Brennan Price

I would have said that's a grounding issue, therefore meaning PSU. I would seriously change out the PSU, tell him to not use his PC until he can change out PSU. 520W would usually be enough for a system like this but generally, it's good practice to use a better PSU. I've had a similar unit kill two cards, it was only when I replaced the PSU that I fixed several issues at once. Although the PSU may not indicate that it's failing, it could still be dying on you. 

Thanks a lot man! I'll tell him

Yeah, I just mean that if Nvidia allowed it on the driver end then the leftover stock of these could be sold that way.

the very small amount of rap i enjoy tends to come from Gorillaz, there are some exeptions like Something Diabolical too tho

I agree, and I can tell that a lot of artists want that "nostalgic" aspect to their music, but it just dosen't do the justice. If you put aside your personal bubble of your opinion for a sec, some (if not a lot) of consumers like that beat and want more of it. It is not cool to really duplicate music, but I think some people want that "old" beat to their new music. I do agree with you that a lot of good music is the type of music that diverges from the trend of ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Look at Elvis for example, he totally changed the way we listen to music back in the 70's(mark me if I am wrong). He changed the culture and made us want something different than hyms and traditional music. Now it just comes down to, sico mode or mo-bomba.  So I do agree with you, but it dosen't mean you can just close yourself off and not listen to any music at all. Find something you like and listen to it. It can anything from country, to dubstep. (feels like I tend to over complicate things) XD

Don't wait till they start throwing things out, ask as soon as you can as they can probably give you something right away and if not they can put you down on a list of people to give things to when they eventually upgrade. Just gotta ask as soon as you can. 
 
Sometimes you can find people on ad sites just trying to get rid of things near to you, they won't usually charge anything but you've sure as hell gotta help them if they've gotta send it, they won't do that bit for free I'm afraid. 
 
Have fun  

Yeah, I completely agree, whilst it is getting harder to create 'New' music, I believe that good music is stuff that is being different and changing with the times though, new music being produced that sounds similar to other things is where most of the music industry is going at the moment. There are only a few decent bands and music artists that break these rules and sound different currently. What I dislike most, however, is some of the newer bands that are popping up and trying to sound like 70's or 80's music, it's really not the same as music to that era that experimented with sound more and techniques. I think part of it is the processing of the music too that plays a big part in this. 

I think the efficiency curve for a PSU changes depending on the unit, but they all can stably output their rated wattage, the efficiency rating just shows how much they pull from the wall to supply that wattage to the PC, higher rated units lose less to inefficiency. Stability shouldn't be an issue unless your hardware tries to pull more wattage than the PSU can supply. 

Or dump the entire shitshow and move to linux.

If it's the older green label CX unit I'd swap it out and see if that's the issue. Though a dude on a discord server I'm in has powered some pretty hungry hardware off a green label CX with no issues. Considering a new PSU is probably the single cheapest piece to buy for troubleshooting your rig though, I'd start with that. 

Honestly, I would put this down to PSU alone. I've had the same issue with a 650W Bronze PSU, when I changed to a 750W Gold, my freezing, poor performance and stuttering disappeared completely. However, I would also get it sorted quickly or don't use your PC until you've replaced the PSU. Using a bad PSU can cause your GPU to fail quickly or even kill it completely.

^^^ What model PSU is it? Corsair has budget units that I wouldn't trust to drive such expensive hardware, and then also literal godlike units that are some of the best in the business. 

Why can't people accept that China is not the first to claim this side of the moon? Pink Floyd was the first, they've had the dark side of the moon since 1973. 

Honestly, I wouldn't count that as a major concern as you could just get a 24 pin extension cable in the same colour that you'd have all the rest of your cables in  

I didn't even think of cable extensions, that will make it look much cleaner in the meantime. 

Ah I see, have you tried booting from a different drive with something like a Linux bootable drive instead? Then by playing simply games ya can see what happens. The SSD might be the issue instead so doing this might rule out the possibility of the SSD being an issue. As for the GPU, I'm not entirely sure what to suggest as like you said, £20 in shipping, and then the difference for an equally powerful card. If it is just the GPU that ya get issues with tho, maybe it is power supply as if not enough power is supplied then it can cause windows issues and drives not getting enough power too. As ya say though, I can imagine that if you don't have a donor board to hand then neither will you have a more powerful PSU to try either...
 
As for RAM, try an overnight or 24-hour test with memtest86 as only 2 passes isn't anywhere near enough to say stable I'm afraid. 

There's a chap on YouTube called LGR, he has  hotwheels and a barbie computer. 
 
Not that he'd sell them, but I mean he might have a line on where to get another. Drop him a message, it's a pretty big channel though so an immediate reply isn't a given 

my guess is mobo or RAM. my guess is that its failing POST and thats why its flashing. what did you do to test the RAM? memtest86 im guessing, but for how long?

Why are your using a list that disregards efficiency to "prove" that some PSUs are more efficient than their 80+ rating would indicate? The PSU tier list doesn't care for efficiency. A Titanium rated PSU can be super efficient, but if it performs poorly, it'll be in a lower tier. 
You are not being thorough, you're just showing that the Dunning-Kruger effect is real. 
 
The Thermaltake Toughpower Gold are different to the Toughpower. They're also in a different tier. So much for being thorough. 
 
And the "Pure Power 80+ Silver" isn't a PSU. Again, very thorough of you. Assuming you're referring to the Pure Power 10 ≥400W, you're still wrong. 
Here is the report on the Pure Power 10 500W: 
https://clearesult5.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/PLS/EQ5C0gYbR0VAu9K95VheWMIBN9EAxjKEfQdh157mWPuExw
And here is the report on the Strider Essential 500W:
https://clearesult5.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/PLS/Ecqrj5GjdSVNoEa7MDYMAEMBciqVG2iPU9UzboQnB9w-gQ
 
Here we see the efficiency at 10%, 20%, 50% and 100% load: 
Pure Power 10 500W: 84,47%; 88,72%; 89,73%; 85,58%
Strider Essential 500W: 86,31%; 89,76%; 90,41%; 87,62%
 
As you can see, you're completely wrong, as the lower tiered, 80+ Gold rated, Strider Essential is more efficient than the higher tiered, 80+ Silver rated, Pure Power 10. Feel free to get a feel of how wrong you are by checking all of the 80+ reports. 
https://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx
For most people, the performance of a gaming PC is how much RAM it has, or which CPU it has. What actually matters, though, isn't that. 
Same for PSUs. The performance is what matters when talking about the performance. 

Oh hell yeah. That's a late model DDR3 LGA 775 motherboard. Buy the best LGA 775 CPU you can afford (the best reasonable choice is the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (about $100), but the Q6600 or Q9500 are fine (and much cheaper (I think ~$20 for a 6600.) 
 
And you have a PCIe slot, so any modern GPU will work fine. A used 760 or 960 will be ~$100.
 
EDIT: I lied, the Q6600 is $10 on ebay, the Q9500 is ~$30. And there are many other quad core CPUS from that era that would work as well. Just search "core 2 quad" or "core 2 extreme".

Never cheap out on the power supply, even if a power supply says it's Bronze through Gold rated, that means nothing unless the efficiency of the power supply unit is good as well. 
 
This has been discussed on the forum before and I would recommend looking at the link below, you'll find tiers from 1 to 7, Tiers 1 to 3 are the best if you can get hold of them. These three tiers will last the longest and will often have a greater warranty too. 
 
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/631048-psu-tier-list-updated/
 
Personally, I use a Tier 2 EVGA 750W GQ, I moved to this from a Tier 6 power supply and I can honestly tell the difference, plus I've gained a bunch of extra cool power saving and temperature saving features too. 

Take out the PSU , turn it upside down so any water inside can drip out.
 
Dry everything u can. The CPU socket, use compressed air.
 
leave it for a day to dry.
 
test the PSU prior to installing anything, use the 24 pin jump method. if its going to pop its best it does it when not plugged into anything else.

Couldn't be more wrong.
 
You can perfectly well play modern games on an LGA 775 motherboard. (Assuming that motherboard supports the higher end LGA 775 chips.)

I have a question... How much £ if I wanted one? However, it's looking great so far, wish there were other cases and solutions like this on the market that wasn't stupidly expensive. 

If you don't game then 1700$ is crazy overkill for a PC of any sort. You could get by with a 400$ small form factor build and it will more than satisfy your needs however it won't be very portable if you need to use in your classroom. Will you need to use the device in a classroom??? What course are you taking??
 
Your best option is a thin and light laptop. MacBook Pros are more expensive than Windows counterparts but they do have great build quality on the outside, good audio and screens and depending on the processor, decent cooling and battery.
 
However, the internals are custom Apple stuff(poorly designed) which are very quirky and even moisture from the air could brick your MacBook. This won't be a concern right away but repair costs from Apple authorized service centers can be expensive if you have bad luck and might not even solve the issue. Most people don't have these problems and while all companies have such problems none of them are so expensive to fix and the number of problems you will face will be much lesser. You should take a look at this channel to understand what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w
 
So you could get most problems fixed by a similar reputed repair group if you end up with bad luck. However, unless you need MacOS I would recommend getting a Windows Machine and adding Linux or any other OS you want and make it a dual boot system.
 
If you need a touchscreen, a 2 in 1 tablet like the Surface Pro lineup offers very good build quality and battery life with decent performance for much less money. If you don't require a touchscreen, go with a good ultrabook.
 
LG Gram- Battery Life is best in class and good build quality, ultra light under 1 kg(depends on model)
Dell XPS- More premium and better build quality, better performance, heavier and less battery life.
There are other options like the Asus Zenbook but first decide between touch or no touch, and MacOS or Windows.