Tormy-

Join Date 02/2006

+58

$17,000 PC/Xbox 360 gaming rig released

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6275345.html

Though there's a recession on, some gamers still spend buckets of ducats to get top-performance gaming rigs. Custom PC specialist Origin is reaching out to just such a spendthrift demographic with its latest system--cheekily named "The Big O"--which combines both a high-end PC and an Xbox 360 slim in a single, extremely expensive box.

On the PC side, the Big O is customizable, with one or two six-core, 12-thread Intel Xeon X5680 CPUs which can be overclocked to 4.3 Ghz on a ASUS Rampage III Extreme Motherboard. It also boasts a SLI multi-GPU configuration, which can have up to four GeForce GTX 480 FTW graphics cards. Up to 12GB of RAM can be given to device, all versions of which have 2TB hard drives, liquid cooling systems, and customizable cases.

Two things make the Big O unique in today's gaming market. First is its inclusion of an entire Xbox 360 slim, also liquid-cooled, inside the same box. Second is the device's whopping price. The entry-level model, which has a single CPU and GPU, rings up at $7,669. The version recently featured in CPU magazine, which boasts two CPUs and four GPUS amongst other features, rings up at a whopping $16,999--as much as a low-end new car or a round-the-world vacation.

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Holy crap. Even if I had that kind of money, I'm not sure I would get that. My Xbox 360 works just fine, and $17000 for a computer seems more than a little excessive.

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And yet within 3 or 4 months a new 17,000 rig comes out

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And within 4 years you're still using only 10% of that expensive PC's potential. Almost 2 years ago when I was getting my new PC I decided to grab two GTX 285s in SLI, figuring that'd make the PC last longer since before the rule of thumb was 2 years for a gaming PC before it needs an upgrade to keep up.

To date, I have never needed to turn on SLI. Every single game (including Crysis) runs fine maxed on the single card. And with many more games going cross-platform, there will be fewer and fewer games that drive hardware upgrades like Crysis did back then.

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And within 4 years you're still using only 10% of that expensive PC's potential.

QFT!

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What Annatar said. The $1000 machine I put together 2 1/2 years ago still easily handles any current PC game without breaking a sweat. The fact the every new 'PC' game these days is designed to run at 360 specs for easy porting accounts for 99% of the reason for this, although I'd say the power of top-line graphics cards has finally exceeded developers ability to take full advantage of them as well. The time and cost to develop something that would actually require two or more 480s/5980s is so high it will never happen for at least a decade, by which point there will be a single card with that much power anyway.

On a side note, isn't including a $300 XBox on a $16700 computer kind of small time? For that kind of money, I'd expect one of those homebrew super systems that have every single relevant console ever made built-in.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1806

To date, I have never needed to turn on SLI. Every single game (including Crysis) runs fine maxed on the single card.

Try FSX.

I cannot max that on the one 285....even have to limit the FPS to around 25.

Though it DOES handle anything else with ease...

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+493

Some people have more money then sense...

FSX runs just fine on my 2x4890 crossfire

But then on Crysis it's about 12% more fps than a GTX 295

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How much CPU power was used to reach the moon? A couple c64?

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My personal spin on what is happening with the (lack of) stampeding PC development is.... Microsoft.

Their insistence that you upgrade your OS to get next generation DirectX, combined with Vista being wholly unpalatable, combined to keep a large segment of gamers 'last generation'. That combined with the recession makes it rather risky and pointless to make games for insane rigs.

We're starting to see higher requirements again, though. If my theory is right, that may be due to Win 7 having gotten the consumers' 'stamp of approval' in a way Vista never did, and will accelerate further.

My current gaming rig is a $1000, four year old box, and it still works just fine. Well... almost. The hard drive is going, and I'm thinking of getting a new rig (It started chugging a bit with Mafia II). Friend of mine bought a new PC recently...went totally overboard, spent roughly 5000$ on the components and he's not even a gamer. (Although he plays the occassional game). He just wanted to see how far he could go, I think. Me, I'll get another $1000 rig. Good screen is important, though, unfortuantely mine's still working perfectly well so I can't honestly go upgrade that.

(Samsung 226BW, excellent screen but out of production now)

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Wow... overkill much. My first rig was 1400-1500 including monitor, printer, mouse, etc... My new rig now which is a year old is like 1900 including new monitor, etc... 17000$.... Why would you do this....?

I'm buying my new Honda Civic soon, I feel my money is better spent then that pc...

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TheDarkKnight2008

Join Date 04/2007

+16

Two six core xeons and 4 gtx 480s? I guess you won't need any heating this christmas.

On that note, you could easily spend less then $5000 on a couple 6 core i7s and 4 gtx 480s... Or 5870's, if you care at all about your house being less then 200 degrees.

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For $14,000, you can take a 4-month cruise around the world on Princess, all meals included. That's lobster, steak, and foods you never heard of. A $17,000 gaming rig, all the world you'll see is your little shack at 2am with a stack of used pizza boxes in the corner. And then in 4 months, you'll be bored of it and it starts to go obsolete anyway.

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On that note, I'm heading out on a mediterranean cruise in three weeks.

And yes, a $17000 rig is absurd. Almost as absurd as this: http://www.novelquest.com/emperor.html <- even if it is cool. And it has some very specific uses that would be worth it.

(Okay, the absurd one starts at 40000$. The other one might actually be worth it. Sort of.)

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TheDarkKnight2008

Join Date 04/2007

+16

$39,500??? I bet I could DIY something like that with about a year of planning and less then $1000.

Hum..............

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Quoting TheDarkKnight2008,

reply 14

$39,500??? I bet I could DIY something like that with about a year of planning and less then $1000.

Hum..............

Ironically, this $17000 computer isn't actually aimed at people who know anything about computers. It's kind of like selling a $500,000 sports car to some celebrity who knows nothing about cars.

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Ironically, this $17000 computer isn't actually aimed at people who know anything about computers. It's kind of like selling a $500,000 sports car to some celebrity who knows nothing about cars.

Yep, just so you can quote the price to your friends trying to impress them. If they have any PC knowledge though, you just end up looking like an idiot.

And what's with the five year old kiddie crapware being in there. That's seems like an anti-selling point to me. RRODs should be a real treat to fix in that mess.

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Quoting Khardis,

reply 13

On that note, I'm heading out on a mediterranean cruise in three weeks.

And yes, a $17000 rig is absurd. Almost as absurd as this: http://www.novelquest.com/emperor.html <- even if it is cool. And it has some very specific uses that would be worth it.

(Okay, the absurd one starts at 40000$. The other one might actually be worth it. Sort of.)

Holy ****!

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Quoting Khardis,

reply 9

My personal spin on what is happening with the (lack of) stampeding PC development is.... Microsoft.

Their insistence that you upgrade your OS to get next generation DirectX, combined with Vista being wholly unpalatable, combined to keep a large segment of gamers 'last generation'. That combined with the recession makes it rather risky and pointless to make games for insane rigs.

We're starting to see higher requirements again, though. If my theory is right, that may be due to Win 7 having gotten the consumers' 'stamp of approval' in a way Vista never did, and will accelerate further.

My current gaming rig is a $1000, four year old box, and it still works just fine. Well... almost. The hard drive is going, and I'm thinking of getting a new rig (It started chugging a bit with Mafia II). Friend of mine bought a new PC recently...went totally overboard, spent roughly 5000$ on the components and he's not even a gamer. (Although he plays the occassional game). He just wanted to see how far he could go, I think. Me, I'll get another $1000 rig. Good screen is important, though, unfortuantely mine's still working perfectly well so I can't honestly go upgrade that.

(Samsung 226BW, excellent screen but out of production now)

I think what is "holding development back" is more budgetary then evolutionary. PC gaming is a more price-sensitive market then consoles.

Admiittedly I run my games on a $1700 laptop, but I overpaid for massive RAM, figuring Elemental would need it when it goes 64-bit, and I get to travel a good bit with my laptop- so portability+ power was a huge deal.

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TheDarkKnight2008

Join Date 04/2007

+16

Quoting DethAdder,

reply 16

Ironically, this $17000 computer isn't actually aimed at people who know anything about computers. It's kind of like selling a $500,000 sports car to some celebrity who knows nothing about cars.

Yep, just so you can quote the price to your friends trying to impress them. If they have any PC knowledge though, you just end up looking like an idiot.

And what's with the five year old kiddie crapware being in there. That's seems like an anti-selling point to me. RRODs should be a real treat to fix in that mess.

If the 360 is part of the case itself it won't have RRODs. The main reasons why Xbox 360s have ROODs is due to the cheap way they made the xbox, the motherboard holds the parts with xclamps (Instead of screws). When the device heats too much, the xclamps bend and the parts lose connection with each other.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwithout-towels/

A lot of people buy broken xboxs off of ebay just to put them in pc cases. Of course, you can run into some that have overheated to the point where the cpu and gpu are permantely damaged...

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