What a Five-Figure Gaming Rig Looks Like

A good gaming PC will cost you around $1000. A great gaming PC can cost more than $2000. But the best gaming PC, a pure show stopper, will require a whole extra digit to the price tag.

Enter the Large Pixel Collider

The staff at PC Gamer set out to build one of the most powerful gaming rigs on the market, and the Large Pixel Collider (LPC) was the end result. It’s named after the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator that sends atoms smashing into each other at the speed of light. The LPC isn’t a pinnacle of human achievement, but it is a specimen of hardware which gamers dream of.

So, what makes the LPC so special? Most builders go big on the video card, the life blood of every gaming PC, and even splurge on two if they have the budget. Right now, the best video card on the market is the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan. One of these alone would power any game on its highest settings without breaking a sweat, but PC Gamer doesn’t think in terms of “good enough” and combined a whopping four Titans in quad-SLI to assemble unparalleled power. That’s 24 GB of total video memory to play games at 4096×2160 on a single monitor (AKA 4K resolution).

But the video cards are just scratching the surface. Every corner of the LPC is composed of some of the best materials, starting with the massive metal case from Digital Storm. The case is big enough to house the four video cards along with plenty of hard drives and a motherboard capable of handling 64 GB or RAM, which PC Gamer uses to the max. The metal helps dissipate heat which keeps components cool. And on top of all of its function, the black and red design just looks sweet.

Power Up

Speaking of heat, the power behind this hardware gets hot — hotter than any console or mid-level gaming PC, and needs the right gear to keep cool. The cases’ fans help but don’t quite do the trick, so the LPC is hooked up with a liquid cooling system that chills the entire computer, especially the GTX Titans and CPU. Keeping temperatures low ensures that performance stays high.

You can rest assured knowing that any game from Origin.com like Battlefield 4, will look stunning through the Titan. The detail consistency speaks for itself if you just browse the web for example videos. The LPC processes every pixel miles away, and gives it the same quality as graphics in the foreground — all while keeping the frame rate well above 30 fps at all time. PC Gamer is planning to test various games over time, and it will be great to see what this beast can handle.

So, you’d like to own your own LPC, eh? There’s no specific price tag on the machine, but a similar build on Digital Storm puts the final fee at well over $13,000. Unless you’re willing to sell your car, you may be saving a while before grabbing this one.