#1061
How should I know if you'll think it was worth it? Have you ever used/seen a 120/144 Hz monitor before?

I mean there's a number of options including but not limited to:
-lowering your expectations (read: live with the drops) or
-lowering your settings

Don't take this the wrong way, but you insist on high settings, playing high sens engie in pubs. It just doesn't strike me as an aim-heavy playstyle, so I don't really see you benefitting from a 120/144Hz monitor.

#1062
Never upgrade for the sake of upgrading.
If you don't need better performance you'd just be wasting money.

If you need a larger SSD, get a larger SSD. You could try moving some more stuff to the HDD first though.

#1059
Too bad. AA is one of the few things that you could turn up with little performance impact because it's done on the GPU.
Doesn't really matter though because it's not happening.
I could recommend a better build but you won't get what you want so I don't really see the point. I'd only end up getting blamed for it not living up to your expectations.

#1057

1. Skylake is newer and faster. Chipsets got more/better features, DDR4 is faster.
   
2. Full ATX is more expensive. Unless you need more PCIe slots than you can get on µATX I don't see the point. µATX cases are smaller and cheaper as well.
   
3. Why not? Because it puts you 30$ over budget.
   
4. How high? Max/movie cfg? Because I don't see it happening. For one TF2 simply doesn't do "stable fps". Unless your minimum fps are above 120 it won't happen. Secondly TF2 is CPU bound. 960 wouldn't be the problem (285/380 is cheaper and faster though), you could get away with less. But it's not possible in terms of CPU, not always. In 6s With a bit less than max and an i7-4790K@5.0GHz. In pubs? Not happening. On stock clocks? Not happening. On stock clocks with a CPU with lower base clock on pubs? Take a guess.
   
5. Ethernet > all though
   
6. So is the GN246HL.

Sooooo, what settings are you going for exactly? And is it for 6s, HL or pubs? Either way there will be drops, especially if you don't want to oc.

#1055
Why Haswell and not Skylake?
Why full ATX?
Why 16GB RAM?
Why a 970 and not a 390? Do you need either at all? Just for TF2 it's a waste of money.
Why WiFi?
Why the VG248QE and not the XL2411Z?

i7 does nothing for TF2. The 4790K would be better because of the higher clockrate but you can get that cheaper by overclocking an i5.

Budget?

#1053
There's lots of options, but I'd have to make a pretty long list to be able to guarantee that there'll actually be one of them in stock and not overpriced.
A brick and mortar shop won't have that many semi/fully modular 80+ Gold or higher PSUs in stock anyway, so just posting here again once you know what's in stock would make it far easier for me.
Same for the exact GPU and mobo model.
Availability of Toshiba HDDs can be a bit dodgy as well, if you can't get it or if it's overpriced the Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001) is an alternative. There's two versions of it though, one being almost on par with the DT01ACA, the other being significantly slower, which complicates things a bit.

#1051
BCLK ocs weren't really possible on Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Has-/Broadwell.

It's a lot more interesting with i5s, the 6400/6500 are 20-25% cheaper than the 6600K (possibly even more of a difference due to the shortage). With the i7s you don't really have that option. 10% isn't as big of a deal and with your budget there's no reason to cut corners.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($513.00 @ IJK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($99.00 @ CPL Online)
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 ($78.00 @ IJK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($129.00 @ Centre Com)
Storage: Toshiba 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($99.00 @ IJK)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card ($495.00 @ CPL Online)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($149.00 @ CPL Online)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($79.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Total: $1830.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-06 05:49 AEDT+1100

Thermalright Silver Arrow IB-E and Enermax PSUs might be cheaper and therefore worthwhile alternatives in Taiwan.
As always 390 > 970, cheaper and faster, unless you absolutely need nVidia for some reason.

No panel is exactly the same, so to figure out the ideal settings you need a colorimeter.

#1049
Any decent mobo, µATX or full ATX, will have 4 slots, so 2x4GB should do.
Why an i7?
Why not non-K overclocking, if you're only going for a minor overclock.

And most importantly: Budget?

I finally did some bare minimum testing regarding speed vs timings.
In other news I still hate manually adjusting DRAM timings.

speed timings latency fps
1333MHz CL9 ~13.5ms 222,53
1333MHz CL7 ~10.5ms 229,29 +3,04%
2400MHz CL12 ~10ms 245,66 +7,14% +10,39%

For reference:
typical DDR3, 1600MHz CL9: 11,25ms
typical DDR4, 2400MHz CL15: 12,5ms

In other words Skylake is definitely the way to go.
Pushing an i3-6100 to 4.5GHz (praise the non-K overclocking, I called it), should be far better than an i5-4590 (about the same price) and about on par with an overclocked i5-4690K (about 100$ more expensive unless you drop the Z mobo).

Well no voltage changes isn't that impressive. Turbo isn't as agressive on the 3630QM as on some other CPUs but it's still 8/8/9/10. So with linx on all cores you only get 107.66MHz * 32 (24+8) = 3445.12MHz, not much of an increase compared to 100.00MHz * 34 (24+10) = 3400.00MHz max single core turbo. Is it actually stable on 107.66MHz * 34 = 3660.44MHz? Is it fixed voltage or maybe it increased to voltage automatically to compensate? There might also be power throttling even if there's no thermal throttling.

I'd be suprised if you were able to control PCIe seperately since it should be the same die. Not the first time I've seen a modded BIOS display options that weren't actually available. I mean I've seen settings for components that weren't even on that specific mobo.

Yes on Nehalem etc BCLK and PCIe were still independent, kind of a given with a BCLK of 133MHz and PCIe at 100MHz.

#1047
You have to keep in mind that the max turbo is 3.9GHz (1/2 cores, with 3 cores it drops to 3.8, 4 to 3.7). So you can get that on all 4 cores without any added voltage and from there it's just 0.3GHz.

#20
There were some multiplier shenanigans as well. Either way they weren't locked.

On Sandy and Ivy Bridge a lot including PCIe is tied to the BCLK. 7% is about the max you'll get, beyond that, if not earlier it will just crash and burn. Haswell likes it even less. There's also no need to since you get straps on the K models.

I really doubt you got anything above 105MHz stable on Ivy Bridge and even if:
-Haswell is worse
-the difference between "shit fps" and good fps is definitely more than 5%.

#10
If you're getting shit fps with an i7-4790 something else is wrong.

#18
Intel didn't lock them before Sandy Bridge?

Try overclocking the BCLK on Haswell, I dare you. Not only won't it be stable it also fucks up PCIe so the GPU won't work either.

#1044
Previous gen CPU (or 2 gens old, depending on how you count), locked, then a cooler and a Z mobo. I'm not sure what you're going for but I don't think it'll work out.

SSD there's better choices, PSU there's cheaper or better options, etc. ...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£159.98 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£64.79 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£41.12 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£55.71 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£34.98 @ Novatech)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card (£249.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£39.19 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£41.76 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £687.12
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-02 20:43 GMT+0000

#1045
You should actually be able to do that with the stock cooler.

TF2 doesn't care about your GPU. You wouldn't notice any difference between a 950 and a 980 Ti.

So apart from the Steam beta thing there's nothing to fix. Every update so far has resulted in lower fps. Welcome to TF2.