#1077
1. Haven't heard about that yet. Link(s)? On 1080p 4GB aren't necessary, with a 380/960 it'd just be waste of money. Turn up the settings high enough to even get close to 2GB and you're looking at <30 fps average. http://www.teamfortress.tv/post/514892/pc-build-thread

2. Depends on your headphones. Not sure how much research you've done regarding that. Although given that you want a mic as well the input pre amp (or rather the lack thereof) of onboard might not cut it. The audio setup is a whole different can of worms though.

3. Depends on the game and settings. In TF2 also on the CPU clockrate.

#1075
1. You still need a Z mobo, it's pretty much "normal overclocking". I'd say it's definitely worth it. i5-6400 + Z mobo + cooler should get you better performance than a 6600 on stock clocks at about the same price. Only once you start pushing past ~4.4GHz I'd expect it to get difficult, but going from 4.4 to 4.8 isn't really worth the premium of the 6600K.

2. The N200 should be in stock at umart and IJK, but there's other options as well.

3. No idea if you'll think it's worth it. The XL2411Z is a nice monitor regardless and it was within budget.

4. Honestly if your wiring is bad enough to prevent powerline (and it's not just the rooms being on different phases/legs, whatever you want to call it) it's a fire hazard. Anyway, here's a way cheaper USB 3.0 wireless adapter that still performs pretty well.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($269.00 @ Centre Com)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($55.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($189.00 @ IJK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($75.00 @ IJK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($129.00 @ Centre Com)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($68.00 @ Umart)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card ($288.00 @ CPL Online)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($59.00)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($77.00 @ Umart)
Wireless Network Adapter: Edimax EW-7822UAC 802.11a/b/g/n/ac USB 3.0 Wi-Fi Adapter ($45.00 @ Umart)
Monitor: BenQ XL2411Z 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($449.00 @ CPL Online)
Keyboard: Cooler Master Storm QuickFire Rapid Wired Gaming Keyboard ($110.00)
Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-AD700 Headphones ($150.00)
Other: Sony ECMCS3 mic ($30.00)
Total: $1993.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-18 22:47 AEDT+1100

There's 3 different "features":
1. 120/144Hz. Lower motion blur/smoother motion.
2. Lightboost. Even lower motion blur.
3. G-Sync/FreeSync. Eliminates the stutter you'd get when your fps drop below your refresh rate.

G-Sync/FreeSync obviously won't help you since you're getting 300fps. 300 > 144 > 60 (not all x-Sync monitors are 120/144Hz). Some further information, just for future reference:

Lightboost is sort of the next step to 120/144Hz. All Lightboost monitors are at least 120Hz, but not all >=120Hz monitors support lightboost. With your budget there's really no reason to cut corners just for saving 30$. Get the XL2411Z. It offers more options regarding Lightboost than other monitors (except for the other Benq XL Z and G of course). The monitors cheaper than it aren't PWM free (see #10) or don't even support Lightboost. Specifically the Asus VG248QE also got worse colours.

About the XL2420G: It's simply not worth it in your case. The main selling point over the Z series is G-Sync, which requires an nVidia GPU (not sure if you own one) and won't help at all in your case.

#1073
1. Shame, non-K oc on Skylake is nice.
2. No, not really.
3. What about Lightboost though?
4. More than 75$ for a cable? Does your router even have ac? Even if, does that much bandwidth actually make sense? We're talking about Australian internet, aren't we? There's also powerline if you're going to spend that much.

#1071
The usual questions:
Do you want to/are you willing to overclock?
Do you really need full ATX?
Colours vs 120Hz, Lightboost yes/no, G-Sync/FreeSync yes/no?
Why Wi-Fi?

#6
You're still getting all of it for less than the regular price of just the 5930K, which is nice. That means you can buy your own pizza.

I'm not actually jelly though because I don't do anything like rendering that could actually use the 6 cores. Amdahl would just be having a field day and it'd end up slower.
The only deals I'm waiting for right now are nearline HDDs with >=1TB/platter and >=4TB total (ideally >=1.2TB/platter and >=6TB total).

No, it wouldn't work through the VPN.

Just use UDP or TCP instead of ICMP. Even WinMTR can do that.

Ah yes, may I suggest the gentleman take his leave and fornicate thine self.

Sincerely, Setsul.

They haven't "disabled all ping/traceroute related testing within the cmd prompt" unless it's a school pc. They are probably just blocking ICMP. UNIX traceroute defaults to UDP and you can set it to use TCP if that doesn't work. If you've only got Windows there's programs that can do the same (e.g. pingplotter).

You won't be able to fix the problem if you don't know where it is and can't even prove it exists at all. Point your finger at them all you want, but do you really think without any evidence this is going to help? They won't go "Oh well, I guess our network is fucked, we should definitely do something about this", they'll go "Ok, it's only a single student complaining and we can't reproduce the problem. Chances the problem isn't our network, instead his pc or the gameserver: >99%. Case closed."

In fact they pretty much said that.

Right now to them you're just looking like a clueless student playing on a shitty gameserver crying that the internet is broken and they must fix it.

Sorry if this is all a bit harsh. My points are:
-Blaming people without proof is never a good idea.
-Just guessing what the problem is and then only trying to fix that even though there's a lot of other options what the problem could be, because "surely this must be problem" is never a good idea.
->Find what's causing the problem first.

Well what do trace routes and the server admins do suggest that the issue is?

#1068/1069
You could've just edited your post.

Don't know what you're trying to do, don't know the budget. So I can only say the first build is pretty bad, the second is ok-ish but could be better.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do but editing the profile called "Team Fortress 2" might be easier.

#3
That is truly fascinating, but could you check usage and temps anyway?

You should be able to force it with nVidia Inspector.

#1065
I never said that. While I am against the concept I do understand Intel's reasons.
What I said was that they're not worth it most of the time.*
The whole point of K CPUs is to make you pay extra for the option of overclocking. All non-K CPUs are locked down. You can't oc them**. That's the whole point.

*Performance that you can't get without overclocking doesn't really count because by then you've left the territory of good price to performance ratio long ago. And from a price to performance standpoint if you have to pay extra not only for the mobo and cooler but for the CPU as well, combined with the mediocre overclocking results of Ivy Bridge and Haswell the proportional increase in cost will be larger than the increase in performance. In other words the price to performance ratio gets worse.

**BCLK is still an option but it's more trouble than it's worth (~7% max and destabilizes PCIe -> GPU). Only now on Skylake with PCIe and BCLK independent it became interesting again.

#1066
I might as well just copypaste #1056 and edit it.
Why Haswell and not Skylake?
Why an i7-4790K and a cooler, but a H97 motherboard? Overclocking yes or no?
Why 16GB RAM?
Why a 960 and not a 285/380? Do you need either at all? Just for TF2 it's a waste of money. 960 4GB is just bullshit by the way.
Why no SSD?
Why a 650W PSU for a 300W build?
Are you absolutely sure about Windows 10?