00RaZoR11

Are you trying to run a drive bay pump and res?If not you have no pump at all.If it was me i would lose one top odd bay aka cd drive bay they unbolt from that case.Mount the rad in the top depending on thickness.I would skip the 120mm rad in the back its really not needed.And i would just mount a cylinder res/pump combo somewhere on the floor of the case.Or move down a case size the core x5 is the same design but smaller and use a 360 top and maybe a 360 side,But really unless you want to overclock both the gpu and cpu a single 360 rad is enough for your build.And if you want to overclock the cpu i would delid it or if you don't know how or scared you might break it https://siliconlottery.com/collections/all/products/7700k50g
Will sell you a delidded cpu.The reason you delid intels is to make them run 29 degrees or colder c then a stock one,This way you can overclock it higher with out thermal throttling.And something you can play with to show the parts you need https://www.ekwb.com/custom-loop-configurator/

Why not skip the custom loop and just buy faster parts.

Yeah you can hard line any custom water cooling part.Only thing different over soft tubing is the tubing and fittings the rest like rads and water blocks etc etc,Are the same since its all the same threaded ports.

So long as you have proper tubing and compatible fittings, yes, the radiator doesn't determine if you can use hardline tubing.

I would go for the 2x 280mm rads and get a USB Optical Drive and connect it whenever you want to play games that require a disk. 
 
 

Because it's an aluminium kit with a gpu block intended for reference/founders cards. Your strix card has a different pcb layout and thus is not compatible with this gpu block. You can't just buy another gpu block because those will usually be nickel/copper, which can't be mixed with aluminium components. You'll have to find an aluminium gpu block intended for strix cards specifically, but I haven't seen any alu gpu blocks for the strix or other custom cards.
 
Also I wouldn't use a aluminium budget loop with a high end build (assuming since you have a 1080ti). Either go full custom (copper) or stay on air. 

The evolv sucks for air flow unless you mod it or buy a new top and front like https://modmymods.com/custom-services/phanteks-case-mods.html
But what those cost you can buy a better case.

The local IT suggestion was an H81 motherboard for 110€ (assembly included) but I can find the same one for 41€ on amazon, it might not be a High end one but good luck finding a new one for cheap (talking about z97).
 
At this point in time ( even if money is not a problem ) I'd prefer to limp my way towards a new generation of cpus and gpus, everything is working fine I can game I can browse and everything mildly intensive so theres no worry.

I personally don't really like ASUS boards anymore... the more "highend" ones are what I call "Ram Zicke" ... means extremely picky with ram modules.
 
For quite some time I personally use the Fatal1ty boards... First from Abit, now from ASRock. Even suggest those when I do builds for friends. Never went wrong with those. 
 
From the benchmarking point of view they are not the top, but quite well in the upper tier. 
 
The ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming K6 could be an option. Cheaper than the Taichi but still a good decent board.

Some shops just want your money...
Yesterday I had a fight with my sytem, becase it was locking up with 3 or 4 cores active, but it was running fine with 1 or 2. Hyperthreading didn't matter. I thought I fried the 3rd core, but when I plugged in a different HDD, it worked. 4 cores and all!
So I reinstalled windows on the main drive, and started reinstalling all my stuff. Unexpectedly, after a restart, it locked up again. Turns out the "easy OC suite" included with the motherboard completely crashes the system!
If I was less techy, I'm sure I'd have ordered a ryzen by now.
So you can't trust tech shops, nor the gigabyte ultra durable team.

Return it? No. The rig isn't malfunctioning, nor it has a fault, per se. The cause for return is not justified and they won't accept it, no normal retailer would. 
The consumer market was hit with such performance drop that you won't notice it, if we're to believe trusted sources. Now, server stuff does get hit a lot harder. I updated my laptop and PC, no issues whatsoever. But as I see it, it is the normal windows update issue, I don't think it's this patch specific.

well, keep them up to date... buy some pretty stout security software, maybe invest in heavy grade firewall protection, lock down your systems...
 
you know how to do this...
 
OM... YOu are a genius. an Economics GENIUS! I'm going to buy up EVERYONE'S 6700k/7700k/8700k for pennies on the dollar! shower me with CPUS!
 
Let the good times roll!

exactly what i am thinking ... this whole thing gets blown out of proportion. makes good headlines, after all. 
 
this has existed for so long and not been abused yet.
but now, after all the noise about it, i bet some people will try to craft a weapon grade exploit around it. 

CPU quality means how well the cpu is build. If you would go to your local computer shop and just buy 2 7700k's, they will overclock differently.
THey can both OC fine, or like ass, or 1 fine and 1 like ass, you don't know! We call it the silicon lottery You never know what you'll get until you try!

That might not be enough voltage, not every CPU is the same, some CPU's will be fine at those settings, some won't. It's all about searching the limit of your own cpu.

The Aorus Ultra is complete crap, the Carbon isn't

MSI.
 
I'm going to get flak for this but I don't care, Gigabyte are trash and have been since Z270 launched. Something changed at Gigabyte during the transition between Z170 & Z270, the issues started manifesting themselves on the lower end boards at first but in the last 6 to 9 months it seems like buying anything from them is a crapshoot.
 
Heat issues
power delivery issues
incompatibility issues
Instability issues
UEFI updates that break more than they fix
 
I wouldn't take a Gigabyte board if it was given to me.

After they suggested an H81M motherboard from Asrock for the price of 95€ plus installation (the motherboard retails for 45€ on Amazon) I brought home my poor hunk of metal defeated.
 
Welp, since I was at it and I had the time I decided to unscrew everything, remove Ram, Gpu, every single cable and put some new thermal paste on my cpu, and yeah, it works.
 
My take from this is that, if for no reason your pc won't start, after determining that the Psu, Ram, Gpu or whatever drive you have installed are not at fault, and you've determined that the culprit is the motherboard, you should try and start over (minus cable management, I wouldn't even dare to untangle everything after all the work I've done).
 
So yeah, thank you tech shop for not testing the motherboard alone, after I've suggested so.

You can see what programs are using the most resources with task manager

You are using DDR4 RAM's. Double Data Rate. So double the number you see in programs like CPU-Z and got the actual speed.

stop panicking for starters... 78c under load is quite alright.

I've seen this problem before myself with Old hardware. (between 6 and 10 year old mobo's, 24/7 usage) For me, the BIOS chips would degrade. If it's the same for you, you could try to update/downgrade/change your BIOS version and check if it makes a change. (the most important thing here is to rewrite data to your BIOS)
 
Another thing you might want to consider to bypass this problem, is putting the pc in sleep mode. That way, it isn't really turned off, and it will skip parts of the BIOS. It's not an cold start. (and also, your load times will most likely improve when starting up this pc) Power draw is minimal during sleep mode, and noise is non exsisting.

DIfference should be negligable.

Just having it in a different slot wouldn't make that much(honestly, barely any) difference to the benchmarks you found on google.
Is his card overclocked? cause there's a 99% chance the results you found on google were OC'd  and that's without factoring in difference in settings.

Thats exactly what you dont do with motherboards.
Also, the shrouds are plastic and flimsy