 3200 Mhz
GPU: Saphire Radeon R9 380 Nitro (maybe 380X)
ASRock Z170 montherboard
SSD: Samsung 250 GB
HDD: 1TG 7200
PSU: BeQuiet 530W
Case: SilentiumPC Gladius M45W Pure Black
A 21:9 LG monitor

I want it to be cheap, help me with work (thus the 21:9 monitor), but also be able to play Starcraft 2 and some other games, obviously I don't need ultra on all settings

asus gtx980ti sli.
Intel i7 4970k
asus maximus VII
hyper x 16g
Corsair hx 1000i

Barracude 3tb HDD. 
WD black 3tb HDD. 
Samsung pro 250gb SSD.

Corsair H110i Hydro series cpu cooler.

Fractual Design Define R5

I'm also thinking about upgrading one of my monitors this or next year. I'll probably upgrade to 2560 x 1440 resolution instead of 4K, since I don't want to "waste" all the performance gain of my next GPU for resolution.

G-Sync or FreeSync are mandatory for my next monitor (depends if I go the Pascal or Polaris road). If I stay with Nvidia (otherwise I'll lose the ability of playing some games in stereoscopic 3D), it will be probably one of these two monitors (or a display with similar specs):

• https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/asus-pg278q/
• https://pcmonitors.info/dell/dell-s2716dg-144hz-g-sync-monitor/

both 2560 x 1440 resolution, G-Sync with 30 - 144 Hz refresh rate range, 3D Vision compatible

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Intel Xeon W3570 @ 3.2Ghz
6GB Ram DDR3

Pretty sure i'm the only person in this thread gaming with a server CPU. XD