DirkW

WUT? Red louder than Black? Nope. Reds are among the most quiet drives in WD's line. Well some stuff about the Reds (TLER) is actually only important in a RAID, so they are indeed optimized for RAID. However, they work just as fine as a single drive in a desktop, as they do in a RAID array on a NAS or server.

Should work, yes. But are you sure the GPU is the lowest part of the loop (not only counting the obvious components like blocks, res, pump and rad but also of the whole tubing, etc.)? In my loop the lowest part is actually a section of tubing - and I put a T-connection in there, with one end being a dead end with a valve (and an additional plug just to be safe).

@IhazHedont Unless I'm missing something on first glance, a loop like that wouldn't work well at all. The water would just rush straight through on the right side (least resistance) and not go through the blocks to cool the GPUs at all. You'd have to move the top outlet on GPU #1 to the left port, so the water has to go through the block to get out, not just pass straight through the ports. And when you use 2 identical GPU blocks (otherwise don't even bother with parallel!), resistance should be be equal, and water should "divide up" and each half go through one particular block before exiting.

For gaming Z97 should be plenty. X99 is usually over all too expensive to make it feasible for a normal gaming PC (at least in my opinion).

Only national? Damn, then I'm out. Actually it's because of Dual Data Rate (=DDR), not dual channel.

Most people don't understand that there's a difference in core temps and the amount of heat a CPU dissipates in Watt.

An SSHD is basically a normal mechanical harddrive with a small SSD-Cache. So, yes, just like HDDs (but unlike full SSDs!), SSHDs can (and should) be drefragged once in a while.

With rapid mode enabled, people usually get numbers in the 3000's and come asking why their SSD is so super fast... @OP: It's really a bit mysterious, since the write speed doesn't seem to be affected at all, since it is still in the 500+ range. The 840 Evo had this read speed degradation for older files, which ld to a firmware update from Samsung, but I haven't heard anything like that about the 850 series...

Probably random, since on boot, the OS reads many (small) different files, rather than only a couple of big ones.

It really comes down to the looks, - and what that is worth to you. I'm happy with mine, but when I got it, I was fully aware of what I'm doing (buying an overly expensive piece of hardware just for the looks - ok plus the waterblock on it as well). If we leave those two things out... there's no way I would have bought this board, as you can get about the same hardware for roughly half that price. Anything ROG is pretty much always want, not need.

I'd say most of the time you'd be lucky to get 1 FPS difference in games with different system RAM at all.

If I go Ti at all, then very likely EVGA GTX980Ti Hydro Copper.

Well, it depends (as always)... things that load pretty much instantly with a SATA-AHCI-SSD already, will not be improved in any meaningful way. Things you need to wait for, may improve quite a bit.

Not from memory, but a quick google search led me to this: http://www.overclock.net/t/1227636/how-to-change-sata-modes-after-windows-installation

Actually you'd only have to make a small change in the registry before changing from AHCI to RAID in BIOS, then there'll be no BSOD.