The CPU gets progressively expensive; and yes, more than 8 cores will probably blow the $4k budget. However, two things to note:<p>1) High-end i7 and Xeon with the same core count hover around the same price. However, Xeon are not made for overclocking whereas the i7 can be overclocked (easily).<p>2) The application they used for benchmarking relies on high CPU speed. Normally what you find is the more cores a CPU has, the lower their clock speed (I assume to keep it within the TDP).<p>Also, CPU is all but one price component in a Xeon system:<p>- The base motherboard would cost the same to a high-end consumer motherboard. If you&#x27;re looking for dual-CPU motherboard it will cost almost twice as much.<p>- (Most) Xeon systems will require ECC RAM, which is more expensive than the regular RAM.