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It is certainly a matter of personal taste, maybe to some degree generational. I do not care for how it looks for the exact reason people that like it do like it. The copper, blue and white colors are why I do not care for it. I would prefer that everything would be black and not have any of the hokey LCD stuff on it. Some people may like it just for the element of novelty in a partially retro aesthetic, but I think modern motherboards are more aesthetically pleasing in general, unless you go with a naked PCB eyesore that has all of the components exposed. Those are universally ugly regardless of when they were made. When you go back to pre-X299 and Z390 days they were not particularly attractive components IMHO and they get progressively uglier as you go further back in years. Why are you selling it as like-new used instead of just returning it for a refund? Did you buy it from a place that has a customer-hostile return policy? I'm sorry you had to find out for yourself why @electrosoft and I have recommended against it buying the more expensive models. There is little or no reason for anyone to buy a more expensive 5080 or 5090 in terms of performance. There are some differences in quality, but they are minor compared to the inflated price of the models with modest differences that yield nothing in terms of performance. If you are going to put a waterblock on one, there is even less of a logical reason to pay for a more expensive model. Ignoring the substantial leap in performance for 5090 over 4090, NVIDIA 50-series GPUs in holistic terms are a pretty horribly overpriced alternative to 40-series in some ways. This is especially true of the SKUs below flagship XX90 models. A 3070 actually performs better than a 5060. The 5060 offers nothing outside of newer software features that NVIDIA made artificially incompatible with past generation hardware. That's inexcusable. But, post-COVID NVIDIA has become a very dishonest, despicable anti-customer company. Feature RTX 3070 (2020) RTX 5060 (2025) Architecture Ampere (8nm) Blackwell (5nm/4nm) CUDA Cores 5,888 3,840 Memory 8GB GDDR6 (256-bit) 8GB GDDR7 (128-bit) TDP 220W 145W DLSS Support DLSS 3.5 DLSS 4 (Multi-Frame Gen)

This isn’t a problem — a 9900K naturally runs around 100°C, and that’s not an issue. However, if you’re seeing severe thermal throttling, the problem is usually poor contact between the IHS and the heatsink, which you can fix using a thin copper shim. The best solution is upgrading to a 9900KS. You can check my post — with the 9900KS, temperatures under worst-case conditions reach only around 75 to 80°C. It might sound surprising, but due to power limiting, you can actually get higher performance with lower wattage and significantly lower temperatures.

Time spy test score Old Cpu 9900K: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/56481843 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New Cpu 9900KS : https://www.3dmark.com/spy/64018720 After upgrading my Alienware Area-51m R1 to the Intel Core i9-9900KS, I noticed that almost every user who performed this upgrade experienced significant CPU performance degradation. Most reported Time Spy CPU scores were only between 8000 and 9000 points due to power limits, EDP throttling, BIOS limitations, and the lack of a proper 9900KS profile in the BIOS. I decided to fully optimize and tune the system manually. After testing multiple BIOS versions, tweaking hidden settings, optimizing memory timings, tuning power behavior, and creating a custom optimized profile for the 9900KS, I finally achieved a stable and fully optimized result. Previously, with the standard i9-9900K, the best temperature I recorded during Time Spy was 96°C. However, after upgrading to the i9-9900KS, the system delivered noticeably higher and more stable performance while running significantly cooler, with a maximum Time Spy temperature of only 71°C. My final Time Spy score reached 18,411 overall, with a CPU score of 11,206 — paired with an EVGA RTX 3080 Ti XC3 that scored 20,767 in graphics performance, which is currently the highest known CPU score achieved with an i9-9900KS on an Alienware Area-51m R1. What makes this result even more impressive is that the CPU maintains excellent temperatures and efficiency while delivering desktop-class performance inside a laptop platform. I compared the performance of my laptop using two processors, the 9900K and the 9900KS. You can see the temperature difference between both CPUs in the Time Spy benchmark. There is more than a 25°C temperature gap between these two processors on the Area-51M. The reason is the power limitation of the 9900KS. By undervolting with XTU, you can achieve higher performance at lower power consumption and significantly lower temperatures. The 9900KS on the Area-51M is power-limited by the BIOS. Since voltage profiles for the 9900KS are not defined in the BIOS, it only allows the CPU to use up to 130W. I am trying to remove this BIOS-imposed limitation. However, even with this 130W limit, you can still achieve significantly lower temperatures compared to the 9900K or any other processor, along with higher performance. If I can remove this limitation, I can increase the CPU score in the Time Spy cpu score benchmark up to 13,000. System highlights: Alienware Area-51m R1 Intel Core i9-9900KS Custom optimized BIOS/RU tuning DDR4-2666 overclock to 2933 CL17memory tuning Fully optimized thermal and power behavior Stable high-performance operation

I picked up a brand new 5080 Astral to play with. It’s pretty nice, and it was a good deal for a new Astral. It doesn’t do much over my Zotac Solid Core 5080 though. Other than running 20c cooler. I remember when I bought a MSI 4080 Super Expert and I didn’t really like it, and I swapped to a MSI 4080 Super Suprim OC. The difference was astronomical. It felt so much better, it overclocked better and even performed much better. I just loved the 4080S Suprim OC so much. Coming from the Zotac 5080, and popping in the Astral 5080, it feels like I have committed a sin and I almost feel guilty or nauseous. 😂 We’ll be seeing a like new Astral 5080 on marketplace here shortly. It’s a nice GPU. But I do not feel or notice a difference other than super low temps. And yes it’s freaking massive! I had to add (2) 45 degree fittings, and remove the flow meter for my CPU inlet tube to clear the width of the card. I’m not really digging the 5080 Astral OC as much as I thought I would.

Can anyone share a previous to 1.30 BIOS version, as this one keeps my DGPU always active and on 20W P0 on idle?

Le'm bleed bro @Mr. Fox. One by one until they are all gone. Broadcom loses over $315 billion in one day: not earning what you should thanks to AI comes at a high price. Broadcom has become a stark warning to the semiconductor industry about what happens when you fail to meet expectations in the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble.

Memory scaling with 270k with Buildzoid. Once you hit 8000, it really is much ado about nothing which is what I found testing the 265k from 6000->9000 but I do think he would eeek out a percent or two more tightening his timings but 8000->9000 really was much of nothing..... I settled on 8600 tight for the 265k with the Vengeance 9200 sticks on the Strix-A. -------------------------------------------------------------- When I read earlier this was running MediaTek Arm CPUs, I immediately checked out but I see what they're doing. This is the first salvo of Nvidia entering mainstream computing with their own chips and their own, future chips will be compatible. Nvidia is all in like AMD on CPU+GPU synergy (barf) moving forward and looks to slowly, but surely, replace x86 on the consumer desktop considering how much ARM has infiltrated just about every other level of the computing industry this was the next logical step. If Prism can deliver a proper Rosetta/Apple like experience, it will make the transition even easier. Nvidia also using their market cap, value, resources and AI everywhere to springboard into CPU dominance also makes sense. I really do believe x86 is slowly dying and has been for awhile. It is a slow death, but it is dying as we know it. The crucial point is Nvidia will need to deliver an Apple level ARM performance metric sooner than later to be taken seriously. M5 is an absolute beast of a chip and Apple properly splitting the GPU away from the CPU and retaining the UMA is a major turning point for future options. It isn't a coincidence they are suddenly, "in pockets" allowing Nvidia GPUs to now work with their hardware since Nvidia is still light years ahead of Apple's Metal M GPU technology. Like the video says, the grand plan is for their own in house CPUs but this gets the ball rolling. Like Apple with Intel for years while they worked on their M chips, then translation/rosetta for several years and finally sunsetting Rosetta. I would just focus on that well priced Zotac 5080 you picked up, block it and have a blast with it. You might be able to score a used one on the forums with a high voltage. Never hurts to put out a "WTB 5080 w/ 1.125v rating blah blah blah" The rate cards are being snapped up, ripped apart and slapped into blower style AI farms is insane. Like I said before, I am pretty sure your previous 5090FE was torn asunder and is prolly being abused in an AI farm somewhere in China atm..... Go back to my messages last July/August where I said over and over if you're looking to buy a 5090 NOW is the time because prices are going to start creeping up by mid Sept and then things are going to get crazy sooner than later. Resellers were absolutely flush with cards at that time and we had routine sales of 5090s hitting the $2k point or close to it. I remember a small run on 5090 TUFs for $1999.99 for a moment there too. Now? Good luck. We're ~1.5yrs into the 5090 life cycle and the way things are going this is most likely the halfway point with Nvidia ordered out for the next few years and when Rubin finally does launch, we'll get the 6080 on down for awhile before we even get a sniff of a 6090 and expect the 6080 to perform worse than the 5090 in raw performance. I absolutely love the throwback design of this and aesthetically, I would rock it in a heartbeat! All that copper is gorgeous and the old school blue/white accents brings it home. Not sure what case I would use to showcase it though.

Browser makers are calling out Microsoft for using Windows to push Edge on users A coalition of browser developers just sent Microsoft's CEO a letter demanding it stop burying rival browsers

Yeah it’s very tough these days. 5080‘s are taking over lol. Too many of THEM! I did think about grabbing a PREMO 5080 to play with. Maybe an Astral or Master. Newegg has a $240 off promo on the Aorus Master ICE 5080. But that Astral looks great! Would like to try a 1.125v card, and see how that performs. Was thinking if I’m going to ride out on 5080, let’s make it a premium 5080. If you do sell your 5090 that’s it. These prices are insanity trying to grab another. I scour the internet everyday. Microcenter for $3,499+ Tax is probably the best bet for a Gaming OC 5090. That is an insane price you paid! It really is. The AI community has just hammered the 5090’s. It would be great if some sort of forced update crippled the 5090’s performance in AI. Maybe where if an AI workload is detected it only sees 8GB VRAM or something. 😂 I’m looking at eBay flooded with coreless cards and I’m shocked how GPU’s even got here. Could someone tell me what they think about this motherboard? I really like it!

Do you have Telegram so you can send me a video of the issue you’re experiencing?

I upgraded the CPU to an Intel Core i9-9900KS. I originally had BIOS version 1.28 installed. In order to remove some limitations, I tested every BIOS version from 1.7.3 up to 1.28. My motherboard is the 2019 revision 2 model, and I had no issues downgrading the BIOS.

Talking about garbage.... What Nvidia really offer you is loads of overpriced ram.

I tested the ZRT vbios on my X-Vsion card. PCB version doesn't matter as the most important part which is controlling the display outputs are in the VBIOS chip. The performance is worse because it's a MAX-Q version. I didn't use ZRT drivers maybe that's why the eDP is disabled once the "regular drivers" are installed? You can ask @DynamiteZergfor the ZRT vbios file and test it yourself.

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I did it! I managed to update the secure boot certificates --- manually in the BIOS, mind you. It took quite a bit of searching and reading, and even at the end I wasn't completely comfortable, but it turned out to be not that bad once everything was finished. And I still have Origin PC's BIOS, so no change was needed. If anyone is having trouble with this, I could explain what I did in a bit more detail. It wasn't something I found in one particular webpage, and forget about YouTube videos --- they were all of very little help, if any. I had to piece together a bunch of information and download the required certificates from one site maintained by Microsoft. And even then, I had to fiddle around a bit with the downloaded files --- they required a change of extension, and figuring that out took me some time yesterday and most of today: that's part of what made me a bit nervous as I was updating the certificate keys, and that was just the last piece of the puzzle. I've been reading up for hours on end for the last couple of weeks, and I learned quite a bit. And it ended in success!!! Yippy!!! Anyway, it's done. And here's the proof:

Agreed 100% Basic safety rules are always in effect (aka common sense). FYI, your sig configs are woefully out of date. Time to update!

Instructions (in progress): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MUOo4pmnILAYLVOG15z2ga0OfN69NrTt/view?usp=drivesdk

I would 100% have called the police and filed a report. After I got into my car and grabbed his license plate. Can’t trust anyone these days. Too many local deals have turned deadly.

It's just a MAX-Q VBIOS of the X-Vsion one... The eDP is set to disabled once you install the regular drivers. I don't know if ZRT have any special drivers for that, maybe it'll fix the issue for everything?

Hello. Has your work settled down? I've lost contact with ZRT. It seems difficult to purchase it. Could you please upload the ZRT VBIOS?

You'll have to test to find out. If 970M boots in M15x as is, then no vbios change should be needed

Budget aside, Roman is probably too smart to waste any more than $200K on advertising. I know I am not alone in saying that I cannot identify many purchases based upon advertising. There are exceptions and fringe examples, but I generally view people that purchase items based on advertising as being "not very smart" people, and smart business owners know that. The best advertisements are (a) results and (b) word-of-mouth. Marketing is for muppets.

Thermal Grizzly's Scale: While Thermal Grizzly is a premium, highly respected enthusiast brand founded by der8auer, it operates on a smaller marketing budget compared to past mega-corporation sponsors like MSI or GALAX. This suggests the partnership was likely structured around a mid-tier six-figure multi-year contract rather than millions of dollars. From between $100,000 and up to $500,000. Probably not much above $200.000 - $250.000. Black or white edition cable?😀 What worse than burnt connectors is missing cores and memory. Aka scammed. The scammers now glue the screws so you can't open your graphics card to check if your scammed....