@crazymike1973: Which Noctura, the PWM, Flex or ULN? I probably need the Flex as the cooler came with and seems to work with non-PWM fans. The GPU cooler uses a 120mm fan that is replaceable. It even has a standard fan connector. So I could put a Noctura 120mm fan on that also.

Things are back up and running now with standard clock speed. With all the SDR stuff up CPU is right around 30%. This is a little disappointing as that's what my dual Xeon system was at. I thought I'd see better performance in terms of CPU utilization. Clearly the disk and video systems are MUCH faster. And digital audio performance seems smoother and faster, too. I just ran a quick Passmark, which resulted in a rather anemic 6826, but it was being dragged down by video. I would have liked to seen more like 8000'ish. I took a big penalty because my displays were not at the desired resolution, which I think is unfair. Memory was good at 3416, and of course the CPU came right in where it was expected to be at 12529. That fans never even came off of their bottom speed during the test.

My cooler has 4 pin connectors, so I got the PWM fans. Yours should have 4 pin PWM fans too.

After a month of using the new PC I am really enjoying it. It is quiet, steady, fast and reliable. I run the CPU pump at max. as it make no noise, and the other fans in their "quiet" preset, with the case fans set to 50% in the BIOS, all per the suggestions of @crazymike1973, who helped me out tremendously CPU temp's run around 30C at idle, 40C when running my amateur radio SDR setup with digital audio workstation software and live streaming to the interweb. The only problem I haven't figured out yet is how to use the Killer NIC. The standard Killer NIC drivers won't work with the SDR, so I'm using the Intel NIC right now.

With a couple of weeks of good backups on the NAS, I've now started to play with overclocking. This is my first rodeo with overclocking, so really have no clue. Nevertheless, following some excellent internet recommendations, I just banged it up to 1.35V and 4800MHz. Performance was notably faster. Passmark at the stock 4200MHz was 6845. Passmark at 4800MHz was 7247. I stressed it for about an hour using x264 and temp's were steady in the 80's. I did not do a 24 hour test, but simply used the PC for about a week like that with no problems. At my normal CPU loads running the SDR/DAW/streaming, I see temp's averaging in the 50's. CPU cooler fan speed makes no difference. That might be because I'm inlet limited with the dual 140mm case fans running 50%. I haven't investigated that yet. Or perhaps the pump at max. is well handled by low CPU cooler fan speeds. I am seeing the i7-7700K temperature spiking issue, but they only spike up a little on mine, maybe 10 degrees occasionally.

Throwing caution to the wind, I took it up to 5GHz this morning with the voltage still at 1.35V, as things were already hot enough for me. Again, an hour of the x264 stress tool. This time temp's went up to the low 90's. This is not something I would want to do for a long time, like if I was a gamer. But, since I'm not a gamer, I'm going to let it ride and see if things stay stable, because the SDR stuff doesn't really stress things very much. With the SDR, DAW and stream running (and a browser, of course) CPU load stays in the high 30's and temp's stay in the high 50's with occasional spikes to high 70's per the Core Temp app (stupid i7-7700 temp. spike issue!) This I am comfortable with if everything stays stable. So I'll run it like this for a week or so and then probably call it good.

Passmark is now in spitting distance of the top 20 list at the Passmark site:

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Did I say I was probably going to call it good? That 8000 milestone beckons! I really don't have the patience to shave away at CPU voltage all day or fuss with cache or memory overclocking. Maybe if Samsung comes out with a version of Magician that supports my 960 EVO M2 storage, or maybe if I overclock the GPU, which is running quite cool, I could eek out a bit more and push over into the 8000 range. I definitely do not have any plans for de-lidding the CPU!

Thats awesome!!

Cooler fan speed is only going to make a difference to an extent because the cooler is only going to dissipate a certain amount of heat despite fan rpm. 50C on the cpu with a 4800mhz clock is is pretty good!! Of course the more your usage goes up, the warmer it's going to get but if you got that on a stress test after an hour or so, you're good.

The 1070 and 1080 cards have plenty of headroom for an OC. Mine had a factory boost clock in the 1800mhz range, mine run right around 2000-2100 mhz depending on what I'm running, above that things start crashing.

Awesome build!!

Thank you However, it's not that awesome. You may have misread my post. On the x264 stress test I get 80's at 4800 and 90's at 5000. But in normal operation, with all my SDR bells and whistles, I get 50's for temperature at either 4800 or 5000, with the dreaded i7-7700K spikes to 70 and 80, respectively. So again, not very good performance from the cooler, but adequate for my normal use, I think. It sure is speedy at 5GHz compared to 4.2!

Been running 5GHz all day with the SDR stuff. We'll see if it survives the week without a crash.

Oh.. OK. I thought you hit the lottery there for a minute. Running stress tests and benchmarks is a totally different deal than it used to be. The newer stuff is only going to crank numbers when called upon to do it. The boost clock on my cpu is set at 4400 mhz and RARELY sees it. It doesn't get anywhere near that in Windows, neither does my GPU overclock. If you want to rank on PCmark, then you're going to a lot of time sitting in a chair making minute changes and rerunning the program. The CPU cooler you have is a bad ass unit, but you're eventually going to heat soak any cooler you put in a pc case. Thats why all the OC gurus do liquid nitrogen and other pretty exotic shit to make a number. What you're looking for in ANY OC situation is a set that will run within "tolerable" temperatures and get the speed for the programs you're running. Intel's thermal limit on their processors is around 100C, then it down clocks or crashes and Nvidia's is in the mid 80's.

I go for the highest stable OC I can get across the board. You run the most demanding program on your rig, dial in the CPU OC until the CPU crashes, then back off to the last good setting. Same for the GPU. You'll  eventually hit a ceiling on both. That's the "lottery". Some people get the BSOD over 4100mhz with the i7-7700k, some don't, same for gpu's. Afterburner has 5 profile settings you can save for different programs for a reason.

Once you get past the base clock on ANYTHING, it's gravy. You're trading performance for heat.