I trust Setsul more than 99% of the so-called experts on computer hardware forums. We are very lucky to have him here!

Looks really good. Two last thoughts:

1. What PSU would you recommend if you shaved off $50 by dropping the HDD (I'm going to use my existing one)?
2. Any idea on the difference between the Red Devil & the MSI Gaming X?

1. Yes
2. Not necessary, I have an external drive I can use when the rare need arises
3. 1080p, render scale 100%, model detail low to get rid of clutter, hopefully some AA. The rest is really whatever I can get away with. Right now I can barely manage an unstable 60fps with everything on lowest and render scale 70%. Smoothness matters more to me than graphics in MP games, but I would like to finally get some eye candy on my backlog of last-gen games (like Witcher 2).
4. $1200 including the monitor, but I'd be willing to stretch it some if necessary

That makes sense. I think based on what you're telling me, an AMD/Freesync combo would be the way to go. The other reservation I've had about Gsync is that in addition to the obvious cost premium, I have a nagging feeling that it will become irrelevant in the coming years as Freesync is adopted into the Displayport spec and will become increasingly prevalent.

Lightboost doesn't really matter to me.

1. I'm not going to Win 10 right away and I'll mostly be playing OW and older/indie titles that don't support DX12. I'm not sure I'll see the benefits of DX12 for awhile based on what I'll be playing.
2. Tearing bothers me. I've been under the impression that I could use Free/Gsync to compensate for a lower-powered GPU that wouldn't be able to hit a solid 144 fps all the time. I guess the question is whether I'd be better served by getting a higher-powered GPU (1070 or so) and not having an adaptive sync tech, or a lower-powered GPU and spending the money I save on the GPU on the Free/Gsync monitor instead.

New build, and I don't already have a 144Hz monitor. I am thinking Freesync = yes, but I have been under the impression that the Nvidia GPUs give better $/frame in DX11, which is where I will be doing all of my gaming.

@Setsul

I've been playing a lot of Overwatch and am getting massive frame drops on my aging potato, even on the lowest settings. What would I have to build to get a solid 144Hz experience? I've heard good things about Freesync and am willing to go that route if it means tolerating occasional sub-144 fps dips without tearing. I really would like to spend less than $1200 or so, as well (but this is flexible).

I've been keeping my eye on the recent GPU releases (RX 480/GTX 1060) and the price gouging & stock situation is pretty annoying. Should I wait for everything to normalize? Is it worth going with discounted previous gen cards like the Fury or 980 (Ti)? I'm not really sure what to do at the moment.

I don't understand what you were attempting to accomplish with this stunt. Finding an exploit and attempting to alert site owners is all well and good, but making a tool to vacuum up these files en masse is not fair to the site owners whose site was pounded with requests, and it's certainly not fair to the players whose IPs have been stolen for your own "curiosity". If you plan on doing anything similar in the future I hope you will handle it in a more responsible manner.

I think I came up with a fix. The problem appears to be that for some reason Comcast's DNS is preferring the IPv6 address resolution which leads to the broken page, as opposed to the IPv4 address which works fine. Thus, the fix is to force your machine to use the IPv4 address (by lowering the IPv6 in priority so it isn't chosen).

To do this, click start, type cmd in the search box, right click on cmd.exe and run as administrator. In the prompt, type the following:

netsh interface ipv6 add prefixpolicy 2a00:1d20:2:13::2/128 0 6

You might need to type ipconfig /flushdns after this. I just tested this and it works on my machine.

I think it's fixed now, pop open a windows command prompt and type "ipconfig /flushdns". This will flush your DNS cache and allow you to correctly resolve the host.

EDIT: Just kidding it's still messing up.

Confirmed, Comcast DNS resolves tf2center.com to http://[2a00:1d20:2:13::2]

The correct IPv4 address is 151.80.195.184. Unfortunately, you cannot connect directly, as the IP doesn't match the domain on the HTTPS certificate.

Don't forget the fact that Facebook acquired Oculus for a reason. Facebook is prominently an advertising company, which is where practically all of their revenue comes from, so who knows what sort of terrible freemium/ad-supported/social aspirations they have for the future. With the Vive, at least you know you're buying into a platform (Steam) by a company (Valve) who actually have a vested interest in maintaining their reputation and foothold in *gaming*.

https://shop.oculus.com/en-us/cart/

$599 US dollars, €699 in Europe (not including shipping). It's a bit steep, but they also include a whole bunch of extraneous stuff like an Xbox controller, a remote, and some games, which seems a bit unnecessary in my opinion.

You have 100 lbs of potatoes, which are 99 percent water by weight. You let them dehydrate until they're 98 percent water. How much do they weigh now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox

Most Dells I've taken apart have custom mounting points for their PSUs so you can't install a new one off the shelf. Unless that's changed, he'd probably be better off building a new PC.