ok, assuming those are United States Dollars you can build a monster of a rig for less than 1/2 of that 8000 budget. I will go all out and explain it well since you said its fictitious. Just looking to see what it would look like, right?
(case)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147157
-Supertower case so it has plenty of room. Also has 8 fans and ample cable management from what I see. Its not too expensive.
(CPU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492
- 6 core Sandy Bridge, unlocked, X79 based so plenty of PCI-e lanes to make SLI/CF more usable.
(cooling)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181017
- Water cooling is best for overclocking. These sealed units are best for the first timer, but I would do a 2 or 3 loop design covering CPU, RAM, GPU, and Southbridge. Someone else could suggest parts for that as I am clueless on watercooling as it stands.
(HDD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844 get 4 of them.
- I would set them up in a RAID 0+1 setup or however it is, might be RAID 5. Would give you 6 TB of space with complete fault tolerance. You could increase the number bu increments of 2 I think and still be good if you needed more space.
(RAM)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220649 x2
-DDR3-1600 is pretty much the modern standard. 64GB will give you an outrageous amount, and would allow you to set up like a virtual SSD in the RAM if you wanted to, but I don't know how useful that is. RAM is dirt cheap, so why not max it? If you wanted to, you could drop it to 32 GB by going 8x4GB low latency and save a bundle.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231537 for example would cut cost by 1/2 and net better performance because of the CAS6 latency.
(motherboard)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157285
- X79 and 5 PCI-e x16 slots. You will see why that is important below. You will be set for life almost with this setup, and will have a quality brand.
(PSU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256054
- best quality brand. Plenty of power to run everything. If it is overkill, then no hard done. If it is not enough, then I do not see any better PSUs on newegg that are a quality brand.
(SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
- I know almost nothing about these, but they are good for speed and fairly cheap considering. you could even double up if need be and run RAID0 for 512 GB.
(GPU) x4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150585
- The ultimate DX11.1 CrossFire setup period. With this you will be able to max any game out there I will almost guarantee. It will eat power and be over the top, but that is ok I rekon.
(OS)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116997
-You need at least Pro to use more than 16GB of RAM. That is not changeable. Ultimate will have everything and is only 50 more than pro. I would say it is worth it.
With everything stated, the 64GB of RAM, 4HDDs, and 1 SSD, you are looking at $5270, but it will be able to do everything and anything you throw at it except maybe linux, as ATI and Linux don't get along too well.
Later on, I would suggest 4x GTX680 over the 7970, as Nvidia is always my choice, but for the cost to performance the 7970 wins against the GTX580.
