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I had some time to play with the threadripper platform and tried a PBO with scalar 2x and -10 on all 96 cores, went from 119k to over 153k 😄 But the second try it shutdown 🤣 Still have the 1200w PSU 1U inside that the case came with so i think this is the weak link..i need to mode the case, cut it so i can add Bquiet 1200w ATX PSU titanium but dont have the time for the work right now

Getting 1,000+ FPS is something I have never experienced before. Below is Ark Ascended doing just that on all low settings and 1080P. 6000c26 with 65k tREFI, all tuned to the max with 2167fclk. My son took a picture of me with my phone while I was in the bios breaking things (So posting it here! lol. 😂 )

Speaking of PSUs, the Super Flower Combat 1000W SFX unit was delivered. I have never owned or even seen an SFX PSU except in pictures and videos. It is incredibly small, but unbelievably heavy. It seems like it weighs as much as an ATX PSU. Pictures and videos are usually lacking where perspective is concerned. But, yeah... it's soooo little. It is going to make building a SFF much easier.

Got warranty activated today including the start date being adjusted to my purchase date so its a full three years. Swapped in A-die. It did not want to boot at 3000/3000/2000 with 1050mv VSOC. 1200mv worked but is probably too much. XMP 6000 C36 equivalent timings (and tREFI 16k) at 1200mv VDD/VDDQ/VDDIO but need to stability test.

*** Here is a praise post to offset the many (often justifiable) complaints we see posted in social media. *** I have been a NewEgg customer for about 25 years. In spite of some of the horror stories, I have never once, that I can recall, had a bad experience with them in spite of hundreds of purchases. My Z890 Apex was $549.99 with a $269.99 Crucial E100 2TB NVMe included as a "free gift" not a combo sale. It shows that way on the invoice. They are priced separately and the $269.99 deducted as a "discount" on the invoice. I received my order on Tuesday of this week. The Z890 Apex is now available for $399.99. The customer service AI bot told me it was not eligible for price match because it was a combo. I spoke to a rep after the bot said no. The rep saw the issue and issued me a $150 refund in the form of a NewEgg gift card. No begging or arguing. He said it was not a combo, it was a free gift (agreed with me) and is eligible for the price match because it was within the 7-day time window.

Wow, by far the easiest delid I have ever done using the Thermal Grizzly Delid Die Mate and the Die Mate heater. Removing the residual solder from the die after delid was also much easier because there was less of it. Most of it stayed on the IHS and hardly any left on the CPU die. And, as always massive thermal benefit to bare die. The temps are fantastic. Cooler temps = less voltage and power, higher clocks... profit by every measurement. I am pretty sure I could use the heater to delid a Ryzen CPU with 75% less time and effort if I were to use dental floss to cut the glued spots.

Yeah MSI really came through as I was not sure if I would get any kind of extended warranty given that it was an open box model. Not that there was a choice because they discontinued the config with 9955HX3D and 5090 instead of just modifying it to have 2x16GB RAM. Ended up having to dial it back to C38 and tREFI 11677. I only ever used the stock 2x16GB Hynix in the 5080 variant. These have factory seals and I was hesitant on keeping that 5080 due to price so I never opened it up. The 5080 variant however definitely could do 3000:3000:2000 with 1000mv VSOC stable. The OEM memory had locked PMIC so 1100mv VDD/VDDQ pretty much. Fan noise was essentially the same, very good. Its one of the few that can have good performance, good noise and just warm palm rests. Not X170 levels of palm rest temps which could stay at ambient temp but the chassis is simply too thin to ever really be that good. This has much better fans than the old 2024 7945HX3D. Maybe it is better with heat dissipation. They use PTM7958SP from the factory so if the old model was using a paste this might be part of the difference too.

Well priced too. I think I'll pick one up for a proper "just in case" scenario. I went back to running the Matrix vBIOS because it keeps my game clocks steady over 3200 everywhere. Fallout 76 is no problem. I can even run stock settings, but WoW will trip the WVP2 without adjustments with the 800w bios. On the flip side, my hot spot differential is ~12c with the stock factory application so I'm good atm on that front. No native 12vhpwr on PSU? 🤣 Nice on the warranty just in case. How did the A-die fare in the 5080 variant for comparison? Would it boot at 1050mv VSOC? Let us know how stability testing goes... let's see how this 9955X3D in the 5090 variant compares to the returned 5080... How are the noise levels between the two?

I have this Jonsbo Z20 on the shelf, but I'm going to go with the Mechanic Master C26 for the SFF portable 2026 project. Z20 = ~20.1lL vs the C26 = 13.2l. Both support mATX.The C26 doesn't support an AIO but I was going to go with the Thermalright AXP-120-X67 I have brand new on my shelf anyhow or a max height ~130mm air cooler if needed. C26 supports up to ~310mm length GPU so the GB WF OC SFF 5080 should fit as it is exactly the length of the FE edition (304mm) and ~2.5 slots wide (closer to 2 than 2.5). Specs: MC 7500X3D + Asrock B850M Combo deal MC Open box GB 5080 SFF Corsair SF1000 Samsung 990 Pro 2TB KB 2x24GB 8400 sticks Thermalright AXP-120-X67 Noctua NF-A9 x4 Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 PWM Sx2-PP Mechanic Master C26 Then it comes down to the C26 or Z20 The downsize from 20.2L to 13.1L is pretty massive..... C26 weighs 6.6lbs (3kg) vs the Z20 11lbs (5.5kg)....again in the land of portability pretty massive The entire buildout in the C26 will weigh right around the Alienware 18 + PSU or a hair less actually and more importantly open up carrying case room for wireless KB/M and a 18-23" portable display and be much quieter under load vs any gaming laptop out there along with being able to tune every component with no restrictions. This type of build allows a 5090FE to slot right in but with a 1080p or 1440p 18-23" portable display that is overkill. The idea is lock in 120-165hz solid fps on the go\ as quiet as possible. This Windforce sff 5080 is much quieter under load than my Vanguard 5090. I'll probably end up with a Noctua NF-A12 on whatever cooler ends up end game on the CPU. I don't think a tuned 7500X3D will hold back a 5080 especially at 1440p, but if I do find it is a bottleneck, I will shift my 9800X3D into it and then sort out my desktop core system again. C26: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's that positivity!! 🤣 Good set of baseline data though to see how it fares over the coming months/year. Are you going to routinely test the connection with a firm push check from time to time or leave it completely alone and see how the integrity potentially gives up the ghost? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Curious to see your results with the A die swapped in and hopefully the warranty extension can be applied to really bring it home. There is always the chance of a poor IMC even on a laptop unit so fingers crossed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember to pre-order your ROG 20th edition bundle to get the 20th edition 5090 Astral since it isn't being offered stand alone for only $5499.99...... "Only" $10,349.96 or $11k+ after tax.... https://eshop.asus.com/us/90yv0nf3-mvaa00-rog-astral-rtx5090-p32g-edition-20.html Don't forget you still need a CPU, memory and storage too.... might as push for a $15k build at this point....

BlackwellHotspot_v1.2.dll.txt Use this new version of the .dll I've added Hotspot Delta which is the delta between the coldest and hottest sensor. So now you'll get not only the hottest hotspot, but the delta between the 6 sensors. Edit: Make sure to download it as all files, and save it as BlackwellHotspot.dll

You may be able to get the heatsink from rjtech / sager. That is where I purchased mine. It was around $300 total including shipping. I still have my x170sm with the 10900k LTT golden sample and 3080m. Thought about selling it though to fund some new purchases.

nope thats with the matrix 800W vbios, although in BMW the wattage barely breaks 600W, maybe goes to max. 620-630 at most. seen much higher wattages in other titles or benchmarks. duuude im SO happy i got the WVPII, bringing those "invisible" failure points to my attention! edit: aight, ordered 5 different cables from 3 different sources, lets get our cable binning ON! lulz at least im glad to see that the variable really seems to be the cable and not the GPU, the WVPII or the PSU, that would suck even more. wish me luck guys!

Thanks! Definitely want to give it a whirl. I agree about ZT. I'm so used to having it on AM5 I wouldn't mind an equally competent version on Intel. Is that at stock 600w vBIOS? That replacement MSI MEG 1600T is still trucking along and even with a 600w+ stock OC and those wonderful bars lit up almost to their tops, it is really balanced and nice even when pulling 615-623w on the WV2P. But yeah, the connector is atrocious. Imagine if you didn't have the WV2P and were just merrily skipping along playing till one day you're like: "Is that smoke I smell?" Yikes mine only lasted less than two years and they ended up replacing the MB and 2080 Super but it was under warranty at least during that time. As for the watercooled HS, only place I found them before was AB and TB but I just checked my own launch page info on this here and they are long gone. For the normal HSF combo for the KM, found one left on eBay I dug through my heatsink bin and I did find this custom copper IHS I had made from BartX I know is from 9th gen I think but could be modded as needed potentially (sanded down for z-height issues on die). I had already soaked and reheat cycle treated it for gallium then sanded it down so it's smooth and saturated already. If you want it, let me know and I'll pop it in the mail for you to see if you can get it working with your 10900k no charge. Just inbox me your address. My last, custom made 10th/11th gen IHS from BartX I sent off to @win32asmguy some time ago. That thing was awesome. Have you messaged Rockitcool to see if maybe they have one floating around in the back somewhere? 🤣 Looking forward to your updates over in the SM thread!

I'm a quiet enthusiast for modular, old, laptops, and I have a soft spot for old HP Elitebooks / ZBooks. I know enough about computers to be fairly confident (read dangerous) mucking about the internals. I have an HP Elitebook 8770w that I'm thinking about sticking a new GPU in, and I'm on the hunt for a Zbook [15/17] G4 spec'd out. I have an old, what would've been top of the line Elitebook 8530w that I refuse to let die. One of the things that bothers me the most is the move away from repairable laptops to thin clients that break if you look at them sideways. It's not a real laptop if you can't beat a man to death with it and have it still boot, or something. Anyway, I hope to find help here in my journey keeping the machines I love so dearly alive.

I have been my own doctor the last two days. Google and some AI. I'm sure the higher blood-pressure in the noon/evening come because I now have stooped smoking so fast. Within 3-4 days I have stopped with the last 16 cigarillos/cigars to zero. And within the last 10 day I have gone from 35 cigarillos a day down to zero. Then my heavy coffee drinking... When I quit the smoking right of, the body takes much longer time ro reduce the caffeine level in my body. Up to the double time. The more I drink the more it will stay stuck in the body and make problems. Some summary.... Increased adrenaline due to nicotine withdrawal will actually increase the blood pressure. Same also for people try quitting alcohol after long time drinking. It is actually a well-known medical phenomenon that blood pressure can temporarily rise right after you quit smoking. Although your heart rate and acute blood pressure usually drop once the nicotine shock wears off, many people find that their overall blood pressure increases in the weeks after quitting smoking. When your blood pressure rises to 160/175 over the course of the day, it is a clear sign that your body is under high physical stress due to quitting smoking. Even if your morning reading of 130/74 is fine, a jump to 160-170 during the day is high enough that you should address it, especially since you already have a known high blood pressure condition and are on medication. Your liver takes twice as long: Because you quit smoking 3-4 days ago, your body excretes caffeine half as quickly as before. The 33-100 milligrams stay in your bloodstream for many hours. With 1 liter coffee drinking It will increase my blood-pressure on top of the hard stress for the body quitting to zero cigarettes. When I become stressed in the daytime my blood-pressure going bananas for hours until I fell in sleep at night-time. Thats not good after a stroke. The key is stable lower blodpreesureover time/weeks. Will confront my doctor witht the findings tomorrow. I can not see another reson my blodd-pressure going bananas in the noon/evening the last days. The only change Ihas done is stopping smoking. I tested my teory... Used one small sobril tablet. Half an hour later, my blood-presure went down from 170 down to 147. More relaxed/reduced stress reduced my blood pressure almost immediately. I think changing the blodpressurebmedicine and get some more closer to the evening will hep reduce blood-pressure in the noon/evening. Because earlier in the day I have no problem. Me now... Feel I'm Doc Papusan Yup, more like a real doctor😁 LOL. AI sucks...... Wish we could push all the new modern trash into the grave. "Papusan" (frequently active as "Doc Papusan" or simply Papusan) is a well-known, high-profile community figure and enthusiast in the global PC hardware, overclocking, and tech benchmarking communities. [1, 2] Hardware Specialization & Stance Flagship Hardware Tuning: His personal system specs, famously nicknamed "The Killer" on TechPowerUp, boast extreme custom liquid cooling setups handling top-tier hardware like the Intel Core i9-14900KS, highly optimized DDR5 memory, and various flagship graphics cards like the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090. [1, 2] Anti-Censorship & Consumer Advocacy: Within his circles, he is known for a candid, blunt, and highly critical tone regarding modern consumer tech trends. He regularly calls out major manufacturers for prioritizing aesthetic RGB features over adequate power delivery cooling, criticizes bloatware in modern operating systems, and acts as a vocal critic of overhyped AI trends. [1, 2]

9950X3D2 is insanely fast! Multithreaded is more or less the same as my w3175x probably a little bit faster. But, I play a few games that are not the most optimized like: Oblivion remastered, Ark Ascended, just to name a few.. And what a difference there is! It really has perked things up. I’m seeing double on my 1% lows in these CPU limited titles. Unfortunately I’m having another issue... I cannot get EXPO to boot at all. It worked one time on the very first boot. And do not know what happen. 😭 I cleared the bios after fiddling around with things. And now EXPO fails to post. None of the EXPO’s will work. Tried Expo I, II, Tweaked, etc. I have to run DDR5 4800 to get the system to load windows or work at all.. I have cleared the bios, unplugged everything. EXPO just refuses work. For now DDR5 4800 is working, so I’m running that. I’ll try to update the bios and see if that helps. EDIT: Found the issue. CPU mounting pressure. My waterblock nuts were popping off the threads under tension. I’m going to have to address this block mounting. For now it’s working though. This is a picture of the system. It has a big thick chubba HWlab GTR 480mm cooling the CPU and single D5. 😀 The CPU is really beyond fast in gaming. Words cannot really describe how fast it is lol 😂 I could notice it in Oblivion without a frame counter. 1% lows in Oblivion have doubled. I wasn’t expecting that. AVG fps is about +40% higher in CPU limited games. It is seriously an outstanding gaming CPU. 💀

Here are the photos. Everything is working well. If the 9950X3D2 is a keeper I will move the 4585PX from the Apex to this system and keep the 9950X as a backup/spare CPU. Or, I may just leave it with the 9950X, put the crappy VColor 6000 C26 dual rank kit on this board and put the Kingbank 8400 kit back into my surplus stash along with the 9950X. Everything was tight, but nothing had to be forced or modified to fit. I even found a spot for the remote debug LED, power/reset panel. (I love that feature and it was a deciding factor in purchasing it. I do not like motherboard that are missing debug LED, power and reset buttons.) When I say "tight" there is about 3-5mm of clearance between the PSU AC power connector and the front AIO fan above it. Lian Li/Dan clearly put a lot of effort into designing something where things that are supposed to fit actually do. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I could still fit a 5080 or 5090 in place of the 3070 FTW3 if I needed to. I remembered that I had a couple of old Scythe low profile 120mm fans, so I managed to fit one of them in the floor at the rear to help cool the dual NVMe PCIe card I have in the bottom 4X slout under the GPU.

Saw that too. The IMC has me saying nah lol. Besides my current chip has been flawless at 5.7Ghz P, maybe that chip could do 5.8? Maybe. The thing about SP, is that the number doesn't always tell the full story. Sometimes chips just fail to scale with the voltage headroom they should have left.

unfortunately i cant use native cables, still rocking 2x8pin on the PSU side 😄 but this sounds like a nifty lil feature!

Initial impressions of this cable are very positive. It is very soft and pliable and appears to be very high quality. The pin balance is good. I honestly have no room to complain about the original cable that came with the old Toughpower GF3 1650W PSU. It survived a 3090 Ti, 4090 and my 5090 up until yesterday, when it began to demonstrate a 2-3A variance between pins. It is probably still entirely within the safe zone, and well within the Thermal Grizzly default range, but it did suddenly change and I thought it not worth tempting fate. It has served me very well. It has no visible evidence of degradation or having been hot at the GPU end or PSU end. The Corsair cable has a tight range of variance.

ok so i figured since im having so much fun with RE Requiem and it draws an insane amount of wattage ill test my current GPU cable connection thoroughly and provide you the summary for comparison / reference sake. so total of 5 gaming sessions recorded with HWInfo64, threw out all data points below 95% gpu core load and anything below 600W for both total gpu power, as well as 12VHPWR only. that left me with approx. 7.5h of data with a monitoring frequency of 1s (27,215 data points total). the game was maxed out with RT and PT at 4K, no FG and DLSS set to Quality. as mentioned before im rocking the matrix vbios as a daily driver with a 24/7 stable OC of 34Gbps vRAM and +130 on the core, that gives me gaming clocks in the range of approx. 3060 Mhz +/- 30. ambient temps are currently quite high, were talking about 27-28C in my little "dad corner" 😄 gpu core is in the range of 68-73C under load, vRAM hotspot a tad higher at 70-76C and GPU hotspot approx. 85C on avg. with short spikes up to 93-94C (top 10% are in the range of 88-90C). FPS avg 102.9 1%% low 72.4 0.1% low 67.8 Total GPU Power avg 703W 10% high 761W 1% high 775W MAX 799W 12VHPWR Power avg 688W 10% high 744W 1% high 753W MAX 758W (interesting to see that as 12VHPWR wattage approaches the vbios limit at 800W, the gap to the total gpu power widens, thus the PCIe slot starts to draw more and more power, on avg. only 15W but the max spike is at 41W). Max Delta Current across 6 pins avg 1.06 A 10% high 1.99 A 1 % high 2.57 A MAX 3.3 A (stock setting for alarm in WVPII software is 4A) Max Delta Current across 6 pins (%) avg +11% 10% high +22% 1% high +29% MAX +35% (stock setting for alarm in WVPII software is +40%) this is how it should be, with even the absolute max individual data points still below the alarm threshold (which only comes into play if you get repeated, sequential limit breaches in a row, so a single data point spike aint enough to trigger it). this will provide a nice baseline once this cable inevitably gives out on me an ill need to test a fresh install / cable to compare 😄

Will do. Will test more later tonight or in the morning. Thanks for the help. I tried it on my 5080 and it is not working even after enabling the DLL. The hardware ID should be G1B3 = 2C02h (forgot to add the h) Maybe there is something different needed in the DLL for 5080. Correction: also working on the 5080. I forgot to add the "h" after 2C02 for the HWID.

Given my amazing results with liquid metal on the CPU in my other systems, I decided to go ahead and repaste my Alienware 17 R1 with liquid metal. Man, it runs even better than it did when new! As predicted, it significantly increased my thermal headroom, which increased my indefinite sustained power envelope from 55w to greater than 75w. I haven't tried pushing it yet, so I don't know the actual limit yet, but this is exciting. Having the Chichen upgraded heatsinks for this laptop also helps a lot. Perhaps I can beat my previous winter benchmarks at 4.1 GHz all core and do that during the summer now, plus more. It's crazy that a 13 year old laptop is still useful for a lot of things even today. Backstory: since my memory requirements have increased due to my development workflow, I needed more RAM but didn't want to buy any, so I opted to instead reuse old hardware, and thus bring my Alien back into daily service. I'm offloading lighter tasks to it that I know it can handle, as ultimately I needed to unload web browsing from my desktop onto my Alien instead, freeing up 12+ GB of RAM for making builds of the games I develop (yeah I have lots of tabs open). Easy reuse of the 32 GB of RAM in my Alien. I think it enjoys being out of retirement. I missed it too.

Mumak has a test build available that has hotspot temps. Here is a link to his post. https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/nvidia-rtx-5080-incorrect-gpu-hotspot-temp-missing-3rd-fan-speed-summary-info.10306/post-52987

Good news, because HWMonitor sucks. Another happy degradation-free experience with 13th and 14th Gen Intel.

It is impressive how close to the same performance the 270K Plus delivers compared with the 9950X with 25% fewer threads to handle the workload. The 270K Plus is actually just a tad better, and it's half the cost. Not to even mention the fact that the 270K Plus is much easier to tune and runs circles around AMD's best where memory overclocking is concerned. 💖

https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/cinebench_-_r23_multi_core_with_benchmate/submissions/6046141 With E-cores bumped to 54x... https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/cinebench_-_r23_multi_core_with_benchmate/submissions/6046144

@tps3443 if you're still looking for a good CL26 kit, maybe look to V-Color. I don't know what G.Skill is smoking with their CL26 kits and stupid pricing, but V-Color has CL26 kits for sub $450 with at least the same primary timings and requiring less voltage (1.40 vs 1.45) We also have these older kits (Yes, including the F5-6000J2636H16G2-TZ5R) which are going to be outclassed with the new ULL kits which are completely newer modules coming off the line and will be priced the same as G.Skill is asking now if not much lower. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5080 Prime was on my list too and I actually tried to pick one up earlier this year and managed to snag one right before the price hike but somehow it made it to my local BB store to prepare for pickup then stayed in "preparing for pickup" for two weeks and disappeared and they cancelled my order....I think we all know what happened....congrats to the employee who picked it up to use or resell.....this has happened to me 2x now at my local store. From now on, I'll be changing pickup to their main distro store in my area which is ~35 min away versus 2 min away.... I'm realizing I want to have two lower intake fans on the Z20 so that pushes me to a 2 slot being the best approach. Maybe a 2.5 at most? But we'll see with the GB SFF 5080. I'm hell bent on solving this SFF portability issue with no compromises vs a laptop. Somehow compacting down the perfect SFF, wireless 65% keyboard, wireless gaming mouse and a 23" USB-C powered 144hz 1440p display is the current "holy grail" I'm working on atm......

btw wanted to leave this for bro @Papusan, RO NORGE! lets go, show them english whos boss! wouldnt mind to have a viking world champion 😁

If the BIOS mod was created by Prema after the GPU was released it should be supported and it is about 99% certain it will be supported. If it was before the GPU was released then it is very unlikely. I'm glad that I don't have to worry about that kind of nonsense anymore. Sometimes I forget how bad laptops suck. Even the better non-BGA turds with desktop CPUs and MXM suck without a lot of stupid rigmarole. In hindsight I don't know how I put up with them for as long as I did.

Mine came from System76, so its got their open source coreboot BIOS and EC. I just switched the GPU subsystem ID over to the X170KM so all drivers install without modding. I never backported NVPCF ACPI code for Dynamic Boost so it always runs at 150W, and I believe one of the display outputs no longer work (mDP maybe) because of physical wiring differences on the SM vs. KM board. The TB3 on the back definitely works as that is what I use all of the time. Oh and I am not sure if the seller on taobao is active anymore but back then I got a set of fans modded from the A51m R2 to work in the X170. More CFM and quieter!

Actually this version might be even better. I adjusted more obscure timings after doing a bit more research. Totally stable with my G.SKILL Trident F5-8400J4052G24G kit. Testing now with the TeamGroup Xtreem CUDIMM kit and seems to be identical. Below is a link for the settings. Z890 Apex 8600 Validated - BIOS 9901

Thank you, I really appreciate that. I will happily pay for the shipping. I haven't tried contacting Rockitcool yet as I've hear they've gone out of business, but it never hurts to try. I'll try messaging them. Also thanks for the heatsink link. I almost bought the wrong one, claiming it was the right part. Pay attention to pictures guys.

Thanks. Happy to share it. Let me know when you get home and are ready to use it. I've got an 8600 and and 8800 CMO I can send. Edit: Here is a zip of the folder (BIOS, CMO and Settings TXT files). @Talon

I think this is going to be good enough for now.

Had to make a place for the Z890 Apex. X870E Apex is now installed in the O11D Mini V2 with the 4585PX and 5080. Getting it to fit was a HUGE pain in the butt. Never buy a distro block with the pump facing the inside of the chassis. Big mistake. I have the Alphacool reservior shoved tight against the roof of the case and the 5080 still touches it. With the reservoir against the floor the GPU will not fit. Always choose one with the pump that is in the closed in area behind the mobo tray. (That will also allow you to run the system laying on its back. You can't do that if the pump is pointed up toward the ceiling.) Now that it fits, it looks great. I love this case for mATX/ITX. For ATX it's not ideal unless you love having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to make things fit. (I don't enjoy that. I also hate puzzles.) The Z890 Apex is in the O11D XL EVO with the 5090. It was super easy because all of the connects and mobo layout on the Z890 Apex is the same as the X870E Apex. I only had to modify the two lines going to the CPU block because the orientation of the ports on the block was different than the Thermal Grizzy Mycro direct die block. Speaking of waterblock, I was going to use one of my Optimus Foundation blocks. The silver looks perfect with the white and silver on the mobo. I could not use it. CPU would overheat SEVERELY for some reason (109°C doing CPU-Z stress test). I disassembled it and found it spotless on the inside. Not sure why. Had to run to Microcenter this moring and grab an Alphacool Core 1 block. Now it works amazing. Almost don't need to delid now, but still will. Because I can, and it will be much better. Not because it is unavoidable due to stupid temps. It runs as cool as the bare die Ryzen 9 processors. The B850MPOWER is now on the open bench with the 9950X and 3070.

It's possible to have a weak IMC on any AM5 chip. Remember, these are only "officially" rated to handle 5600 and I had that 9800X3D which barely could do that before returning and capped out at 2000 fclk on the nose. Nothing would push it over. Order another and/or another motherboard to sort out what is holding you back. It could also be your memory too. I went through a few boards and sets of memory to realize that first 9800X3D was the culprit. Second one ( current ) is much better. ---------------- You could always return everything and go 270k too for shiggles and probably save a bit of coin on top of it.

BINGO! 25H2 Cancer Edition... 100%. Installed LTSC IoT 24H2 and viola... all is well with the score. Fully modded and debloated. But, I still do not know why my effective clocks are lower than the core ratio set. Looking at similar submissions on HWBOT the core ratio and effective clocks were the same on other submissions. But, no throttling or temperature issues. Now I can delete the cancer Macrium image. Side note @electrosoft - no driver issues with 24H2. Smooth sailing. Not too shabby for a chintzy Lian Li 360MM AIO and soldered IHS... Nearly identical Cinebench R23 performance as bare die 9950X (only cooler than a delidded 9950X) with only 22 threads (16 baby girl Atom cores) versus 32 threads on the Ryzen 9. Now I need to order a Thermal Grizzly delid tool and heater and bare die block and get it on a custom loop and chiller to do things right. https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/cinebench_-_r23_multi_core_with_benchmate/submissions/6041409

Welcome to the club @Mr. Fox and I had a very similar problem actually with the Asus Z890 Strix and Intel B580 when testing my Acer B580 variant on it. Initially, I thought the card might be defective at one point. I kept having the GPU randomly go into recovery mode as listed under device manager. Let's call it Code 43 adjacent. I tested it on a pre-built HP Omen HP sent me to eval and it suddenly worked fine no problems so I ended up doing a few clean installs, same issue would just randomly pop up and tracked it down to Asus driver revisions. I ended up going with Intel and Gigabyte variants and the problem resolved itself. The Asus versions were so wonky that every time I went to install the Intel GPU drivers it kept trying to update the firmware which was already updated each and every time. Once I sorted out the drivers, the GPU driver install worked as it should.

I’ve seen some doing 5.9ghz on direct die. Seems to unleash the chips a bit.

Dang you got that rig up fast lol. I think with your cooling, you'll be able to push that chip pretty hard.

Now I am a dual-Apex predator... purple now. Dang,it feels good to have some blue back. I've got to figure out some of the tuning. A lot to re-learn, just like switch to AMD had a lot to learn. Very different than Raptor Lake and pre-Raptor. I'm pretty sure right now I am butchering things.

You are in our thoughts and prayers, brother. Are you getting enough sleep? I very rarely ever get the amount of sleep my body and brain need me to, but when I do it always lowers my blood pressure. I'm wondering if yours is lower in the morning because you were sleeping and not stressed out as much as you are when you are awake.

These are single rank sticks. I specifically bought these because they were Hynix A die 5.43.01. Hopefully they are alright OC wise.

Okay, I’m going to try that bios! And @electrosoft I may try another 9950X3D2. If I’m feeling up to it. Memory tuning is very fun. But I learned that it does not help much in real world gaming performance, I suppose IPC is the real king for high fps and pushing fast GPU’s. My Xeon w3175x is a memory performing beast. When I would run only 6x16GB (96GB total) I can do 1T stable, and this does like 172GB bandwidth and 45ns-46ns latency. And it just cannot hold up to anything modern with the words X3D even with a single stick of DDR5 4800 lol. It’s a powerful rig, and still did well in many titles especially those more uncommon “Well Optimized titles”. 😂😂😂 These X3D chips are ridiculous in gaming. I did not realize how many CPU limited games I do play. Almost everything is CPU limited with a 5090 Astral, even with 4K. Rust, Oblivion, Ark, blasting some crazy frame rates with 9950X3D2. @Mr. Fox Are you thinking my Dark Hero should also run 8000c34 just like your Apex can?

Yes, I am using PBO. It does clock down in R23 to around 5.4Ghz on 1 CCD, and 5.3Ghz on the other CCD. When I was referring to these running hot, I remember many people reporting these Ryzen chips just run like 95C or something lol. Or I remember reading something about they intentionally run and target warm temps like that? I want to go tinkering in this bios. But this motherboard is a PAIN. I may wait until I get this swapped out first. But yeah, the platform is excellent. Several games that I play have never ran well on anything. Ark Ascended, or Oblivion Remastered. And these games are constantly skipping and dropping GPU usage. And seeing this 9950X3D2 run those smoothly at crazy high frame rates is shocking to me.

Mine is SP118. I’m not really sure if it’s good or not good. That’s about 30c idle in bios. I have it running R23 doing 44.2K at only 225 watts. And 67c max. I thought these bad boys were supposed to run hot or something. 😎 I’m liking this AMD platform though. Quirks aside. It’s obliterating FAST. Being honest about it, I wasn’t really all that excited immediately after buying the 9950X3D2+Dark Hero and I had the boxes sitting under my couch in my office. But dang! After running the system, I am over joyed by this system.

Finally landed in Phoenix so I should be home in about an hour. LONG day. I arrived at Dulles at 12 noon EST.

This AMD 9950X3D2 is madness! Excellent platform. I’m having some board troubles with this open box Dark hero, but I’m happy with the platform overall.