4K displays are slowly trickling out, and slowly trickling down in price. The problem with the resolution, though, is that not only are the displays very expensive, but there isn’t really any native 4K media. Some games and videos look fine when upscaled to 4K, but that’s not true 4K. Unperturbed by the almost complete lack of content, though, one man decided 4K was a thing of the past, and built a 12K gaming PC.

Whether or not you fall into the camp that can actually notice the difference between a 4K display and standard 1080p HD display, 4K will likely be the standard resolution within the next handful of years. However, if people who did amusing things with computers waited to do them with an accepted standard, then those things wouldn’t be so amusing. Microsoft senior program manager Gavin Gear recently had three Sharp PN-K321 4K Ultra HD displays on loan (the same panels as the recently released Asus 4K monitor), and did what any man would do: use them for a multi-monitor gaming setup.

Running on Windows 8, the rig totaled $17,000, but the majority of that was the monitors alone, which would have racked up a $15,000 price tag if they were purchased. The goal was to build a three-by-one 4K monitor DirectX 11 gaming rig. Looking for some advice on which video card to use, he spoke with his friend Jeff from AMD, who loaned out an Asus HD 7970 DirectCU II, which has enough DisplayPorts to support the multiple monitors. From there, Gear created a three-by-one Eyefinity setup, which is an AMD technology that allows up to six displays to be run off one graphics card.

The rig’s total display area sports a resolution of 11520×2160. That’s not technically what 12K would be, it’s more like a really long, thin 4K, but it certainly features more pixels than a standard 4K display. Gear notes that, pixel-wise, the above setup is equivalent to 12 1920×1080 displays, with a total of 24,883,200 pixels.

Gear attempted to run Dirt 3 on the display with at least a 30Hz refresh on each monitor, but with the settings set to max, the rig made it just below that 30Hz. In order to get above that rate, Gear went into the custom graphics settings and shut off multisampling, as it isn’t quite needed at such high resolutions. He managed around 35 fps, about 5 fps more than the majority of games this console generation. However, 30Hz wasn’t enough, because when you’re building a ridiculous rig, you shouldn’t settle.

A rate of 60Hz was not achievable just yet, but Gear felt it might be possible on a single 4K display. He could not achieve it with the standard single-display-per-video-stream setup, so Gear turned to Multi-Stream Transport (MST). This results in one landscape-oriented monitor displaying two virtual portrait displays side-by-side. Then, Crossfired a second 7970 with the first for some extra power just in case. Finally, he basically set the two portrait displays to merge into one display, which ultimately helps the display refresh at a higher rate. This allowed the refresh rate to reach 60Hz at a resolution of 3840×2160, which in turn produced around 150 fps with Dirt 3’s settings turned up to max.

Now that 60Hz at 4K was achieved, it was time to attempt it on 12K — which Gear’s friend over at AMD had never heard of at the time. Since both the 12K triple-display setup worked, and the 60Hz at 4K worked, it seemed possible. Unfortunately, starting with the 60Hz 4K setup and adding in the two monitors (and creating more display groups) didn’t work. Unlike us normals, though, Gear used his AMD connections to have them create a new driver that could support the unique setup.

So, whereas the single-monitor 4K setup had two virtual displays, with custom driver in-hand, Gear was able to create six virtual displays across the three monitors in an Eyefinity setup. Sadly, Dirt 3 only managed about 8 fps. He decided to add yet another 7970, but had to modify his motherboard and case to fit the third. Once the third card was installed and Crossfired, Gear turned up the game’s settings to high, but shut off shadow detail and particles. He managed around 64 fps on average — or, to put it another way, the GPUs were pushing over 1.5 billion pixels per second. Amusingly, the PSU would reset after a few minutes of running the setup due to power overload.

Yes, this was all very complicated and definitely overkill, but that’s the whole point in having fun. Unfortunately, even if you did have $17,000 to spare, you likely don’t have a buddy at AMD that can get custom drivers made for you when you drop him a line. So, while 4K video and gaming isn’t anywhere near widespread gaming yet, we now know that one day we can play games at three times the K.

Now read: Asus 4K monitor is just $4K, but don’t get too excited: Your computer isn’t powerful enough to use it