Wattage wise you couldnt be more wrong tbh - its only the cables that make things complicated
Quad SLI is just a Giant n000b badge tbh - its about benching and people that think they need to spend loads of money.
Average power consumption on the 980s is very good but they also have very high spikes in power use, using 4 and an overclocked CPU stand a very good chance of knocking a Corsair 1200i over.
You need specialised equipment to measure the power spikes on the 980s but when tested the peaks are no better than the old kepler cards and in some cases are getting close to the 290 series. What the new Maxwell architecture allows the cards to do is save a lot of power when the cards are not under maximum load.
I do agree that quad 980s is about benching @1080p (I will post some scores when I have watercooled mine) and for gaming at ultra high resolutions there are faster/cheaper options out there. The 8gb 290Xs in multi GPU combinations are a serious contender for this.
4 x G1 980s would be a Giant n000b badge as I hinted at earlier unless you can get water blocks for them.
Sometimes chucking money at a problem just creates more problems....
Sorry what I was implying was that a dream is meant to be something big or something like that haha, cant explain it myself. Absurd sounds like a good one ^_^
Tom is right on this as using 4 cards means a lot more to consider than just installing them.
Watercooling is a must
The right case with at least 8 expansion slots and room for 2 PSUs
Getting the right cards, 4 x 980s are not great @4K and are out performed by cheaper 290Xs for example.
Sometimes the drivers are not good, TR on the 290Xs is total crap.
Using the right CPU/mobo.
4gb cards are not enough for 4 way @4K
And the list goes on.
When it works it is nice though.