inflictedpotato

I'm personally partial to our friends at schiit.com, especially with the Modi II ($100) or Modi II Uber ($150). Be warned, however, that this is just a DAC; you will need a separate amplifier. The new Schiit Fulla, an $80 USB DAC + amp combo also has excellent reviews.

The reason that the Fury X has 4GB is primarily due to chip yields and technical feasibility. If AMD could have given us 6 or even 8GB, they would have.

I'll try to answer all of your questions: 1) Looks pretty good. 2) Western digital. They have a much lower fail rate. 3) It depends on your overlocking intentions. Since the 4790k already has such an impressive clock, the 212evo is probably fine. 4) The Hero has a couple more SATA ports, some better overclocking, etc. than the range.r Not too much of a difference. 5) 1000 watts would give you a little more headroom / overclocking room, but if the 12v amperage seems adequate, you should be fine. 6) Both GPUs are great. 7) Need and water-cooling should never be in the same sentence. 980ti is a great card even at factory clocks. Custom water cooling with two GPUs and a CPU will cost a fortune. 3 AIOs is not really feasible either.

The only (!) times that gold plating matters is when incredibly high conductivity is needed (CPU pins etc) and for analog connections in attempt to improve the connections (hifi audio cables). It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever with digital cables such as HDMI or USB. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

A three way tie between my ATH m50s, Arturia Keylab 49, and Motu 8pre.

+1 for the H440. I also love the Corsair 750D.

These are Australian $, not USD. Everything looks more expensive.

This build seems to be somewhat color coordinated (red / black Asus Strix, black Corsair case with large window) and designed to look good. I'm sure aesthetics were a major factor and, having built twice with this board, I can recommend it for its feature set, stability, overclocking, and durability. (Side note on this series of boards: Never underestimate the value of a post code error display; it can save hours of troubleshooting.)

I'm not sure that this is within his budget.

First and foremost, welcome to the world of PC building. The part list looks good, but considering how disappointing the 390x (a rebrand of the 290x) is, I would opt for the 980 for its lower power consumption and greater overclockability. Good luck with your build.

30FPS is a little rough for anything but movies, and turning it down to 1080p really defeats the purpose. I would consider a 1440p panel instead. Watch for sales on the Monoprice one. Regardless, make sure that your GPU is up to par for above 1080p gaming if you wish to do so comfortably. What GPU do you have?

Compatibility and wattage looks good for the first build, but 500 watts is cutting it a little close with an R9 290, which consumes a ton of power. A quality 600w or 650w would be a safer bet. The second build will do much better in gaming performance, since the 290 beats a 280x by a huge margin; nevertheless, an SSD makes a huge difference in overall system responsiveness. If you can afford another $75 or so to upgrade the PSU and add an SSD, you will have a really solid machine for gaming and work. The 290 is still a good card for gaming, just watch power consumption.

I wouldn't worry about this behavior if temperature and performance are not impacted. You will notice the same thing with CPU clock speed in CPU-Z with Intel Speed Step.

Considering your (rather immense) budget, I would seriously consider going workstation grade with your motherboard / cpu / ram, although it is completely up to you. I would probably build something with a Xeon E5 1650v3 and ECC DDR4. With such a high budget, I would also include an NVMe SSD, such as the Intel 750 400GB. For the ability to upgrade to 3 or 4 way SLI in the future, I might consider a CPU supporting a full 40 PCIe lanes, such as the 5930k or the Xeon that I mentioned, since that is one of the major appeals of the X99 platform. Your graphics solution is wildly overkill for single panel gaming at 1080p; I would allocate more money to a 3x1440p setup, as the price for this resolution has fallen considerably. A single 4k gaming monitor could also be fun, although not necessary.With 2x 980ti, you could probably game in surround on all three.

Have you tried just a single stick of the Vengeance pro in RAM slot 0? Did that post?

You should be able to use one cpu with no problems. On certain boards, however, this will limit the available number of PCIe lanes. In addition, you will only be able to use 1 cpu worth of RAM slots. Work will be automatically distributed between the two CPUs, but keep in mind your workload; many tasks are better suited to the faster fewer cores of a single cpu system than many cores, and will fail to fully take advantage of the many cores of a dual cpu system. These boards are typically designed for intense workstation workloads, many of which can take advantage of tremendous quantities of ram, such as intensive video / audio production and scientific computation. Also, remember that only Xeon cpus can be used in dual CPU configurations.

This appears to be a pretty solid build. I would, however, consider pairing the 4690k with a Z97 motherboard, considering that it is an overclockable chip. I, personally, would also consider an SSD for overall system response, but it will have no impact on frame rates.