Overclockers’ most powerful PC yet costs as much as a BMW

Overclockers UK wanted to do something special in terms of a super-powerful PC, and the company has certainly managed that with the new 8Pack OrionX, which is actually two PCs in one case with a price tag that you (and your bank manager) will find terrifying: £24,000.

Yes, that’s enough to buy a new BMW. But as you would hope, the vendor has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this rig – and while the sink might not be there, there’s more than enough plumbing for an entire kitchen with three custom-made water-cooling loops snaking their way around the inside of the case in a cleverly optimized design.

That case is a Phanteks Enthoo Elite which, as mentioned, contains two separate systems within it – and both PCs can be used simultaneously, so you can game away on one, while the other crunches through some heavy-duty video editing or similar.

So, onwards to the specs. The first and primary PC has an Intel Core i7-6950X processor overclocked to 4.4GHz minimum – they’ll push it further if it will go – sat in an Asus Rampage V Edition 10 Intel X99 motherboard.

You also get 64GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM (2666MHz) in eight sticks, and for the graphics cards there are three Nvidia Titan X (Pascal – i.e. the latest generation) in Tri-SLI (and naturally, these are overclocked to 2000MHz plus). Optionally you can have four of these monster GPUs if a mere trio isn’t enough .

Storage? There’s a 1.2TB Intel 750 PCIe NVMe SSD (which is water-cooled), alongside a pair of 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs in RAID 0 configuration, plus a 10TB spinning disk for all your media and other bits and pieces.

Terrific twosome

The ‘secondary’ PC is a bit of a beast in itself, running with an Intel Core i7-7700K (Kaby Lake) CPU overclocked to at least 5.1GHz in an Asus ROG Strix Z270I Gaming motherboard.

There’s 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum system RAM (3200MHz) along with an Nvidia Titan X (Pascal) graphics card.

Storage comes in the form of a pair of Samsung 960 Polaris 512GB NVMe SSDs configured in RAID 0, again running alongside a 10TB traditional hard disk.

You’d think that Overclockers would need to put in a pretty beefy power supply to give these two systems sufficient juice, and you’d be right. There is nothing less than a Super Flower Leadex ‘8Pack Edition’ 2000W PSU tucked away in the bottom of the case handling power duties.

Both individual CPUs/chipsets have their own water-cooling loop, and the GPUs are cooled on their own separate loop, too.

Yep, in short, this is one mind-boggling machine. If you want to buy one, well, we’re not in the slightest bit jealous – of course. Not a bit of it. But this rig will only cause you problems, you know: problems like what super-high-end monitors can you buy to do this thing justice? Did you think of that, eh?

Still definitely not jealous, by the way.

• Luckily, our top picks for the best gaming PCs are more affordable

January 27, 2017 at 07:00PM
Darren Allan