#1301
That is a nice story, although very hard to read.
Now why exactly did you post this?

#1
1. Post in the pc build thread (see #3)
2. Budget?
3. FYI that CPU won't fit in that mobo.

Also on max graphics you will get drops below 144fps in pubs, even with a far better CPU, just warning you now before you're dissapointed.

The Seagates are gone, 1 Toshiba reserved, 3 Toshiba (any combination) still available.

#22
There's so many things wrong with this build.
Apart from the 212 Evo being the 212 Evo which I'm sick of talking about at this point, why do you think he'll need an aftermarket cooler at all? It's a locked CPU.
A slow SSD. Sure it's cheaper, but the whole point of getting SSD is speed.

But the best thing. Not only did you choose a 750W 80+ Bronze PSU for a <350W build, but you'd be spending 60$ on it. You can get a good 80+ Gold 750W for 65$.. There's also cheaper Gold options with a more reasonable wattage, but I'm sticking with the Bronze budget option.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($297.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($57.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Elite Plus 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($29.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.69 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.89 @ OutletPC)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($36.88 @ Newegg)
Total: $596.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-05 18:55 EDT-0400

The second build is even worse. A 212 Evo for an i7-6700K? Nevermind, you can't overclock anyway because it's a B150 motherboard.

The RX 480 4GB will be 200$, the 8GB version will be 250$. There will not be a 490 until at least October and that will be significantly more expensive.
I sincerely hope with "nVidia's latest options" you meant the latest options in that price range and not the GTX 1080 and 1070.

#1299
I'm assuming you're talking about an all-in-one. Don't get one of those. They are worse than air coolers.
I've posted something about that before.

My recommendation would be to get a 2500K or 2550K (3570K is usually more expensive and a bit harder to OC), that should be ~100$. One of the usual suspects (Noctua NH-D14, Phanteks PH-TC14PE, maybe something cheaper) as cooler (~70$) and then OC it to ~4.8GHz (or ~4.5GHz in case of the 3570K).
<200$ (+ monitor) and you should be good. Even if you keep your current settings.
With an fps config you could probably get 144fps without a new CPU.

#1296
How many fps are you getting right now?
Any kind of budget?

A new mobo wouldn't make that much of a diference actually, since you've got a Z77 so you can get a used -K i5 (2500K, 2550K, 3570K, whichever you can find), maybe a cooler, and then just overclock it.

#5
Don't worry.
Even if I didn't it's striped and ZFS anyway. So unless you bought all HDDs you'd never get all blocks. Even if you did you'd have to find one of the few people who can restore a zpool and then pay them a couple of grand just for the chance that they might be able to do it.

So yeah, no one will ever know what was on there.

#6
Nah, I've got the real thing. I mean look at these sexy, hard drives.

#1294
8GB instead of 16GB RAM saves you 30$ (exactly half) you can always add more later should you need it.
850 Evo is faster.
Come on, I literally just posted this. No need for a 650W PSU in a 300W build. I went with a 450W 80+ Gold although you could obviously get an 80+ Bronze, which would be even cheaper. There is a 360W version of that PSU which would still be plenty but it's only 1$ cheaper and limits your upgrade options quite a bit should you choose to replace the GPU a few years down the line.
The VG248QE is ancient at this point. The XL2411Z is far better. I'm guessing that means you want Lightboost, not FreeSync, which would be the alternative.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($215.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($57.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.22 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.89 @ OutletPC)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($43.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: BenQ XL2411Z 24.0" 144Hz Monitor ($269.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $896.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-03 14:44 EDT-0400

Run everything at 144fps or 144Hz? Everything or just TF2 and Overwatch? Also the question seems to be worded a bit weirdly, if the RX 480 won't be enough, why should an older GPU be enough?

Pretty much any GPU will get you >144fps in TF2.
There's no benchmarks for the RX 480 so I can only give you an estimate for overwatch. Assuming 1080p 144fps are happening:
-on Epic definitely not.
-on Ultra maybe.
-on High definitely.

#2
But you know some of them. ;-)
Most of that is just additional information for nerds.

#3
I'm not expecting to sell them all that quickly, there'll probably be more than one left.
If one of the 5TB ends up being the last one I'll sell it to you for the 4TB price if you promise to actually finish the fragmovie before Valve releases HL3 unlike some other people.
I didn't put much effort into it but the cheapest I could find for >500g to Portugal was 7€.

#1292
1./3. By the time he builds it'll be available already. 50-100% better price to performance ratio is worth it I'd say.
2. Ok. The GPU might actually be overkill if he only wants 60fps. By the way he could definitely get a 144Hz monitor on that budget.
4. You're paying for the option to overclock, which you can't. Simply a waste of money.
5. Ok. Keep in mind that my example for Polaris, the RX 480 will be only 200€ but with better performance. Otherwise the 390 is a good placeholder.
6. What about microATX? Smaller cases are cheaper by default without sacrifcing any features.
7. I can find something once the time comes. Just FYI the pcpartpicker calculator isn't perfect but good enough. So if it says 350W then a 400W PSU is plenty. This is why I'm not picking a PSU yet, an RX 480 needs far less power than an R9 390.

Forgot to mention that he could/should also get an SSD. 850 Evo is the usual recommendation.

We're done here
No, we're not.

So I've got a few HDDs that I don't need anymore because I have replaced / will be replacing them in the next couple of days.

I can ship to anywhere in the EU, any parcel service you want or just the cheapest I can find (insured or not, your choice). Shipping might be extra depending on how many you buy, where you live and whether or not you want it to be insured.

I'm selling two each of:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB (ST2000DM001) 55€ one sold
Both about 2 years old. Can provide invoice / proof of purchase / anything you need for warranty related concerns.
Before anyone asks, both are the "good" two platter version, not the shitty bait and switch 3 platter version.

Toshiba MD04ACA400 4TB 100€ one sold
Both pretty much exactly 1 year old. Includes original packaging and all the swag (read: 4 screws) that it came with.
Can provide invoice / proof of purchase / anything you need for warranty related concerns.

Toshiba MD04ACA500 5TB 135€ sold
Both less than 1 year old. Includes original packaging and all the swag (read: warranty pamphlets) that it came with.
Can provide invoice / proof of purchase / anything you need for warranty related concerns.

The Toshibas are not that well known I think so FYI they are all SATA III HDDs, 7200rpm, 128MB cache.
They've also been sold as PH-30xxE-1Hx0 or most recently as X300.
They're the consumer branded / SATA version of the MG04ACA enterprise HDDs (that's why they've got 128MB instead of the standard 64MB), so yes, they are pretty damn fast.
Yes, they support CCTL/ERC/TLER. URE rate is lower than the advertised 1 in 10^14 from my experience, although that's not surprising since the enterprise version is advertised to exceed 10^16.

All drives are working perfectly fine, no errors or anything at all. I quite like the MD04ACA actually, in fact the drives I'm replacing everything with are the 6TB version to get that sweet sweet storage density. The main reason I'm selling the 4 and 5TB drives is to have drives of only one size for RAID10.
I've only kept the 2TB drives for compatibility until now and didn't really them anymore so I figured if I'm going to start selling HDDs I might as well get rid of those too.

#1290
1. When is he going to build?
2. What is he going to use it for?
3. Wait for Polaris (RX 480) if possible (26 days to availability).
4. Locked CPU + overclocking chipset? Please explain.
5. AMD RX 480 > AMD R9 390 > nVidia GTX 970
6. Overpriced case.
7. Overpriced and oversized PSU.

#1287
Should be less than two weeks now. Not sure about availability in Australia though.

#1288
Yeah that's fine.

#1280
Have you ever seen what getting lower fps than the refresh rate looks like? G-Sync drops the refresh rate in those case so everything is still in sync and you don't get eye cancer.
Now since you want more fps than your refresh rate in TF2 it can't do anything. I guess you'll be playing TF2 most of the time so it already doesn't seem worth it. But even in other games you should be able to get >144fps on 1080p with a GTX 1080 (maybe drop down one or the other setting from maxed out if you don't).
Short version:
-Weak GPU, demanding games -> G-Sync helps a lot.
.Strong GPU, low GPU load game -> G-Sync doesn't help at all (TF2)
-Strong GPU, demanding games -> G-Sync might help, but you could just drop the settings instead which is cheaper (your situation for everything except TF2)

Speaking of the 1080 I really wouldn't preorder or order at all right now. Prices are still incredibly inflated and the Founder's Edition is really just an overpriced reference card. Thanks to the "Australia tax" the 100 USD premium translates to 200 AUSD, so I definitely just wait for AIB designed cards.

AMD is dicking around a bit. Lisa Su lost control and Raja Koduri is trying to kill AMD for some sweet Intel money.
They did announce the RX 480 though.
Nothing is confirmed about the performance yet. 36 CUs have been confirmed which should mean 2304 Shaders. A leaked slide mentions 5.5TFLops so that would put it at ~1200MHz. The 150W TDP seems unexpectedly high for such a "low" number of Shaders and clockrate. This might not be the full chip, but instead be a lower clocked salvage chip, with a full chip and possibly another 36 CU chip both at higher clockrates appearing later.
We don't know exactly what the performance will be like but it should be around a 980 / 390X, worst case a bit lower, but still noticeably better than the 970 / 390.

Here's the kicker though: Delaying the launch until after Computex makes sense so they don't have Bristol Ridge and GPUs launching at the same time. But it would leave a lot of the market to nVidia if the full Polaris 10 chip was supposed to launch at 350$ and compete with the GTX 1070. Now what if they've given up on that because they've moved Vega to October?

Sure, it's a bit dissapointing that nVidia won't have competition in the 300$+ segment until October, but that's not actually a bad thing. Because even if the RX 480 is the biggest Polaris chip we'll see it's still the best GPU we've seen in years.
Why?
Because it's 200$.
200$ for performance better than two of the best price/performance GPUs (970 / 390) we've seen in a while, which were 300$+. 1/3 less for better performance. 200$ for performance that you would've payed 500$ (980 / 390X) a few months ago. Better than 970 / 390 performance at the price of the already ridiculously good price/performance 380.

Yeah, I can see that selling.

They're also advertising that two RX 480s will beat the snot of a 1080 in Crossfire at 2/3 the price, but that's a different story.

#1281
See #1282.
If you don't tell me what you're trying to do I'll just recommend a Raspberry Pi and 700$ of thermal paste.

#1283
Clockrate is king for TF2. Also Skylake isn't any more expensive than Haswell nowadays and the higher DDR4 speeds help a bit as well.
The V300 is the SSD anti-christ. Do not buy it.
For the love of god, wait until Polaris launches. They've already announced a card at 200$ which is looking to be the best thing since sliced bread and I'm pretty sure we'll see something great at 100 and 150$ as well.
30$ max for a CX PSU. Corsair CX x50 and EVGA x00B are entry level PSUs. If you can't find them <=30$ they're not worth it (unless there's nothing else available, then maybe 35$). Get whichever is cheaper (in this case 500B at 30$).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($215.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($57.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($31.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($63.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($60.73 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 380 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($141.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($43.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $645.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-01 04:13 EDT-0400

Again though:
For the love of god, wait until Polaris launches.

#1285
I thought it was a troll, but then I checked your profile.

The headset, the case, the fans, the 32GB RAM at the lowest possible speed.
I died a little inside.
The only thing this could get any worse is if your profile is actually right and it's an i7-6700 non-K. Judging by the lack of a cooler it probably is.
So much money down the drain.

Why would you even upgrade though? The difference is minor.