Salkio

You could but you may get heat issues. 
Check to see what you are idling at. I use CPUID HW Monitor for this.
My i7 8086k idles at 33c at 1.344v with a 5ghz all cores. It games in the 70s and benches in the 80s. It will go up to 5.1ghz with 1.344 but for higher clocks it needs more and that means too much heat for my Noctua nh-d15.
 
Here is what my i7 8086k looks like with the Noctua after running Assassin's Creed Odyssey at 5.1ghz
There are plenty of Youtube videos about overclocking the i7 8700k so it is not hard to do.
 

I would say Linux is the better option for any machine. What you will need to decide is what Distro and Desktop. Ubuntu is a fantastic Distro and anything you search on the internet with the word Ubuntu normally comes up with a topic with a solution.
 
If your focus is gaming then for starters you do not want to run them on Virtual Machine at all. The Virtual Machine will kill your performance making the gaming experience poor and higher resource demanding games.
 
I have attempted gaming on many Distro's and even had the same proprietary drivers and versions of WINE, Winetriicks etc on them using Lutris. What I can tell you is, Pop OS, which is pretty much Ubuntu, is polished for Gaming and since it is pretty much the same as your Ubuntu all help guides from Ubuntu work on it also.
 
Pop OS uses does use the Gnome Desktop, which may take some time to get use to. You can edit the look and feel with Gnome Tweaks and Dconf Editor to turn my desktop into the look and feel that works for me.
 
Lutris is the Key with gaming. You will need to make sure to get the dependencies. So far the only one I had to get was Vulkan which Lutris directed me right to it and I installed it in like a minute. Other then that, I have installed and played all my favorite games including World of Warcraft which I could not get to work on any other Distro / Desktop even following all the guides. But on Pop OS it just worked and now I am ready to play Classic when it comes out August 26th
 
Hope this is somewhat helpful, check out the link below to find your games and see if they show as working correctly.
Lutris.net

Looks like the closest thing to a static color is the breathing mode or single slide mode:
Which both are effects, not just static colors sadly. You can apparently choose one of seven different colors for this though.

I have the same CPU.
I just turn on Turbo Boost and Multi Core Enchantment.
4.9Ghz on all cores, the voltage never went above 1.27v ich 5 months now!

That is a impressive voltage for that OC.

On an 8700k, it is, but a 9700k wouldn't need that much usually.

End of the day still depends on silicon lottery 

1.27v should be like a 5.1-5.2GHz OC on a 9700K. For 4.9GHz should be about 1.12-1.14v.

5.1 Yes.
5.2 nop.... not on mine

Depends on your performance target, 4.6GHz is the all core turbo so 5.0 all cores is a decent step up, and if it suits your needs then it's a good point to stay at.

Yes, but you will most likely have more then required voltage being supplied to the CPU.

Auto voltage will apply more than you will need, usually resulting in hotter temps. If you do leave it at auto voltage, make sure you use software to evaluate the voltage and temps in a stress test to make sure it's suitable 

I dont think you will see any difference in FPS at 1440p with your graphics card as in most games you should always hit 100% GPU usage.
Whether its worth it or not is up to you.
If you are streaming or capturing gameplay using x264 then it may very well be worth it to OC though.

Personally you want the lowest voltage you can get to make your desired speed stable, try 1.35 and if thats stable slowly drop the Vcore till it isnt stable anymore. 
 
Also why not but that CPU to some good use by taking part in the BOINC pentathlon?
 
 

You would need to get a 3 pin 5v RGB hub to do it. You can not adapt 12v to 5v in this case here. 

SATA M.2 is in the M.2 form factor and uses the SATA interface (so it's a regular 2.5" SSD but in a smaller size).
NVMe M.2 is in the M.2 form factor and uses the NVMe/PCIe interface. Most of them are in M.2 format, although some connect by U.2 and are 2.5" SSDs (see Optane 900P/905P).

The rpm pin is missing from all but one of the headers since rpm is only read from one of the connected fans. It's not needed for fan control. 
A 3pin fan doesn't have the built-in IC to modulate the incoming 12v pwm signal. You should be grouping 4pin and 2-3pin fans onto separate headers on the motherboard so you can use pwm and dc respectively. If you have to split them from the same header while maintaining fan control, you'll have to use dc instead of pwm. 
What motherboard are you using?
All fans can be controlled. Fan control is dependent on the header you're powering the fan from and not the fan itself. 

Latest is V17.
You are on V15.
 
Try V16?.
 
As a side note, upgrading motherboard firmware is not always a smart move. They do very little testing, and those have many features, you never know what may break. So updating for the sake of it, is not worth it (unless you are currently in a broken state, in which case anything less broken is worth it).
Remember to reset factory settings before and after you update BIOS.

even tho msi has a weird naming that got me this board for like a day (i needed the atx version) it's a good board. load it up and have fun with it!

hell yeah  thank you

nope, z370 will do you just fine my dude! good snag

You're fine, it'll work just like MSI said.
 
Get yourself a CPU now and get gaming.

Been looking for answers like these. Like im i know im not expending to get 20c or 40c under load. I dont care. As long as underload its still usable and does not throttle im happy.