No, I'm asking if she needs it. Since it's for work she might not want to put up with any driver weirdness (Intel) or zooming or whatever being slow because an iGPU just isn't quite enough.

What is she upgrading from?

If she's not sure my recommendation is to get a <500$ 2400G build and add a GPU when she can afford a good one, if it turns out she needs one and possibly even upgrade the CPU after that.

Are you really trying to rename anarcho-syndicalism to super-capitalism?

Would a 500GB SSD be enough?
I think 500$ is only realistic without a discrete GPU and that's probably going to be very noticeable. GPU acceleration with Intel drivers is a gamble but even a 2400G will be a bit slower on the CPU side.

I don't know how good the support for AMD iGPUs is in Photoshop/Illustrator nowadays so I'm not sure if I should recommend it.

Basically: https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49040&width=800&height=800
So Intel iGPU will be kind of mediocre with some occurences of absolutely shit https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49036&width=800&height=800
But the AMD drivers seem to have some quirks too: https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49039&width=800&height=800
Notice how the faster AMD GPUs actually take longer.

On the other hand even 600$ would only buy her a low-end GPU.
So if she wants to save money <500$, 2400G build, if she thinks she's better of with a discrete nVidia GPU it'd be 600$ but even then only with a GTX 1050.

Last years 300$ SKUs still won't fit in the budget even on sale.
If she wants a decent GPU we're looking at ~100$ for the CPU. Intel doesn't drop prices and the effect of new 200$ SKUs is marginal in that price range. Any regular sale with 10-20$ off will matter way more. If she's fine with an APU the effect will be even less.

The point is it's not worth waiting for 7/7 in this case. If she wants to build now it doesn't matter if she can wait she should wait for something in her price range to be released.

#3288
How flexible?
What's the goal/requirements?
When does she want to build it?

#3289
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a 500$ isn't all that interesting on a 500$ budget.
Unless she doesn't want a GPU even 200$ isn't happening. So none of the SKUs launching 7/7 are relevant to her.

No, move the Be Quiet to the intake and everything should be fine.

TC14PE is a classic, Dark Rock Pro 3 or 4. Cheaper as in one of the cheaper dual towers, not cheaper than the NH-U12S, but in the same ballpark as the NH-U14S, unlike e.g. the NH-D15.
Le Grand Macho RT is also an option. Single tower, but with the volume of a dual tower. Obviously quieter than a dual tower with twice the fans and still pretty good cooling. At the same loudness actually a bit cooler than the NH-U14S, it just tops out at 1300 rpm instead of 1500 rpm like most others so at 100% the U14S gets marginally lower temps.

The Z370-A Pro doesn't actually use the first PCIe slot allowed in the ATX spec. They've put an M.2 slot there and the 2nd out of the 7 ATX PCIe slot positions is where the actual first slot is on the mobo. That means it'll be spaced out by one slot no matter what. Never put the GPU in anything but the top x16 slot, all others are significantly slower. I'm assuming that means the RAM is in slots 2 and 4 counting from the CPU, as it should be. At most the NH-U14S should overhand the first slot and even then it's tall enough to fit 32mm RAM beneath it. So any RAM will fit and if you need all 4 slots just don't buy anything with ridiculous extra high heat spreaders.

A good dust filter won't make much of a difference. Getting enough airflow on the intake is more difficult than on the exhaust, it'll get pushed out by positive pressure anyway even if the exhaust fans were struggling.

You could even fit an NH-U14S. A cheaper dual tower cooler might be louder but better for temperatures. It should be doable but there won't be much headroom.

Which fans exactly? Either way use the more powerful pair as intake fans.

You do realize that it's still pretty weird.
Browser, JDownloader, steam chat I can agree with.
Virtual Desktops are unusal.
Multiple explorer windows and command prompts are weird.
Downloading through steam is really weird because Steam pauses downloads when you launch a game for a reason.
Posting a reply after 10 months have passed is really fucking weird.
Playing a movie while playing a game is absolutely idiotic.
Using Blu-Rays for Backups is probably the worst thing I've heard this month.

You chose the least durable storage medium for your long term backups. You need to burn multiple at the same time to even keep up. Restoring 1 TB will take over 10 hours and requires you to swap 40 discs in and out.
You could've just used tapes if you wanted something that's cheap.

Yes, 5 years is completely average.
You should still reinstall because for some reason the HDD was involved in the boot process or your install is pretty messed up. Do a clean install with only the SSD you want to install on connected and plug the HDD in afterwards.

Not even in /dev/ ?

Yeah, it's not officially supported and the microcode updates for Spectre mitigations will be a problem.
i7 got nothing to do with it. It's about age. You wouldn't expect a mobo from 2007 to be compatible with a CPU from 2015, even if they both support DDR3.

Linux booted with the HDD plugged in, right? Run a SMART test on the HDD.

Chip quality.

Higher nominal voltage (difference between the set and the actual voltage will be higher), higher actual voltage as well due to more ripple and higher power consumption even at the same voltage due to the VRMs being less efficient. The effect is larger at higher power consumption so not that much at stock but very noticeable with a high oc.
Mostly it means you need more airflow across the VRMs to keep them at a reasonable temperature.

What do you mean? It can't boot to the HDD, there's no OS on that.

Theoretically yes, but since the PC shut down instead of catching fire it seems like the protection mechanisms were working.

Depends a bit on the chip. It's not going to be very efficient (low end 4 phase VRM) but the VRM heatsinks are good enough that with decent airflow you should be able to get away with it.

You could try to mount it manually. Most likely Windows didn't write out the metadata because fast boot was enabled so now it's slightly broken, which will have to be fixed after the reinstall. There'll be a fairly obvious error description in the CLI if that's the case. You can still mount it read only and might want to save that to a google drive too, if you're not confident you'll be able to fix it.

There's an option to delete partitions during install.

Yeah, media creation tool is a joy to work with. It doesn't even work properly on anything other than W10 half the time. I don't recommend upgrading because that makes Windows do weird things. Ideally just download it on a different pc, worst case install windows 8.1 temporarily just to get a W10 install medium.