You’re building a new desktop. You’re preparing for near future games like Crysis 2, Civilization V and of course next weeks hotly anticipated Starcraft 2. But merely running them won’t suffice, you want to be able to claim your machine can render killer quantities of FPS even in its sleep!
It’s time to go extreme.
Motherboard
ROG Rampage III Extreme
Easy choice here! The Republic of Gamers has an entire lineup of motherboards called Extreme, so where else would you look? The Rampage III Extreme is the one you want, with an amazing thermal and aesthetic design that can stand up to the intense heat generated in overclocking and hours upon hours of hardcore gaming. It’s also packed with more performance features than anyone could ever need.
Processor
There’s really only one choice here – the Intel i7-980X is still the fastest, most radical consumer grade CPU on the market, and naturally the price tag is appropriate for such advanced silicon. You get six cores, twelve threads, and more power than any game in the immediate future could possibly access.
If you can’t quite afford the hefty thousand dollar asking price though, an alternative might be the i7-970, which is the non-extreme version of the 980X, but it still uses the same six core hardware underneath. However, to get the same levels of performance out of the cheaper processor you’ll need some serious overclocking done, possibly with water cooling.
Graphics
ROG ARES
The new master of ceremony of pixels pushing power is the ARES. This juggernaut effectively combines two Radeon 5870’s on one board, with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. It’s superlative graphics prowess at its finest, and you’ll be hard pressed to get one this summer because ARES was launched as a very limited edition.
You may also consider the “regular” Radeon 5970, which is similar to ARES, except it features only 2GB of GDDR5 and two underclocked 5870 cores on board.
It’s also noisier too! – seriously the ARES is worth it if you’re a serious gamer.
ASUS Radeon 5970
Memory
You can’t call yourself extreme with anything less than 24GB of DDR3. And the faster the RAM, the better. Sure, your operating system may not even access that much memory, but you’ll know the difference.
Try something like the G.Skill Trident series DDR3 2,400MHz, which is vastly overclocked from the get go.
Storage
Solid state is the only one to consider in a true hardcore setup, and by sheer price alone, doing so qualifies you as extreme. Two 240GB solid state drives in RAID 0 from makers such as OCZ or Corsair can cost as much as an entire desktop PC – extreme indeed!
Power supply
You’ll need something beefy to handle all the extreme hardware you’re throwing at this thing. The ASUS G-1000HA is a solid 1000W power supply, but it may not be enough. Ask at your local retailer for something slightly more amply enabled, such as the Silverstone ST1500, which, as the name suggests, has a monstrous 1,500W.
ASUS 27T1E
You’ll note we’re not including the display in this round up, and that’s because we don’t consider those extreme in a performance altering manner. A 27” 27T1E from ASUS will do just fine for now, and doubles as a nice TV, too. Save the extreme for what really counts, and enjoy your summer!
