My Biased Friend: I need answers

[TehCaucasianAsian]

My IRL friend is so incredibly biased about PC parts, that I figured I would ask over here at Tom's for some answers, as well as to give all of you a good laugh. Let me quote my friend for you all, just so you can see the opinions he tries to stand behind, some being purely made up and manipulated by brand biases.
-"Western Digital is the only storage brand you should ever buy, that stupid Seagate you bought is going to blow up and light your computer on fire within three hours. Western Digital Black master race"
-"XFX is a crappy PSU brand, and so is Seasonic. The only brand you should ever buy is Corsair, and they aren't overpriced you just have to pay a premium for the best, not to mention the only brand that works on arrival" (What's ironic is that he has a Rosewill FORTRESS supply in his rig)
-"AMD GPUs are horse Sh*t and only cost less than an NVIDIA work of art because the drivers and aesthetic of each card will make you puke, and the only thing those pieces of trash are good for are mining rigs and frying eggs. Team Green is the only good brand."
-"Those benchmarks that show AMD beating NVIDIA are rigged, the R9 295X2 can't play Crysis 3 at 800x600 on Low. It's garbage. Who liquid cools a GPU, anyway? The Titan Z is twice the price because it's twice as good. Triple Slot means triple the goodness." (This next one is sort of contradictory)
-"Air coolers are crap compared to liquid coolers for CPUs. That Noctua NH-D14 is so ugly, I bet it can't cool an i3. The H100i is much better, and Nocuta's have to be super loud if they're that big and ugly. Liquid cooling master race."
-"EVGA is the best GPU brand for NVIDIA, MSI and ASUS are only cheaper sometimes because EVGA steals all the business with their awesomeness. Superclocked cards are worth the extra money, you're gaining like 20 frames. Does AMD have overclocked cards? No they don't, because AMD is terrible."

So, I have to deal with this bias. My friend's biases caused him to purchase $1300 worth of parts, ending up in him having a GTX 660 in a build that could have fit a 780 in that kind of budget. But since he insisted on having the "best" brands he got a pretty shitty build, that is outperformed by my $700 build pretty frequently.

Now, I do have some questions.
1. What is the best PSU brand? I am considering XFX' Pro Series GOLD Supplies for my next rig, and hear that XFX is top notch, but I don't know for sure. They're cheap with great reviews but I'm not sure.
2. The R9 280X Toxic I plan to get can perform as good as a GTX 780, yet all I get is shit from my biased friend about how the GTX 770 Superclocked he's going to get is going to "destroy that piece of shit". Any thoughts? The 280X Toxic won't be purchased for some time, so it will be cheaper in the future (Currently $299.99 on Amazon) but the 770 is more expensive. Which would you buy based on PURELY performance?
3. WD or Seagate? My Barracuda has lasted 6 months with no issues, my friend's WD has gone 8 months strong. I sometimes actually load things faster than him.
4. Noctua NH-D14 or H100i? In benchmarks the Noctua cools just as good if not better for cheaper and quieter, and I don't care how big and ugly a cooler is so long as it's good.

That's really it. My biased friend crams a bunch of shit down my throat so I just need better answers.

 

[USAFRet]

With a friend like that, the best you can do is nod and smile. No list of refuting facts will convince him.
If we were to lay out, step by step, where he is wrong ...and he is...he would just disregard it as 'fanbois'.

Let him be an idiot, and build the best PC you can afford.

 

[Eduello]

1. Seasonic (makes XFX, some Antec and Corsair) and Super Flower (makes EVGA SuperNOVA G2 and P2 for example) are probably the best brands out there.
2. Performance? The R9 280X, it has more RAM and the TOXIC edition is sweet. It won't beat GTX 780 cards with aftermarket coolers though.
3. Both are fine, although I tend to lean towards WD since I've had some bad experience with Seagate drives (reallocated sectors).
4. My choice was the Noctua. The H100i is good for the aesthetics, and it also puts less stress on your motherboard if you move your PC around a lot.

 

[Martell1977]

1. I always recommend Antec, Corsair or XFX 80+ Bronze or above. I used to include some OCZ and PC Power&Cooling, but since OCZ went belly up, the strength of their warranties are questionable until things stabilize.

2. Purely on performance? The R9 280X would be my choice. It has enough performance wins against the 770 to make it the better buy, then add in price/performance and the 770 fades away. Your friend pays the nVidia tax, i.e. pays more for features he likely will never use like Cuda(which is gimped on gaming cards anyways), Shadowplay, Physx, etc.

3. WD has some great drives and for years were the only ones I'd buy. However, the latest offerings from Seagate have impressed me, enough that I have Seagate SSHD's as boot drives in my 2 main computers. That being said, WD is still my main go-to brand when using a HDD. Seagate bought some smaller brands (Maxtor) years ago and I had to replace a lot of their failed drives, and that led me to primarily use WD drives.

4. Haven't done any water cooling, but I'm sure for most coolers out there (like just about any computer part) you can find people that had flawless experiences and others that failed miserably. There is a lot to be said for installation skill and environment.

Let me guess, your friend has an iPhone too, lol

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

The BEST PSU's being released are the SuperFlower models from EVGA: G2 , PT . and T2.

 

[TehCaucasianAsian]

1. I always recommend Antec, Corsair or XFX 80+ Bronze or above. I used to include some OCZ and PC Power&Cooling, but since OCZ went belly up, the strength of their warranties are questionable until things stabilize.

2. Purely on performance? The R9 280X would be my choice. It has enough performance wins against the 770 to make it the better buy, then add in price/performance and the 770 fades away. Your friend pays the nVidia tax, i.e. pays more for features he likely will never use like Cuda(which is gimped on gaming cards anyways), Shadowplay, Physx, etc.

3. WD has some great drives and for years were the only ones I'd buy. However, the latest offerings from Seagate have impressed me, enough that I have Seagate SSHD's as boot drives in my 2 main computers. That being said, WD is still my main go-to brand when using a HDD. Seagate bought some smaller brands (Maxtor) years ago and I had to replace a lot of their failed drives, and that led me to primarily use WD drives.

4. Haven't done any water cooling, but I'm sure for most coolers out there (like just about any computer part) you can find people that had flawless experiences and others that failed miserably. There is a lot to be said for installation skill and environment.

Let me guess, your friend has an iPhone too, lol

An iPhone 4 to be exact lol

 

[TehCaucasianAsian]

1. Seasonic (makes XFX, some Antec and Corsair) and Super Flower (makes EVGA SuperNOVA G2 and P2 for example) are probably the best brands out there.
2. Performance? The R9 280X, it has more RAM and the TOXIC edition is sweet. It won't beat GTX 780 cards with aftermarket coolers though.
3. Both are fine, although I tend to lean towards WD since I've had some bad experience with Seagate drives (reallocated sectors).
4. My choice was the Noctua. The H100i is good for the aesthetics, and it also puts less stress on your motherboard if you move your PC around a lot.

So I'm assuming that in the benchmarks where the 280X Toxic beat a 780 in gaming that the 780's were reference models? I guess some sites are AMD biased lol. I like the look of the Toxic and the fact that it's sometimes cheaper than other 280X's so i reallllly like it but there has to be some more cons to it, right?

 

[byza]

Your friend sounds like he'd be fun to argue with, just to get him worked up.

At the moment you can get this Gigabyte 290 pretty cheap. It still won't beat a 780 but it's better than a 280x or 770. It doesn't look as flashy as the Toxic though.

Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($319.99 @ Newegg)

I also went for the Noctua, but it is heavy on the mobo. If you want this cooler and you're going to move your computer around, you might want to look at something like 'Skythe Ninja Wire' to support it, but it would probably just be easier to get the H100i if that was the case.

 

[SpectreUnleashed]

1. I would prefer Corsair as your friend. Not that I am biased but people who I trust o PC builds use Corsair power supplies.
2. R9 280X Toxic all the way for me. EVGA's superclocked has a good performance too though but 280X Toxic has a sleek design with 3 fans. Also it is a more budget friendly GPU.
3.WD's Caviar Blacks are preferred among gamers but I would go for Seagate SSHD from now on. 3x of a 7200 RPM HDD.
4.I prefer liquid cooling system mostly since it keeps inside of the computer more neat. I think the dust comes out of the air cooling spreads into the PC. If your all parts are water cooled (CPU, GPU) and if you only have 1-2 additional fans, you will not have any dust at all.