After Slightly Mad Studios announced 12K support for Project CARS, we’ve been curious about what exactly it’d take to actually achieve those numbers.

After looking into benchmarks of Project CARS at standard resolutions as well as what it took to run the game at CES 2014 at 12K using NVIDIA Surround technology for Project CARS, we’ve come to a conclusion: it’s ridonculously expensive.

But my oh my is it pretty:

Rather unfortunately, monitors are excessively expensive in South Africa. The reasons are many, but the gist of it is that you’re going to spend around R30,000 just on the monitors alone.

You can score yourself a 28” 4K monitor, like the Dell P2815Q, for around R8,900. But to get a true 4K experience, you’re going to have to invest a lot more.

You could easily find a R50,000 4K monitor without much effort.

Project CARS will cost a fortune in monitors alone.

But what about the rigs required?

Well, as demonstrated by a recent benchmark by Techspot, a GTX Titan X is only just enough for 2160p. That means a lot more pixel crunching is necessary for our purposes.

Project CARS 2160p Benchmark. Image courtesy of Techspot

To render 1.5 billion pixels per second for a 12K image is no easy feat, nor is it an affordable one:

The Beast of Burden – A mid-range 12K rig

CPU: i7 4790k – R4,599 at RebelTech & Wootware.
GPUs: 3x GTX Titan X – R15,959 at RebelTech.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WIFI-BK – R6,170 at RebelTech.
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Elite, 32GB Kit – R6,886 at RebelTech.
PSU: Corsair HXi 1200W – R3,935 at Wootware.

This mighty collection of image processing muscle will set you back R69,467, not including a chassis, any peripherals, the obvious water cooling or the monitors. And yet, you’ll likely never max out the settings of Project CARS at 12K.

Mega Super Ultra Omega Hyper Rig of Destiny – What you really need for 12K

CPU: i7 5960x – R14,399 at RebelTech.
GPUs: 4x GTX Titan X – R15,959 at RebelTech.
Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC – R 6,487 at Wootware.
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX, 64GB Kit – R15,426 at RebelTech.
PSU: Silverstone ST1500 Tek 1500W – R4,899 at Wootware.

At a simply stupid R105,047, once again without monitors, peripherals, water cooling again or a chassis, this is the ideal rig for 12K gaming. Ideal is a subjective word of course; there’s nothing ideal about the price.

But we can dream, can’t we? One day.

One day.