Overkill PC builds

[sotiris.bos]

If you got the money, why the hell not?

[AlwaysFSX]

At that point, I just call it art.

Very, very expensive art... Which I'm okay with

[sperkowsky]

as you can see by my specs i have a "low end enthusiast system" which in my opinion is all you need but for people who enjoy doing crazy watercooling and such and have large pockets who are we to judge

[Oshino Shinobu]

I love overkill builds. Even though there's no real point to overkill, it's always nice to look at how powerful and good looking someone can make a PC. I personally wouldn't buy one myself as I don't have the money to spare.

 

If you can do it and want to, then go ahead. Similar to people who buy a super car but just use it for general driving. There's no really reason for it, but it gives you something nice to show off. 

[kuzimins]

They're called OVERKILL for a reason, now shut up about this. Is that too hard to understand?

[unraw]

Overkill builds are the same as owning a high horsepower car to drive just on the weekends. Its not like you need it, but it sure is fun to have it.  B)

[Osmium]

I am very focused on value. I never will recommend someone buy more than 16GB of RAM, i7 extreme, or worst of all those overpriced mobos for gaming.

 

However people will bigger budgets I have no problem recommending stuff like i7s (regular), 780tis, or other luxury items. My reasoning for those items are they will benefit the person performance wise out of games and will generally speed things up. But ROG boards, massive amounts of high speed ram, and i7 extremes really don't spee things up enough to justify the price(however the 780ti is pushing the limits for me at least).

 

So in conclusion yes I think overkill PCs are stupid. 

[Torey]

At first I shake my head, then I just wish that I had money like that to just carelessly throw around, but I wouldn't.

[aithos]

I just built an overkill build and the justification was a few points:

 

1) future-proof.  I wanted a build I was confident could last 4-5 years without having to worry about what games I'm playing.  Most of my builds are meant to last 3-4 years, I wanted to stretch this one a bit more to see where 1440p vs 4k gaming ends up in the next 5 years (when I think it might actually be reasonable to consider).

 

2) re-use of parts.  I often choose an overkill PSU (my last one was an HX1000 with a single GPU, currently AX1200i for dual 780ti) because I always use my PSU in at least 2 builds, this one I'll probably use in my next 3 builds.  I'd rather have the best PSU on the market with zero chance I'll need to upgrade later than buy several less expensive ones over the years.

 

3) I wanted a system capable of doing 1440p @ 120hz with max (or close) settings, RIGHT NOW.  I'm going to buy a Korean panel and overclock, but when native 1440p 120hz zero input lag panels hit the market I want to be ready...

 

4) I waited 4 years to build this PC even though for the last 3+ years I've been in a new career making much better money, this is my treat to myself because I can afford it.  I've always been reasonable with my gaming builds, it was time (I'm almost 34) to be able to enjoy spending some money instead of being frugal all the time.

 

Edit:  for the record I went with i7-4770k and 16gb of RAM.  I didn't see any reason to do 32gb or raid 0 on my SSDs and I preferred the better memory performance of Haswell to Ivy-E extra cores and RAM.  I'm not doing high end 3d rendering or massive amounts of video editing...