We heard you like gaming PCs… so we put a gaming PC in your gaming PC’s gaming PC’s gaming PC, so you can PC game while you PC game.
No, you’re not seeing things. Tech tip genius, Linus, teamed up with Kingston to make the ultimate rig: seven virtual machines in one case. Sponsoring him by providing the solid state drives and memory needed to complete the beast, Kingston showed off the “7 Gamers 1 PC” at this year’s CES. It’s another thing you didn’t know you needed to add to your list.
Most likely the most expensive build in existence, this rig will make you feel like a bottom-barrel scum PC gamer by just looking at it. In Linus’ initial unveiling back in October, he showed how easy it was to play Crysis 3 with up to 100 frames per second, while running Unigine Heaven (a 3D engine benchmark program) on the other six VMs. Leaving benchmarks out, there is most likely nothing the average PC gamer could ever do to push the rig to it’s maximum capacity.
Linus built the 7 Gamers 1 PC in about a day total. The Kingston representative said he did twenty hours straight, took a break (I’m assuming either a nap or caffeine refill), and finished it in another four hours. My $1200 rig took a couple of hours to build, and another hour and a half to wire up. Thankfully, I had a roommate who worked in IT that was willing to help – he found me in the kitchen when he got home staring at parts with my hands in my hair.
If you want to build one of your own, here’s what you’ll need (with Amazon prices as of 01/08/16):
CPU: Xeon E5-2697 V3 x 2 ($2656.32 each, on sale from $3,354.20)
Memory: 256GB Kingston ECC DDR4 x 16 ($117.99 each, on sale from $190)
Motherboard: ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS x 1 ($564.91 each, on sale from $599.99)
Video cards: AMD Fury Nano x 7 ($619.99 each, on sale from $649.99*)
SSDs: Kingston 1TB KC400 x 8 ($408.49 each, on sale from $873**)
HDD: Seagate 8TB Enterprise Capacity x 4 ($529.99 each, on sale from $631.11)
Case: Caselabs S8 w/custom paint job x 1 ($399.95***)
PSU: EVGA T2 1600W ($497.64; Linus used Cablemod cables)
Cooling: Custom water cooling by EK, with two pumps****
Total (without water cooling): $18,390.79
* – Might not be the right item; results varied with minor details
** – This is a really good sale, and you should take advantage of it
*** – Custom paint job not included
**** – Looking at the site, I had no idea how to even begin calculating this
Linus had originally installed one pump with the water cooler, but found that once the seventh video card was in use, the components were too hot to touch. If you’re unfamiliar with how hot the inside of your computer might get, it’s a lot hotter than you’d think. My PC (which is what this PC eats for breakfast and craps out later), running Final Fantasy XIV on max settings, no water cooling, with top, rear, and front fans averages at about 136.4*F (58*C). Now think about seven times the components running at full capacity. Yikes!
A lot of people are asking why Linus built this to begin with, and the only answer I was able to find was “because he’s Linus, and he can”. If you had the resources, would you take a shot at something like this? If you had seven screens hooked up to it, how would you utilize them? Sound off in the comments below!
