So, this morning I woke to find a random new thread pop up asking what people's dream system builds would be if money were no object.
Funnily enough, I've been having a bunch of conversations with my colleagues about this over the last couple months, so now I'll get a change to just lay it out. Most of this will be a copy-pasta from the thread, but at the end I'll add my thoughts about it.
If money were no issue, my dream PC setup? I've got a few ways to go about it.
Tiny/Static Build (£4820):
Intel NUC8i7HVK - £1000
Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Samsung DDR4 2666Mhz 64GB (32x2) - £340
Windows 10 Pro - £220
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Mac Mini Variant (£4039):
Mac Mini (i7/64GB/2TB/10Gb configuration) - £2959
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
AMD Radeon 7 - £700
(If R7 is discontinued, and until 5700XT or above is supported) AMD RX Vega 64 - £325
Portable Variant (£3925):
Lenovo X1 Carbon (7th gen, fully specced): £2645
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Tower Build (£10,987):
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600s - £135
Expansion: ITX Expansion+Riser - £25
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X - £800
Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro - £145
Motherboard: Gigabyte - X570 AORUS MASTER - £390
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3600Mhz DDR4 64GB (16x4) - £655
PSU: Phanteks Revolt X 1200W - £235
OS Drive: Corsair Force NP600 NVMe Gen4 2TB SSD - £425
Other Drives: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x3
Graphics: GTX 2080 Ti - £900+
Windows 10 Pro - £220
Second ITX System - this a dual-system case
CPU2: Intel Core i9-9900K - £460
Cooler2: Corsair H60 (2018) - £65
Motherboard2: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac - £177
RAM2: Corsair Vengeance RGB 3200Mhz 32GB (16x2) - £305
OS Drive2: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Graphics2 (via Riser): GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Windows 10 Pro - £220
I would use custom cooling to better fit with the requirements of the CPU/Mobo, but that's much harder to price up. This is just for an illustration.
In all of the above, I've not added monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, networking or NAS because that really depends on the workspace you've got. Also I only added Windows 10 in because if money is no object, you have no excuse to pirate Windows.
Note: from here, are my more expanded thoughts and rationale for the above.
Small Systems:
I've liked the idea of Intel NUCs since I first saw them, and they've come quite a long way over the last few years.
You get a modestly powerful processor (equivalent to laptop CPUs, either for the mainstream U-series or more powerful gaming G-series CPUs) with 2 SoDIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM, and 2 M.2 slots that support NVMe in RAID (either for performance or redundancy).
With the Bean Canyon NUC, it comes in a tiny package slightly bigger than an Android TV box.
With the Hades Canyon NUC, it comes with VEGA graphics making it a decent gaming PC in its own right in a more stretched out but still very compact package.
As an alternative, you can also go for a Mac Mini (just make sure you buy your own RAM) which is only a little bit bigger than the above but will function the same way.
Or if you need more mobility, you can go with a Thunderbolt equipped laptop so that you can use it anywhere and just plug it in at home for more performance. I went with the Lenovo X1 Carbon because it's my ideal laptop - slim, light, good battery, good keyboard, and the carbon fibre materials just feel so nice to touch compared to every other laptop I've ever used.
What makes them interesting for a Dream System setup, is their Thunderbolt 3 ports allowing you to plug them into an external GPU enclosure such as the Razer Core X Chroma, allowing you to tap into roughly 80% of the GPU inside. Since money is no object, the nVidia GTX 2080 Ti is the obvious choice for Windows, although for Mac compatibility you'd have to make a slight concession in getting either Vega 64, Radeon VII (which has just been discontinued), or taking a risk with the new PCIe 4.0 compatible 5700 XT and hoping Apple add driver support soon.
This means that your home gaming setup can have monitors, ethernet, keyboard, mouse and anything else all connected to the eGPU, and then all you need is a single cable to connect your chosen computer (NUC, Mac or Laptop) to access everything. It also means you'd have the freedom to take it with you wherever you go (e.g. friends, work, etc).
Of course, the single-cable solution only actually works with laptops that charge via Power Delivery. If you use a NUC or Mac Mini, you'd also need to plug in their power cables (+ bricks) so it's not a perfect solution. But I really like the idea of minimising the amount of space used. It feels like freedom.
Dual Systems:
The other way you can go is to maximise the power you can squeeze into your tower. A few months back I saw a review of the Phanteks Eclipse P600s case with its optional ITX expansion. As a case, it looked fairly nice and ticked all the usual boxes, but didn't stand out in any particular way other than having a reasonably low price. But then I saw the optional ITX expansion and how you could fit in a tiny second system at the top of the case, out of the way of your main system, and that sparked all kinds of ideas and inspiration.
And I'm not the only one - I saw a bunch of threads of people who would love to have a dual-system case, all asking the same question - how well does it work, and is it worth it?
Well, long story short, for most people it's definitely not worth it. Most people only need one system, and would be better served by spending the money on better parts for their single system than trying to splurge out on a second system. After all, how many people do multiple things at the same time? When you're gaming, you're focused on the game. Even if you need a walkthrough on a second screen, you've got a choice of two monitors for one system, having a laptop on the side (like my Surface Pro 6), or even having a tablet on the side (like my iPad Air). If you're watching a video and feel the need to mindless browse the internet on the side, the above options are all the same but you can even through in your phone this time.
There are basically only 3 cases where it's worth having a second system.
Content creators can use a second system to keep their work and play separate. Capturing, transcoding, editing, streaming, etc, are all best left to a second system where it can safely hog all the resources whilst your gaming system is on your main system to allow you to play at your best without unnecessary lag or performance drops caused by background processes. Or visa versa, depending on your priorities, you could have your rendering station as the main system whilst your little gaming machine is on the side to allow you to play games until the rendering is done.
Another case is when you have virtualisation stations hosting servers, either for home or work or even to host servers for the games you're playing. It's usually a much better idea to keep such workstation tasks on a separate system than the one you're playing on, much like with the above creative uses, except in this case servers and other virtualisation uses are normally kept on 24/7. You can set up a high-efficiency system on an ITX motherboard so that even when you turn off your main system, the other can be left to work without making too much noise. A bit like a NAS, except it's built into your system, and can do so much more.
The final case I can think of is the most pointless of all cases but some people will probably do it anyway. Having a dual-gaming system, so that you and a sibling or friend can play games at the same time. Imagine you and a brother playing Monster Hunter World, hunting together and only needing one desktop tower between you. Or if you're into MMOs like World of Warcraft, and they're into other games like Fifa or Sonic Racing, you don't have to fight over who gets to play since you can both play different games at the same time and can both wear headphones so you don't disturb each other. The only problem with this scenario is that the ITX system will use a riser for its graphics card, and will not be able to get the full performance out of it. Sure, you could use the Thunderbolt 3 port that comes with the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac I selected and use an eGPU to make up for it, but then it's no longer just having a single tower and becomes having a tower plus a half-size tower next to it.
Still, having a dual-system case does offer a degree of freedom of choice and upgradability, depending on your needs. You could also opt to just stick with one system at first, and upgrade with the second system later on, going through leap-frog upgrades rather than massive overhauls every few years. The biggest downside is having to buy a special Phanteks dual-system PSU that costs twice as much as more sensible PSUs from Corsair, but if this is a dream build and money is no object, then that's a non-issue. Then there's custom liquid cooling - it would work great in a case like this, but at the same time it can make future upgrades more difficult. If you use flexible tubing for the ITX system, at least you won't have to open the loop and drain the liquid to replace the CPU (and/or motherboard), but trying to work out how to effectively cool 2 CPUs, the X570 motherboard, and 1 or 2 graphics cards positioned at the bottom of the case, gets a little tricky. Or creative, depending on how you look at it.
You also have the option to add 3x2.5" drives and 4x3.5" drives in the case on top of all 6 M.2 drives I filled the system with, however that means a lot more cables, weight and space added to the build, and I was aiming for a dream system that keeps things as clean and simple as possible. M.2 drives are mostly hidden (although 2 in my build would be attached to a daughter board) and a total of 12TB should be enough for nearly anybody. Each 2.5" drive slot can fit a 4TB Samsung 860 SSD or 5TB Seagate HDD, and each 3.5" drive slot can fit up to a 14TB Seagate HDD, making a theoretical maximum of 83TB without needing extra expansion cards.
Or just do both:
You can always take things one step further - get a dual-system case, AND a eGPU, so that you have one full-tower gaming setup, using the secondary system as your always-on NAS/content server/gaming server/capture and streaming server/virtualisation or editing and rendering station, allowing it to sometimes be used as a secondary gaming rig where you can plug in an eGPU to bolster the gaming performance, or take that Thunderbolt cable from the eGPU and plug it into your Lenovo/Apple laptop to work/game from there or take your laptop with you elsewhere.
Or go balls-to-the-walls crazy, having your dual system, plus a NUC, plus a Mac Mini, plus your laptop, with at least two eGPUs (one for AMD and one for nVidia) to go between them, giving a performance boost to the ones that need it at the time.
Funnily enough, I've been having a bunch of conversations with my colleagues about this over the last couple months, so now I'll get a change to just lay it out. Most of this will be a copy-pasta from the thread, but at the end I'll add my thoughts about it.
If money were no issue, my dream PC setup? I've got a few ways to go about it.
Tiny/Static Build (£4820):
Intel NUC8i7HVK - £1000
Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Samsung DDR4 2666Mhz 64GB (32x2) - £340
Windows 10 Pro - £220
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Mac Mini Variant (£4039):
Mac Mini (i7/64GB/2TB/10Gb configuration) - £2959
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
AMD Radeon 7 - £700
(If R7 is discontinued, and until 5700XT or above is supported) AMD RX Vega 64 - £325
Portable Variant (£3925):
Lenovo X1 Carbon (7th gen, fully specced): £2645
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Tower Build (£10,987):
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600s - £135
Expansion: ITX Expansion+Riser - £25
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X - £800
Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro - £145
Motherboard: Gigabyte - X570 AORUS MASTER - £390
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3600Mhz DDR4 64GB (16x4) - £655
PSU: Phanteks Revolt X 1200W - £235
OS Drive: Corsair Force NP600 NVMe Gen4 2TB SSD - £425
Other Drives: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x3
Graphics: GTX 2080 Ti - £900+
Windows 10 Pro - £220
Second ITX System - this a dual-system case
CPU2: Intel Core i9-9900K - £460
Cooler2: Corsair H60 (2018) - £65
Motherboard2: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac - £177
RAM2: Corsair Vengeance RGB 3200Mhz 32GB (16x2) - £305
OS Drive2: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Graphics2 (via Riser): GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Windows 10 Pro - £220
I would use custom cooling to better fit with the requirements of the CPU/Mobo, but that's much harder to price up. This is just for an illustration.
In all of the above, I've not added monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, networking or NAS because that really depends on the workspace you've got. Also I only added Windows 10 in because if money is no object, you have no excuse to pirate Windows.
Note: from here, are my more expanded thoughts and rationale for the above.
Small Systems:
I've liked the idea of Intel NUCs since I first saw them, and they've come quite a long way over the last few years.
You get a modestly powerful processor (equivalent to laptop CPUs, either for the mainstream U-series or more powerful gaming G-series CPUs) with 2 SoDIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM, and 2 M.2 slots that support NVMe in RAID (either for performance or redundancy).
With the Bean Canyon NUC, it comes in a tiny package slightly bigger than an Android TV box.
With the Hades Canyon NUC, it comes with VEGA graphics making it a decent gaming PC in its own right in a more stretched out but still very compact package.
As an alternative, you can also go for a Mac Mini (just make sure you buy your own RAM) which is only a little bit bigger than the above but will function the same way.
Or if you need more mobility, you can go with a Thunderbolt equipped laptop so that you can use it anywhere and just plug it in at home for more performance. I went with the Lenovo X1 Carbon because it's my ideal laptop - slim, light, good battery, good keyboard, and the carbon fibre materials just feel so nice to touch compared to every other laptop I've ever used.
What makes them interesting for a Dream System setup, is their Thunderbolt 3 ports allowing you to plug them into an external GPU enclosure such as the Razer Core X Chroma, allowing you to tap into roughly 80% of the GPU inside. Since money is no object, the nVidia GTX 2080 Ti is the obvious choice for Windows, although for Mac compatibility you'd have to make a slight concession in getting either Vega 64, Radeon VII (which has just been discontinued), or taking a risk with the new PCIe 4.0 compatible 5700 XT and hoping Apple add driver support soon.
This means that your home gaming setup can have monitors, ethernet, keyboard, mouse and anything else all connected to the eGPU, and then all you need is a single cable to connect your chosen computer (NUC, Mac or Laptop) to access everything. It also means you'd have the freedom to take it with you wherever you go (e.g. friends, work, etc).
Of course, the single-cable solution only actually works with laptops that charge via Power Delivery. If you use a NUC or Mac Mini, you'd also need to plug in their power cables (+ bricks) so it's not a perfect solution. But I really like the idea of minimising the amount of space used. It feels like freedom.
Dual Systems:
The other way you can go is to maximise the power you can squeeze into your tower. A few months back I saw a review of the Phanteks Eclipse P600s case with its optional ITX expansion. As a case, it looked fairly nice and ticked all the usual boxes, but didn't stand out in any particular way other than having a reasonably low price. But then I saw the optional ITX expansion and how you could fit in a tiny second system at the top of the case, out of the way of your main system, and that sparked all kinds of ideas and inspiration.
And I'm not the only one - I saw a bunch of threads of people who would love to have a dual-system case, all asking the same question - how well does it work, and is it worth it?
Well, long story short, for most people it's definitely not worth it. Most people only need one system, and would be better served by spending the money on better parts for their single system than trying to splurge out on a second system. After all, how many people do multiple things at the same time? When you're gaming, you're focused on the game. Even if you need a walkthrough on a second screen, you've got a choice of two monitors for one system, having a laptop on the side (like my Surface Pro 6), or even having a tablet on the side (like my iPad Air). If you're watching a video and feel the need to mindless browse the internet on the side, the above options are all the same but you can even through in your phone this time.
There are basically only 3 cases where it's worth having a second system.
Content creators can use a second system to keep their work and play separate. Capturing, transcoding, editing, streaming, etc, are all best left to a second system where it can safely hog all the resources whilst your gaming system is on your main system to allow you to play at your best without unnecessary lag or performance drops caused by background processes. Or visa versa, depending on your priorities, you could have your rendering station as the main system whilst your little gaming machine is on the side to allow you to play games until the rendering is done.
Another case is when you have virtualisation stations hosting servers, either for home or work or even to host servers for the games you're playing. It's usually a much better idea to keep such workstation tasks on a separate system than the one you're playing on, much like with the above creative uses, except in this case servers and other virtualisation uses are normally kept on 24/7. You can set up a high-efficiency system on an ITX motherboard so that even when you turn off your main system, the other can be left to work without making too much noise. A bit like a NAS, except it's built into your system, and can do so much more.
The final case I can think of is the most pointless of all cases but some people will probably do it anyway. Having a dual-gaming system, so that you and a sibling or friend can play games at the same time. Imagine you and a brother playing Monster Hunter World, hunting together and only needing one desktop tower between you. Or if you're into MMOs like World of Warcraft, and they're into other games like Fifa or Sonic Racing, you don't have to fight over who gets to play since you can both play different games at the same time and can both wear headphones so you don't disturb each other. The only problem with this scenario is that the ITX system will use a riser for its graphics card, and will not be able to get the full performance out of it. Sure, you could use the Thunderbolt 3 port that comes with the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac I selected and use an eGPU to make up for it, but then it's no longer just having a single tower and becomes having a tower plus a half-size tower next to it.
Still, having a dual-system case does offer a degree of freedom of choice and upgradability, depending on your needs. You could also opt to just stick with one system at first, and upgrade with the second system later on, going through leap-frog upgrades rather than massive overhauls every few years. The biggest downside is having to buy a special Phanteks dual-system PSU that costs twice as much as more sensible PSUs from Corsair, but if this is a dream build and money is no object, then that's a non-issue. Then there's custom liquid cooling - it would work great in a case like this, but at the same time it can make future upgrades more difficult. If you use flexible tubing for the ITX system, at least you won't have to open the loop and drain the liquid to replace the CPU (and/or motherboard), but trying to work out how to effectively cool 2 CPUs, the X570 motherboard, and 1 or 2 graphics cards positioned at the bottom of the case, gets a little tricky. Or creative, depending on how you look at it.
You also have the option to add 3x2.5" drives and 4x3.5" drives in the case on top of all 6 M.2 drives I filled the system with, however that means a lot more cables, weight and space added to the build, and I was aiming for a dream system that keeps things as clean and simple as possible. M.2 drives are mostly hidden (although 2 in my build would be attached to a daughter board) and a total of 12TB should be enough for nearly anybody. Each 2.5" drive slot can fit a 4TB Samsung 860 SSD or 5TB Seagate HDD, and each 3.5" drive slot can fit up to a 14TB Seagate HDD, making a theoretical maximum of 83TB without needing extra expansion cards.
Or just do both:
You can always take things one step further - get a dual-system case, AND a eGPU, so that you have one full-tower gaming setup, using the secondary system as your always-on NAS/content server/gaming server/capture and streaming server/virtualisation or editing and rendering station, allowing it to sometimes be used as a secondary gaming rig where you can plug in an eGPU to bolster the gaming performance, or take that Thunderbolt cable from the eGPU and plug it into your Lenovo/Apple laptop to work/game from there or take your laptop with you elsewhere.
Or go balls-to-the-walls crazy, having your dual system, plus a NUC, plus a Mac Mini, plus your laptop, with at least two eGPUs (one for AMD and one for nVidia) to go between them, giving a performance boost to the ones that need it at the time.
