WaterproofBeanie

For the simple reason that I only know one person with a Razer keyboard, and I have only tried it briefly. The keys feel similar, but just slightly different, to the Cherry Blues that I prefer.

Wow this looks awesome. Are you planning on watercooling the graphics card as well? Seems that with only the dual radiator mounts you are going to have some issues.

The Razer keyswitches aren't that bad. However, Cherry switches are better known and you have more options. Personally, I would recommend either the Ducky Shine 5 or the Corsair Strafe/K70 RGB if you want a similar look to the Blackwidow

It 'should' be fine. (640k is enough for anyone hehehe). I guess it depends on how games develop. Realistically, though, for some games it will matter, for some games it won't. I would say you should be fine for 2-3 years for sure, beyond that might be questionable.

Assuming you are in America, then the 980 new would cost around $500. This suggests that the 780ti is only $300, which is 40% cheaper. Looking at benchmarks, there is usually a 5-15% performance delta. Is that worth it? I would go for the 780ti personally. Rather have $200 cash and a 780ti than a 980. EDIT: A bit more info - neither card will be able to push 144hz at 1080p in current games. Realistically, either of those cards is looking at 60-100fps depending on the game currently. (Source: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1441?vs=1442)

Should have figured that out. I couldn't see a graphics card in your new builds and was confused... teehee As for some of the questions you raised, the both the X99 and Z170 builds will be easily able to handle a second 980ti in SLI. However, only the X99 build will be able to take a third card. This leads into another of your questions, about the PCI-E SSD. While both platforms will be able to take it, iirc you will not be able to run SLI and use a PCI-E SSD on Z170, only X99. Given your choice of cooler I assume you plan to overclock, so the difference in clock speeds should not really matter. Having said that, going X99 severely limits your upgrade path for CPUs. There are not going to be any new 2011-3 CPUs, so you will be limited to the 5930K/5960X. If you do not plan to upgrade for the next 2-3 years, that should be fine. Overall, the X99 build wins for me based of your criteria

So you are planning on reusing your existing 980ti?

This is legitimately beautiful. In Australia, I know that PCCG sell sleeved cable extensions. (Their 'Plasma' colouring seems to match the other cables you had pretty well)

Yeah, I agree. Partially performance, and also because nvidia are evil.

Given that removing a stick of ram works, try the other stick of ram in the slot that the working one was in. If the computer still boots, then it is likely a motherboard issue.

The S340 doesn't have any optical drive bays

Isn't the minimum requirement for 64 bit windows 7 2 gigabytes of RAM? On topic, I designed HTML webpages on my second generation iPad. It isn't intensive. For animation, any of those CPUs will be good, but possibly the 5820k will be better.

If you are deciding between the 4790k and the 6700k, then there is no contest. The 6700k has a newer socket, chipset, architecture and manufacturing process.

What are you using it for? At 1080p or even 1440p there is no real reason to upgrade now, you should be getting at least 60fps most of the time. I second the others, waiting until next year would seem to be the best option. Hopefully nVidia's Pascal, or AMD's new architecture, will provide some significant improvements along with the newer manufacturing process

You can fit up to a Corsair H110, but their H100(i) will fit more easily. I would reccommend a Swiftech H240-X, however. Very high quality and looks beautiful/

That will be more than enough for just windows. You will also be able to store some of your main applications on it. And, while I own the 240gb version of that SSD, I would recommend a Samsung 850 EVO instead. However, they are both good and will likely serve you well. Realistically, a 60gb SSD would work fine for just Windows, but the bigger the better.

Realistically, no current AMD socket has a real upgrade path at the moment. If you only want 2 graphics cards, then I would go for LGA1151 socket, as it has a mostly guaranteed upgrade path from here. So, CPU suggestions: At the moment, the i7 6700k is the fastest processor on that socket. At stock speeds it boosts up to 4.2 ghz, with four physical cores, with a total of 8 threads due to hyperthreading, However, if multithreaded performance isn't as big a deal for you, then the i5 6600k is also strong. Realistically, if you are planning to upgrade down the line, by the time either of those, (especially the i7) is slowing down your computer, the socket will likely be equally obsolete. Bear that in mind. For motherboards, it depends on the form factor you want. Going from smallest to largest, we can rule out mini ITX because it only supports 1 graphics card. Moving up to micro-atx, for the best experience go for either the GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5, the Asus Z170M-Plus or the Asus Maximus VIII Gene. Between these, the functional differences are little. With ATX boards, overall, it doesn't really matter. Just make sure that it has the Z170 chipset, and supports SLI/Crossfire. Without more specific information I can't really help.

I built my first computer when something in my mum's prebuilt came loose. It booted, after you gave it a smack. Of course, this was no problem for my enterprisng younger brother and his friend (at the time around 9 years old) came up with the brilliant idea of flipping the switch on the back of the power supply that let the user manually choose between 240v and 120v current. They flipped it to 120v, and after about 10 seconds of running it made a bang sound, and started smoking. I figured I might be able to do something, so I (at the time 12 years old) did some googling and ended up fixing it. The power supply only took out the motherboard, ram, cpu and graphics card. Naturally, once I fixed it (with some exterior funding), whenever it didn't work for whatever reason, it was my fault. yay.

Try updating the BIOS, but it might not do anything.

Definitely remove the graphics cards. If you still have the original boxes, pack the computer in the case box and the graphics cards in their own boxes. Make sure all the drives are securely screwed in. And if you have a big air cooler, take it off for shipping.

I bet that camera is truly terrible. Upscaled 6mp photographs or something.

Sapphire for sure, but be careful. It is a VERY long card.

My school has these, but they are phasing out the computer labs and getting us to bring in our own tablets or laptops. The 'music lab' on the other hand, has 2008 iMacs. They are so slow, especially because they all login to a server. I am a bit disappointed. In 4th grade I was able to single-handedly bring down the whole network, and bypassing the blacklist internet filters was easy. Around two years ago they switched to a massive whitelist, which nobody has found there way through yet. The admins really tightened up the security, locking down everything. At least the school internet is capable of around 500/100 with about 20ms ping after hours, because nobody uses the system. With students at school it drops to a fairly consistent 20/50 line, just with multiple layers of filtering.

My first PC was a family computer bought from the local PC guy. It had a Pentium 4 2.6 GHz, 1.5 gb of DDR1 (or at least it does now, it has two older 256mb sticks, I am assuming that the 1gb stick was added later), I think a 9500GT, but only because I have a few spare lying around the house. No-brand power supply, cooler master centurion 4 or something case. It had a 200gb seagate hard drive, using IDE. My next computer was, again, a family computer. My father is vision impaired and used zoom/screen reader software that is very demanding on the computer, so my parent's computers are fairly cutting edge. This one had a Q9400, 4gb of DDR2 ram, another 9500GT and a 1 terabyte hard drive in the centurion 5. I still use this computer, but with a gtx 960, an SSD, an 80+ silver power supply, scavenged an extra 4 gb of ram, and put it into a new case. The toolless PCI slot cover system on the Centurion 5 is riveted in, and putting in any modern graphics card prevents it from properly locking, causing all the slot covers to fall out. My parents, on the other hand, are rocking an i72600/8gb ram build. HD6770 graphics card. I manage the computers in my house, but the OS is tied to the motherboard so I can't steal her cpu. And my Grandma is fairly tech-savvy, but bought her first computer in the early 90s and has the 2000+ dollar (AUD) price bracket burned in as the lowest price for a good cpu. Which is why she has a 3930k, 16 gb of ram and a 780. In a beige box.

Why are you looking at the Define R4? The R5 has been out for more than 6 months now, and is what the S is based on.