Alternative Hardware Choices

Piecing this list together was very difficult, and we had to turn down some very compelling hardware options along the way. Some of these options dramatically bring down pricing, even if it hurts future-proofing.

2x Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X
This was the most difficult choice to turn down. At $900, a pair of R9 Fury cards could pack a wallop with 4K Ultra HD performance, especially given how fast a single card is. One of the reasons we turned down this combo is due to inconsistent multi-GPU driver support from AMD. Before most major game launches, NVIDIA rolls out "Game Ready" driver updates that add crucial SLI profiles to games. We wish AMD was that regular with CrossFire profile updates.

2x ASUS GeForce GTX 980 STRIX
The GeForce GTX 980 (non-Ti) is slower than the R9 Fury, and its 4 GB of memory is slower still. We're skeptical about a pair of GTX 980 cards offering 60+ FPS with some of the most visually intense games. The ASUS STRIX is among the best GTX 980 offerings out there.

Intel Core i7-5930K + ASUS X99-A motherboard + 4x 4GB DDR4-2800 memory
We really cannot recommend Intel's Core i7-5930K for a pure gaming machine, even if you plan on streaming your games. The per-core performance of the i7-5930K is lower than the i7-6700K, its double memory bandwidth doesn't translate into vast gaming performance gains, and the overall platform cost is nearly double that of a "Skylake-D" platform.