Zando_

I used to pull 400w on a Killawatt running 180x26/1.425v with my GA-X58A-UD5 rev.1 with the 12 phases on my X5675. The 1080 should have been on a 40w~ idle roughly since it was in windows so that cpu was certainly pulling 300w+ just to itself. With the GPU in OCCT it would pull 550w so the math checks out for a 180w GTX 1080. Using turbo boost/eist it would hit 4680mhz on the single core multi while also at the same time also idling down to a nice 105w idle when the 1080 decided it actually wanted to hit the 11w lowest idle states(aka never). 32nm was a tank, my X5675 easily doubled my i7-930 scores.

I haven't dug into the latest gen stuff as I don't own any of it, buuut I can tell you that ASUS AI Overclock loves dumping ungodly voltage into your chip in an attempt to make it stable, I would recommend disabling it and manually tuning. What voltages is it pushing vs stock, and if you revert to stock what do your temps look like?
 
Also, can you expand the "Core Temperatures" dropdown in HWiNFO64, that will let you see per-core temps. IIRC the mounting solution for 12th/13th gen flexes them enough to cause uneven contact (thus the aftermarket contact frames to apply even pressure). If you're seeing large differences between individual core temps when they're all under the same load and at the same boost clock/voltage, that could be a sign of it.

Most likely the CPU yeah. A modern i3 has the same 4c/8t but far faster cores, so the 7700K sits a bit below that.

Prime95 Small FFT will kill a lot of poorly designed motherboard VRMs, especially with high core count CPUs, so if you want to see some destruction, that's probably the way to go. 

haven't had issues with my cpu, 3700x.

It looks like i7 4790k-s are going for around $100 right now. If they were $20 I'd say go for it and see what happens, but for that price I think you're better off investing in a platform upgrade.

Is the program just slowing down like crazy? That is a phenomena known as clock stretching, it can happen depending on how undervolting is done. Clock speeds will remain high, but performance tanks out of nowhere. Ryzen CPUs do it a ton if you set a negative voltage offset, and Intel chips can do the same (albeit not as commonly).
 
If it's giving different results though, that just sounds like it's unstable, which for a CPU overclock I've seen happen a couple times.

I'll give it a try right now and get back to ya'll!

Most people who care about what goes into PCs are playing games on them, and most people look for the best perf/$, so thus the focus on gaming performance. If that isn't your passion in PCs, finding other niches is pretty easy. Puget Systems consistently publishes benchmarks with full focus on creative and workstation render tasks, Level1Techs is a great source for enterprise/server hardware, ServeTheHome for even more focus on home server stuff, etfc. Lots of great spaces without a focus on games. 

To be fair, most people in the custom PC market are gamers first, so the assumption is that if you're on here asking for help specing out a rig, you want something gaming focused. The people who do need something more production focused generally go for a pre-built workstation from someone like Puget, HP, Dell, etc. for a warranty and support rather than building it yourself. There are exceptions to that rule definitely, but for the most part you fall into one of those two camps. 

VRMs are designed to withstand temperatures up to about 120C for a very long period of time - temps when the GPU is idle or is around 60C are nothing for the VRMs. You've got nothing to worry about. They only get hot when there's a lot of power coming through them - in those instances the GPU is hot as well, so the fans spin up.

Static electricity.  It can eat your components and shorten their lives without you even noticing. 
 
Fear.  As long as you carefully follow the instructions and don’t improv it’s a lot like tinkertoys. (Legos?) everything is modular.
 
sloppiness.  Just because it’s modular doesn’t mean it’s fault tolerant.  If something isn’t working make sure you didn’t just fail to seat something correctly or plug it in to the wrong place.

CPUs do not work like that.
 
 

Except for loading the 8K image into memory, that use case isn't bound by storage performance. So a cache isn't going to make any difference except for load times. The load time will only be improved if the file you're loading is cached (i.e. it has been loaded enough times for the cache software to determine it should be cached) These use cases are bound by GPU and CPU performance more than anything. Storage performance might make a difference when loading things, but again, only if the files you're working with have actually been cached. Except for loading a level, not bound by storage at all. This is down to GPU performance and to a limited degree CPU performance. That's the one use case where storage performance can make a noticeable difference up to a certain point. You will definitely notice a difference going from a HDD to an SSD. You'll have a much smaller difference going from a SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD, so it's barely worth it. You seem to have the incorrect assumption that using a cache will magically make your computer faster overall. It will not. It will only speed up tasks that are bound by storage performance, if the files in question happen to be cached already. It'll not do anything for running games at 8K except potentially reduce loading times.

You will be playing with controller most likely so I would keep that in mind. I would consider both the resolution at which you plan on playing it along with the refresh rate. At 1080p 60 fps either is fine. If you have it on steam, you will have it on any system you own, but if you buy for PS4 you will only have it on PS4.

^^^ Get a boot SSD in there and you're golden. Very nice spec, and it's cool to see a proper all-white build, those are often rough to assemble as white components are weirdly uncommon. 
 
As for the CPU question:
1. That CPU is fast as heck already.
2. It isn't a -K chip, you couldn't overclock it if you did want to (not that there's much of a gain to be had on newer CPUs anyways). 
 
CPUs have changed up a good bit in the last couple years, sounds like your friends are still expecting them to behave like older generations, so they're giving you info that's a bit outdated. 

^^^ Get a boot SSD in there and you're golden. Very nice spec, and it's cool to see a proper all-white build, those are often rough to assemble as white components are weirdly uncommon. 
 
As for the CPU question:
1. That CPU is fast as heck already.
2. It isn't a -K chip, you couldn't overclock it if you did want to (not that there's much of a gain to be had on newer CPUs anyways). 
 
CPUs have changed up a good bit in the last couple years, sounds like your friends are still expecting them to behave like older generations, so they're giving you info that's a bit outdated. 

If all you got is a HDD, then your friend is clueless about computers. That system looks fine other than lack of SSDs.

Do they? I've not heard people say they're bad. Toshiba are no more or less reliable than any of the other major drive manufacturers.
 
You hear it about Seagate, but that's based on some seriously flawed "reliability" data that was released quite a long time ago.
 
EDIT: Though if you have important files, you should be backing them up. Ideally keeping copies in physically different locations

Make sure it's actually 3060 Ti and not 3060 with 8GB Vram. 😆
 
 

Do you have a task that needs VRAM more than a fast GPU? The 3060 Ti is faster than the 3060, unless whatever you're doing absolutely must have over 8GB VRAM, it should be better.

3060 Ti is about 30% faster than 3060, don't be fooled by the amount of VRAM.
So, go with 3060 Ti, assuming that you're gaming.

I've always felt that Teamgroup was solidly in the middle of the pack WRT their other offerings. Never had any issues, but never found them the best either.

I guess but in a more convoluted way. Like Netlimiter just installs on Windows and runs on start up. You can set the default rule to "Ask" so that any time a new process tries to access the web it detects it, you get a pop up and you can choose whether you want to allow it or block it. It's super user friendly

?? Who told you this? I have GTX 780s still kicking, 9 year old cards. And an HD4870, a 14 year old card. That's in a Mac Pro, the original Nvidia GT 6300 (IIRC that's the model) from 2006 - so 16 years old - is still kicking but just doesn't support newer graphics APIs so I replaced it. 
Wait for 3rd party benches to see how the cards perform + if there's any major launch issues.