Nah, weird is showing up in a thread about a known (and now banned) cheater in RGL to say "I wish RGL bans for cheating wouldn't stop cheaters from playing at non-RGL LANs."

Also I literally saw how you first just quoted "What exactly are you suggesting?", which is a good way to shorten the quote, before replacing it with a bit of ye olde ad hominem. Don't know why you thought that would improve your argument.

What exactly are you suggesting? Cheaters don't get banned until they're caught at LAN, cheaters get unbanned if they show up at LAN, cheaters get banned if they don't show up at LAN, or AC teams should spend an entire LAN watching all suspected cheaters who showed up not cheat and then unban them because if they didn't cheat at LAN they probably didn't cheat online?

You can't retroactively prove that you didn't actually cheat online by not cheating at LAN.
It would be like unbanning or not banning someone for not cheating in a single tournament, after they've cheated for 5 seasons straight.

And deciding whether or not someone cheated online purely by whether they play better or worse at LAN is an objectively terrible idea.

The Tomahawk is fine.
Yes, if the case already got 2 or 3 fans, you probably don't need any extra.

Well, when in doubt check reviews to see if they mention anything like that.

It's not like it's either the Assassin 120 for 40€ for the NH-D15 for 110€. There are lots of coolers in between, though the Assassin is about as cheap as it gets for a dual tower. Not sure how good the AK620 is, but it is an option, and between that and the NH-D15 there is, for example the Dark Rock Pro 4.

Micro ATX means you lose 3 PCIe slots, down to 4, but USB ports should stay the same.
Though that specific board is extremely weird in regards to PCIe, partially because the space where most would be is blocked by some weird contraption, and partially because Gigabyte chose to be really fucking weird about it.
The full ATX variant got 3 x16 slots, one of them running at PCIe 4.0 x16, and two running at PCIe 3.0 x1 which is just baffling, because for some reason they felt the need to include one M.2 slot with PCIe 5.0 x4 (which you just get for free on any B650E board without all this weirdness) and still keep 2 M.2 slots at PCIe 4.0 x4, and another where they put the WiFi.
The µATX variant got 2 x16 slots, one PCIe 4.0 x16 (8 times as fast as the slots on the big one), one PCIe 4.0 x4, one M.2 slot PCIe 5.0 x4, one M.2 slot PCIe 4.0 x4 and one M.2 slot for the WiFi.
The gist of it is, unless you need three SSDs and three big PCIe x16 card, but are fine with two of them being connected with truly glacial speeds, that board makes no sense at all.

As for USB, they've both got 12 ports in the rear, 8 of them USB 3 or better, and headers to connect 3x USB 3 and 4x USB 2 to the front panel.

That's a bit confusing.
You're worried about the noise from the PSU so you're thinking of buying a different CPU cooler?
Anyway, yes the NH-D15 is a much better cooler. It is also significantly more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
Yes, 1000 Watt is definitely overkill.

You could go for a µATX mobo and case, a bit smaller and cheaper.

Rest looks ok, I'd say.

Easiest question first: PCIe gen only matters for bandwidth. If you've got the full 4 lanes available, then 3.0 gets up to 4 GB/s. If you want more, you need 4.0.
So it's not going to do anything for the 980, which tops out somewhere below 3 GB/s even when the SLC cache does its job. It's also terrible for sustained sequential write, tomshardware got 0.315 GB/s in their review.
If you want TLC for the endurance, DRAM for bursts and not sucking, and good sustained sequential write then I'd say Crucial P5 Plus. PCIe 4.0, tops out at 5-6 GB/s, but obviously that's all the cache, levels out around 1.8 GB/s write.
Alternatively, SK hynix Gold P31, only PCIe 3.0, so the initial burst is not nearly as impressive, only around 3 GB/s, but it can sustain 1.5 GB/s, is much more efficient, and you get a 500 TBW endurance rating at 500 GB instead of the 300 TBW everyone else seems to offer. How much truth there is to that, I don't know, but SK Hynix do build their own NAND, so they should know.

Like I said, you don't have to get these exact parts, a different CPU cooler is fine too, just not too small. Bigger is fine too.
For compatibility, you should mostly worry about the height. Most case manufacturers list the max height height for a cooler that fits, so check that if you're not sure.
Yes, 2x16GB with 2 slots empty. 4x8GB would work, as would 2x16GB in a mobo with only 2 slots, but 4 slots are an easy way to tell that a mobo probably doesn't suck, and 2x16GB is better for technical reasons.
Especially with the RAM, you really don't need the exact same. DDR5-6000, CL36, any kit that got that is fine.
With PSUs, just ignore brands, because almost none of them were actually built or designed by the brand that's selling them. E.g. be quiet! sells PSUs made by CWT, FSP, HEC, and Seasonic.
I didn't really pay any attention to that note, but you can get a PSU with 2x ATX12V/EPS 8-pin connectors if you're worried. The 7900X is meant to have a sustained power draw of 170W, and AM5 officially only allows 230W peak, and a single 8 pin is rated for 235W sustained, but some mobos change the default settings to allowe higher boost clocks and/or overclocking. I'm still not worried, but it's obviously cleaner if you either get a mobo with 1x 8 pin (most B650 only got 1) to go with a 1x 8 pin PSU, or mobo and PSU both with 2x 8 pin.

#3961
As for sound, cases usually only have a front panel headphone output and microphone input, because that's all the mobos got connections for. On the rear of the mobo there will be more though, so usually you'd plug anything big and stationary into the back and headphones into the front as needed.

This is not meant to be a final partlist, just a general outline.
https://fr.pcpartpicker.com/list/PJQsbK
Pcpartpicker tends to be pretty bad outside of the US, but it's convenient to show what a build would roughly look like.

You'll need to check what's actually available and cheap in whichever shops you buy from, but the gist of it is
-7900X
-Decent cooler that fits on AM5 mobos and inside whichever case you chose. Standard tower cooler should be enough, not too thin though, 120 or 140mm fan. Dual tower if you want something even better, but you're not overclocking. Don't try to cheap out on this, the 7900X is a 170W CPU, and the cooler it runs, the higher the boost clockrates will be.
-B650 µATX mobo with 4 RAM slots. If you don't need Wifi then skip that. B650E if you want/need PCIe 5.0. 4 RAM slots because only 2 slots on a µATX mobo are the first sign that corners have been cut. Again, you're not overclocking, so you don't need anything special, and µATX is cheaper than full ATX, B650 is cheaper than X670. Avoid A620 though.
-2x16GB DDR-6000 CL36 or thereabouts should do. Just get whatever is cheap. Check the mainboard's memory compatibility list if you want to make doubly sure it'll work.
-Some sort of lower midrange 1TB SSD, that means TLC, not QLC. Tons of options here, reviews are your friend.
-Pretty much any 4-6 TB HDD will do.
-4060 Ti, again choose whichever you find a good deal for.
-Case with an external 5.25" slot (3.5" is much rarer), 2 fan included, and dust filters. Seriously, get one with dust filters.
-550W PSU (that should be plenty), 80+ Gold or better, fully modular. Check the PSU tier list or actual reviews to see if it's actually good though, 80+ is just an efficiency certificate, not a quality certificate.

There should still be enough money left for windows, if you need it, and a nice 4K monitor, especially once you actually look for better prices than just amazon.

Ok, so from what I'm seeing in Lightroom/Premiere Pro benchmarks, an i5-13600 probably would be faster than a 7700(X) and it's cheaper.
For 13700 vs 7900X it swings back in AMD's favour, and 13900 vs 7950X Intel wins again.
If you wanted/need a K CPU and a Z mobo for overclocking it would be different, but since you don't and are not planning to replace the CPU, it would actually work fairly well for you, so I thought I should mention it.
For the GPU, something in the 4060 to 4060 Ti range should be enough. Those are about the same performance in games as a 3060 Ti or 3070, but for hardware editing the older ones actually seem to do a bit better. It makes sense, the older ones need more hardware (and power) to achieve the same in games, but for pure number crunching, having more hardware is beneficial.
For the mobo and case, I'd got with µATX, which sounds a lot smaller than it is. You don't need the 7 PCIe slots full ATX offers, nor a full-height case where you can stack 10 HDDs on top of each other. 4 PCIe slots are enough for a triple slot GPU and a sound card, and 2 HDD slots are mostly standard still for µATX, I think.
I didn't ask, but do you need a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drive? Just so we know how many external slots the case needs. A 3.5" would be enough for a card reader, but those are becoming rarer, and most cases that come with an external slot only got a single 5.25", which would be enough if you want an ODD and a card reader. Not that there aren't those with 5.25" + 3.5" (very rare) or simply 2x5.25", it simply limits your choice of cases a bit. And you obviously don't want to find out only during building the pc that you can't fit both ODD and card reader.

#3954
jnki pretty much got it.
Though you could mix 1 and 2, be more conservative with the GPU since it's the easiest and most likely to be replaced in a couple of years, still get a fairly beefy CPU, but have enough money left over for a good monitor.
CS:GO / CS 2 and GTA 5 also don't need that good of a GPU, so it mostly depends on how much makes sense for hardware acceleration.
For the CPU, Intel's E-cores might help a lot, or they might not, best to check that. If they do help, Intel's probably the better choice now, though on the other hand AMD's socket AM5 is going to stick around for quite a few years, so unlike with Intel, you could actually replace the CPU with something better later.
For storage, you could either go with one big SSD, fairly simple, or get a smaller, possibly faster one (1 TB or so) and then an HDD however large you want it. Maybe two, for mirroring. The latter is more work, you'd still want to render onto the SSD to not get slowed down by the HDD, and then move it to the HDD when you're done. The advantage is that high capacity HDDs are cheaper and no one I know who does any rendering or editing has ever been content with how much storage they got. The mirroring wouldn't be a backup, doesn't protect you from accidental deletion, malware, hardware failure other than the HDD, but it does protect you against the extremely annoying situation of the HDD dying and taking last week's work with it and then you need a new HDD first because you don't have the space and then you need to put it into the case and then you need to restore stuff from backup and whoops 2 days are gone and you're way behind schedule.

Anyway, the usual questions:
1. Overclocking yes/no?
2. Which programs are you going to use?
3. Anything special you want/need? Sound dampening for the case, smaller form factor, space for more PCIe cards, e.g. a soundcard, SD card reader on the front panel?

The latency is in clocks, so 2666 CL19 is very different from 3200 CL19, let alone 3200 CL16.
Basically, 17% lower bandwidth 42.5% higher latency. It's not great.
It's better than not having RAM, and RAM is the easiest part to replace, so for cobbling together an upgrade out of used parts it's ok I guess.

Unless you really need 32GB though, I'd get 16GB of better RAM, then add more later if it turns out to be necessary.

If you think your CPU is on its last legs and will die immediately if you dare to increase the voltage even a little bit, then you'll need to buy a new one anyway.
I mean the goal isn't to fry it immediately, but overclocking without increasing the voltage isn't going to get you very far. Maybe not anywhere.
It still wouldn't be enough to solve your problem, so it's a moot point.

No, it's just the only one I bothered to look at benchmarks for.

No. I think Hitman 2 is roughly as bad.
Yes, I did literally tell you that the 3770K gets 40.5 fps average in the benchmark I linked. With 1% lows of 22 fps. I would not want to play like that.

I mean you could also overclock with increased voltage?

Anyway, not sure which Hitman, but just looking at Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks it's not happening.
https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Cyberpunk-2077-Spiel-20697/Specials/Cyberpunk-v152-Benchmark-Review-Raytracing-1398562/3/
3060 getting 63.7 fps average on 1080p Ultra (rasterizing), which is fine, 3770K on 720p max settings gets 40.5 fps. I don't think that's going to work, even with overclocking.
I checked https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-cpu-scaling-benchmarks
and there's basically no difference from 1080p Ultra to 1080p Medium if you're cpu-limited.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7M7qn9U9K3nXn7qJYnQMsL.png
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/gQqHFpb6dmaqZW4vgMGDxC.png

I don't think there's any way you're going to get 60 fps in new games with a 15 year old CPU. It's clearly not working with a 12 year old CPU now, and the 3770K is just one year more recent and not nearly enough of an upgrade to buy you another 5 years.

-Yeah, mobo is fine.
-It got both a USB 3.1 (1x USB-C) and a USB 3.0 (2x USB-A) header, exactly what the case supports.
-Yep, PCIe 5.0 isn't going to do anything for a couple of years yet.
-Yes, you can update the BIOS on that mobo by plugging in a USB flash drive with the new version in the correct port and pressing that button.
-Why would you need a button to clear CMOS? The old school reset is simply removing the battery. Not that you should ever need to do that.

PSU is good.

I don't like the SSD, it's just not good. There are some TLC versions of it that don't suck as badly, but it's luck of the draw which one you'll get, and purely because they're pulling the two versions under the same name bullshit, with the better ones being sent out as review samples, I'd never buy one.
The Crucial P3 is a bit better if you want to stay in that price range. Yes, it's PCIe 3.0, but at 4x that maxes out around 4000 MB/s and neither of them actually reaches that, with the P3 actually being faster. It's still QLC, but that's what you get at that price.
Samsung 970 Evo Plus or WD Blue SN570 or WD Black SN770 would be some of the usual suspects if you're willing to spend a bit more for TLC.

What exactly did you do?
I mean if you just swapped slot how do you know which module was working correctly? Did you test them one by one?

Either way, you'll probably want to run memtest86+. https://www.memtest.org/
You'll need an empty USB Flash Drive, or CD ROM if you're old school, or do it via network boot if you want to be really weird.
That takes windows out of the equation and by switching the modules around you'll be able to tell if it's always the same module throwing errors, the same slot, or random.