Steel_Wind

I'm in Canada and I do not expect to get vaccinated until September or the first half of October. Vaccine is more likely before GPU, but there is a realistic chance, however small, of snagging a card on a restock. There is no "notify me" option for a vaccine! 

Next month? You are an optimist, aren't you?

I expect the best that vast majority of us can hope for is 4th quarter of 2021 -- and more likely? A year from now.
 

Okay well if you had a chance to get one by winning what amounted to an internet lottery today -- in a window of time that appears to have been open all of ~two minutes earlier? Then you did.

So either you bought one -- and that's that. Or you didn't -- and the sad truth is? That's that, too.

If you aren't paying a scalper's price? There are no 3060 cards to buy. That's the sad reality.

Gamers have been thrown under the bus to Ethereum cryptominers by nVidia. And nVidia was quite content to throw computer retailers under the bus, too.

First, let me begin by saying I loved SYW Season 4 and I subscribed to Vessel because of it. I bought one of your shirts because of it. The main message is I loved it, ok?
 
 
The suggestions below are secondary to the main message:  Don’t Stop. I loved it. You all rock.  
 
 
Season 5 Suggestions:
 
Luke and Linus team up with another pair of case modders again. I’s be quite happy if it were Rod and Bob, or somebody new is fine too. Given that Rod and Bob proved to be great in front of the camera, perhaps you should leave well enough alone, but whatever.
 
RANDOM THEME BUILD: Prior to the competition, the staff at LMG puts together 12 “themes” on 12 separate cards/ slip of paper. The themes are general descriptions, of some interest to PC enthusiasts that would be recognizable to viewers.
 
Example: Star Wars, Star Trek, DOOM, Skyrim, Sports Team, WoW, Half-Life,  Marvel or DC Cinematic  Universe, Poker, Game of Thrones, Guns n’ Roses, whatever -- etc.. Point is: something with a strong theme that a few words may instantly describe.

At the beginning of the competition, each team draws its theme card in secret out of a hat and keeps the result secret from the other team until the reveal.

Budget – $900 was fine, but, whatever.
 
Judging – 50/50 Theme and Performance for a total score of 100. The build must be constructed in accordance with the theme.  
 
BONUS: For every $20 the team does not spend from its budget, it may add 1 point to its final score. This adds an element of price/performance and encourages haggling and pricing drama. There needs to be MORE of that.

WHY? Because it makes for filming entertaining purchases and results in way less less “just give me the system at that price” purchasing – which is BORING. Boring isn’t okay. Ever.  And "zero haggle drama" just isn’t the way your viewers actually buy from Craigslist either – so it shouldn’t be the way SYW does it.  
 
NEW RULE: Neither Luke nor Linus may make the call to a seller unless they are calling using an assumed name and an alternate gmail address with a different non-recognizable name on a phone tht does not identify who they really are.  If either calls saying his name is "Dave" or “Steve” or whatever -- that’s fine. But calling and saying "it's Linus" calling is NOT fine. It has to stop. 
 
If there is  haggling to be done face to face, then neither Linus nor Luke can do it and they cannot be present at the deal. Their teammate must do it on their own with just the camera man present. IMO, the R9 290 Reference Card “lottery win” was the direct result of favoritism by a subscriber. With FAME comes penalties. This needs to stop in order for the competition to keep a pretension to being fair.
 
A LITTLE BIT MORE TIME: Consider adding one additional day for build/construction to permit better execution of the random themed case mod.
 
 
 

Short Answer: There are no easily located cheap mobos for socket 1155 unless you want to overpay on eBay.
 
If you must, go the eBay route. However, having been patiently looking for the past three weeks for Z68/Z77 mobos, I ultimately came across a Asus ROG Maximum Extreme with a PCH initialization error for $41.00 and as part of another Craigslist system for cheap another Maximus Extreme. These were $500.00 mobos when released and they still pack a HUGE number of relevant options. In the end, I got two of them for about $70.00 each.
 
The one thing Scrapyard Wars is complete b.s. about is the artificial time constraints on the show. I get why the show does it, but for those of us who choose to build with some used components out of choice or necessity. -- it teaches the EXACT wrong thing.
 
To acquire enthusiast grade used parts, you must be patient. It will take 2-4 weeks of watching eBay/Craigslist/Kijiji and other used online ads to find your parts. It isn't a Newegg or Amazon ordering experience; It is not remotely the same thing at all.
 
Be patient, watch the ads extremely closely for several weeks and look at whole systems too from which you can poach parts and resell the rest.  Over time, you will develop a real feel for every little feature and topography of the used market at a component level. (It is quite an addicting hobby in itself, actually.) 
 
You will find that with knowledge, patience and a bit of luck,  you can pick up a great cheap Z68 /P68 / Z77 mobo for use with an Ivy Bridge CPU.
 
It just takes work and patience. An awesome deal is not a click away and off the UPS truck tomorrow. That isn't the way this works.

Given that one RX 480 blows away the performance of about 99% of all PCs, and more than 94%+ of the so-called "gaming PCs" in the marketplace based on Steam's data from March 2016, calling this a low-end card is a cup of bitter Green Tea. 

If it delivers 390x performance for $199? What it is, my friend, is the default video card for a gaming PC. Money talks VERY loudly. When you hit price/performance that squarely in the bullseye? The marketplace changes.

In fairness to the RX 480 -- it is promising more like a 390X in terms of comparable performance, not the 390. That's not a LOT more WangoZeeTango, but it is a significant bit of nitro in the tank in terms of comparisons and price/performance in the current marketplace.

I would say yes. Probably the best bang for buck and definitely an upgrade for you. Plus the power consumption will likely be less.

Yeah, you are the only one.  And you should not have stopped. It wasn't a review. 
 
They showed the card, showed the power connector and monitor hook-ups on the back of the card and told us the price point.

It wasn't a review. You need to lighten up Francis.

Yeah, you are the only one.  And you should not have stopped. It wasn't a review. 
 
They showed the card, showed the power connector and monitor hook-ups on the back of the card and told us the price point.

It wasn't a review. You need to lighten up Francis.

Yes. I have both the R4 and R5 and it is awkward as all hell to install in the R4 up top. You should be aware that a 240mm cooler may not even fit in your case, depending on your mobo's placement of its 4/6/8/12 pin to the mobo's cpu power. Yes, it's that touch and go and a real pain in the ass. Sorry about that news. FWIW, the Asus Gaming Pro Z170 does fit in a Define R4 with a 240mm H100iGTX cooler up top. But only JUST.  You might also have issues as well depending on the height of your heat spreaders on your RAM. They were fine with Corsair Vengeance DDR 4 3200  but just... FYI. 

The good news is that the Define R5 shifts the top fan placement from on centre to move the fan mounting holes outwards off centre, giving you WAY more room and a H100iGTX installs MUCH easier.

I built my own system in a R5 in January. I installed a H100iGTX in it up top and had zero issues. I loved the case. I built my eldest son's system in March and decided to go for an R4 for his as it was on sale, saved me $50 and the aesthetics were almost identical. "Why spend the extra $50", I thought.

How wrong I was.

Short Strokes: There is a DAMNED GOOD REASON to spend the extra $50. The build experience in the R5 over the R4 is superior in every possible way. All of the little things -- and some big things -- make the R5 a vastly superior case. If you have the money, get the R5 instead. Really, it's worth it. Building in the R4 is frustrating as all hell in comparison to the R5. It is a night and day experience.
 
Now, at the end of the day, the new Skylake system fit in the Define R4 and looks great and it works well. It's not that it cannot work. It can and does (depending on your parts). But the comparison to the R5 is not a favourable one.

If I had it to do all over again, I think I probably would have just built my son's system in a Deepcool Dukase (which fits both 240mm and 280mm easily up top) instead of the R4 and saved an extra $50 off of the R4 -- or paid more and bought an R5 or NZXT H440.  Either way, up or down in price will make for a build that would have made me happier than the R4 I got "on sale". 
 

A 500w should be fine. Hell, you might even get away with 450w, tbh. If you are like most games and "overbuy" on your wattage, go 600w or 650w if you must -- but any more than that is just totally wasting your money,

Trying to be lean on your wattage and devote your savings to better after market fans is not a bad thing. 3 (or 4) Corsair AF140s will make quite a difference in your case airflow and keep everything cool. 
 

around 500w should be pretty good

GPU wise, the release of the 1070 and 1080 will push down used card prices. I would agree that vram is an issue with the 570 and you are better off with a 3GB or 4GB card for 1080 gaming. A Radeon 7950 or 7970 would be a significant upgrade and can probably be found for not much money used. Wait a month or two -- it will be even cheaper. All of the older cards are about to take a hammering on the used market as the new nVidia cards push down the top of the market.
 
For used builds and upgrade inspiration, check out the Tech Yes City Youtube channel. Lots of older tech reassembled and put to use for modern PC gaming on that channel - that is what he does there. Given the gear you've got going on? Tech Yes City is perfect for you.

ROG Striker 2 Extreme is the very best, top shelf of the 775 mobos. They are hard to find and extremely expensive to replace these days. Great motherboard! 
 
Even still, you will find that a $10 add in card for more Sata 6 gb/s will be handy, and there are combo cards with USB 3 and esata on them as well. If you have the slots... it's very cheap to add. The cheap cards off of eBay from China work great, btw.
 
Apart from another GPU card, you might look at a NVME slot based drive -- though those are mondo pricey of course. 
 
For a CPU the fastest option is a socket 771 Xeon X5650. There are microcode patched BIOSes for the Striker 2 nVidia chipsets which run those Xeons. You won't find a faster CPU for that mobo. It will require an (easy) mod to the socket. (Google it or ask for the links here -- very easy to find and the Xeon CPUs are quite cheap to buy on eBay. Much cheaper than a Q based 775 CPU.) The mod won't effect its value as those who are looking for Striker 2 Extremes these days plan to mod them for Xeon use anyway. 
 
The retail Xeons (do NOT get an engineering sample) OC all to hell. You can get it to 4.2 under a 240mm AIO.
 
 

So I recently RMA'd my PSU (it was actually in error, long story) and I just had to mention my experience with Cooler Master support.
 
It was fantastic. The only RMA I have done other than this was 2 times with my GPU through MSI, and Cooler Master's support makes MSI an embarrassment in terms of customer support. I went on cooler master's site, first registered my PSU, and when submitting my RMA, it allowed me to auto-fill all info relating to my PSU (warranty, serial number, model, purchase date). My RMA was accepted within 24 hours. I had difficulties finding the RMA form I needed to print (it wasn't obvious) so I contacted live chat, at an awkward time (like 9:30 p.m EST, I was surprised they were online) and got help within 30 seconds, and within 45 seconds I was greeted with a hello and an apology for the thought-to-be-faulty PSU and a link to the RMA form I couldn't find a link to. I made a suggestion to have the form sent to you in the RMA accepted confirmation email (MSI does do that) so you don't have to find it on their website, and was told my idea was pretty good and was forwarded to IT.
 
Fast forward a week, I discovered it was not my PSU through indirect means (again long story, look at my posts). I contacted live chat again, and when talking it auto-filled all relevant info by automatically finding my current RMA (not having to re-find and type the serial number and various info was very nice, with MSI I was constantly filling out repetitive forms when dealing with support). Again, within 30 seconds (and at like 9:00 pm EST) I was connected, and within 60 seconds I was told the US RMA department is closed but he left a note on my RMA, and I was done with support. It took me 2 minutes from sitting down at my desk to having the issue handled (with MSI it was days and days of back and forth emails). Within 24 hours I got a email from the US RMA dept saying my note was received and they would be shipping the PSU back when they got it, the next day I got notified they got my PSU and that same afternoon it was shipped back and I got my tracking number.
 
Just thought my experience was definitely praise-worthy, amazon-support level quality. I was really impressed, good job Cooler Master.

Your bros problem is the CPU.
 
Rather than a Q6600, I would suggest a Xeon e5450 or Xeon x5650. Those CPUs are much faster than a Q6600 and are intended to run on a socket 771 motherboard; however, with an easy modification to the socket and a piece of conductive tape placed on the bottom of the Xeon -- together with a modded BIOS the Xeon will fit and work completely in most (not all, but most) mainstream 775 motherboards.
 
The retail Xeons noted above (you do not want an engineering sample for this) overclock all to hell and will go to 4.0-4.2GHz under a Corsair H60 AIO without difficulty. This will add significant power to your bros computer.  The Xeons go for about $25-35 on eBay.
 
If your brother does not already have 8 GB of RAM, I suggest that he upgrade from 4GB to 8 GB of RAM. DDR2 is expensive stuff but it is available off of eBay here: 

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/281705992229

The relevant thread to read is here:
 
http://www.overclock.net/t/1431723/mod-lga775-support-for-lga771-xeon-cpus

And the video to watch on the modification is here:
 
 
 

worst case scenario it will run at JEDEC speeds, you'll be fine

The Asrock H110M-ITX/ac  does support XMP so odds are good that you could at least get the 2666. Even if you can't it's no great loss.

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/2/
There's also that really useful website. Me and a friend followed it when getting an X5450 into an EVGA 680i SLI motherboard but that did require an FSB downclock.

It works with most mainstream moboards.  Read the thread on overclock.net and determine your mobo's compatibility.

What is your budget?

Do the 775 to 771 mod and take Xeon - faster clock speed, biger cache, cooler operation and therefore better OC potencial.

Using a Xeon e5450 or x5650 on a modded 775 motherboard is an option, especially if you have used gear in the basement. The Xeon's are cheap at about $25-$30 on ebay.
 
You can add SATA 3 6GB/s support via add in card for less than $10. Same for USB 3.0 at the same price. RAM for such a motherboard is less than $50. You should be able to find a used system with everything else you might want for diret cheap. The 775 motherboard you want is the P5QL Pro. It has the best overall features and supports both the 775 mod. PCIE 3.0 and 16GB ram. It is also mainstream as hell and there are a lot of them out there, used and cheap.   You can do this for LESS than $200CDN if that is your plan -- or come pretty close with some good Kijiji/Craigslist hunting.

I know. I recently did just all of this for $120 in Toronto.

The Xeon's are true hyperthreaded multicore systems, so rendering video on them is not all THAT bad, but you will want the 8GB ram.

It's not a 6600K Skylake on a Z170, but it's not a Skylake 6600k Z170 price, either. 

Fractal Design Node 304
 
Fractal Design Core 500 (best one imho)
 
Define Nano S
 
 Phanteks Evolv ITX