COUPER MILLAR

M.2 is a form factor. They can be SATA or NVMe drives. 
SATA based M.2 drives are no faster than 2,5" SATA drives

What is your budget? A 1060 6 gb would take care of most of that easily. 

Try updating the driver through device manager. 

Honestly I'd look at a surface pro or book. I had a surface pro 3 during pharmacy school and wouldn't have done it any other way. Being able to easily annotate professors slide in one note by hand was fantastic. 

Honestly I'd look at a surface pro or book. I had a surface pro 3 during pharmacy school and wouldn't have done it any other way. Being able to easily annotate professors slide in one note by hand was fantastic. 

Pretty sure Googleing that statement will take care of what you need.

It would require the PSU on, which would require the system on really. 
 
With how cheap 4/5 port switches are, you may as well just get a switch so it always works. 

Everything outside of your house doesn't matter, all that matters for powerline adapters is that the wiring inside your house isn't junk.

What is your ISP suppose to provide in terms of speed?

Ive been very happy with my MSI GS63VR. It's fairly light to carry, batter life is decent too. and best of all its on sale on new egg currently https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154674&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=IGNEFL111017C&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL111017C-_-EMC-111017-Latest-_-GamingLaptops-_-34154674-S0E&ignorebbr=1
 
Looking closer that is actually an older generation with skylake not kaby lake CPU. Still a great PC though. 

Seriously, for $1000 he could almost get two of them depending on how much he has to spend on a bare bones server. 

Seriously, for $1000 he could almost get two of them depending on how much he has to spend on a bare bones server. 

you can get 64 gb registered ddr3 on ebay for under $200 Us. Also you can upgrade to the max CPU's x5680's for about $150 US for a pair. CPU benchmark has them giving about 50% more performance for similar power usage

you can get 64 gb registered ddr3 on ebay for under $200 Us. Also you can upgrade to the max CPU's x5680's for about $150 US for a pair. CPU benchmark has them giving about 50% more performance for similar power usage

I have a similar set up with dual L5420's @ 2.5 ghz, and 32 gb ram and a quad Gbit intel NIC. It is currently running a PFsense and windows 10 virtual machines. The windows 10 VM is running a team speak server and 7 days to die server. PFsense is handling a 280 Mbit internet connection and approximately 30 simultaneous connections, with peak number of connections closer to 50. It works, but Im hesitant to add additional packages to PFSense and am running the windows VM at max more than I like. Trying to bump up one generation might give you a bit more wiggle room. 

I'm always very suspicious of molex to anything connectors

I'm always very suspicious of molex to anything connectors

Newegg.com 
 
without more informations this is all the help anyone can give you. What games are you playing, will you be using it for any other purposes? system specs, freesync monitor?
 

not necessarily. With the side panel off passive air flow across things like chipset, ram, and VRM's can be negatively affected. If you look at the open air benches that LTT uses several of them have flex mounts for 120 fans that can be aimed down on the mobo

What resolution and framerate will you be gaming at? If it's 1440p with the 1070, then the 1600 should be able to keep up in most titles. Though, with that price difference, just get the 1600 and a 1080, alternatively an 8400 and a 1080. Both combinations will be fine

The drive does come bundled with some software. It can play UHD, but I'm not sure about HDR.

It depends what you expect for the future. If you expect it to last you several generations then yes it is perfectly fine. If you want a more open upgrade path then no, the Z370 motherboards will probably be replaced within 18 months and the 9th generation intel processors will most likely not fit with them. In that case the Ryzen would better serve you as AMD has said they don't plan to change AM4 until 2020.

Random power surges have been known to kill Ethernet ports. Thankfully you can resolve this with an inexpensive intel PCIe NIC http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-PRO-1000-Gigabit-NIC-Desktop-PCIe-Network-GbE-LAN-Adapter-Card-Low-Profile-/292193199742?epid=1275558559&hash=item440812667e:g:sAMAAOSwAL9UhM2r

@Lurick True. Personally I just prefer the intel chip, however either is a fine choice.

some of it is a difference in units. internet speed is advertized in megaBITS per second. your download is reported in megaBITES per second. 70 megaBITS/s is roughly 8 megaBITES/s. With that said your download may also be limited by the server you are tying to access. For example  downloading from steam servers in the US I generally get about 80% of my download bandwidth. However, if i try and download from German servers it drops significantly.