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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. 😂 )

*** 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.

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 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. 💀

I have to drive past Microcenter on my 1 hour trek home from the airport at the end of each business trip. I have had to exercise a lot of self-restraint to not go by on the way home and pick one up, along with a Z890 motherboard. The only thing that has held me back is the motherboards that I think I would find suitable are stupid expensive. I'm headed home tomorrow night and I already was checking the Microcenter website last night before going to sleep to see if there was something that I couldn't live without in terms of motherboard options.

Guys! This deal is insane! It really makes it hard to cope with a $899.99 9950X3D2 right now. 🤨 The 270K Plus is $264.99 on Amazon. That is an insane value. This price for essentially a mix of 14900KS gaming performance and 285K multithreaded performance is unheard of.

Coming together. Trying to swap over nothing at all from my main build except for the 5090. In case I don’t really care for the platform. Im hoping it exceeds my expectations though, and if it does it’ll be going in to the big case .

I’m putting it together on the test bench with a 480 and a single D5. My cat thinks so many dimm slots are only good for standing on easier. Also, don’t mind my ghetto waterblock mounting. It works!

If any of yalls are interested in a really good AIO, I just got the new Noctua 420mm AIO and I'm blown away by the performance of the AIO. I had my Corsair 420mm AIO before this, using the same exact Noctua Fans and Thermal Grizzy Kryonaut pad. I tested a before and after run in CB23 with 300w power limits and the improvement is shocking. Best of all, no longer need Corsair iCUE garbage on my system. Just a clean, no RGB AIO and I love it. Same Noctua 140mm Black Fans, Same Thermal Pad, Same Fan Speed. Noctua 420mm AIO Corsair 420mm AIO I've been on a bit of a spending spree lately lol. Picked up the new MSI MPG Ai1600TS PCIE5 power supply with current monitoring and dual 12v2x6 outputs. Finally running native cables and being able to monitor the current on each pin with my HOF 5090D is awesome. No need for a fancy GPU to do this, I can do it with the MSI PSU and monitor all of it in HWINFO64 and MSI Afterburner. Can also overlay it in an OSD so I can keep an eye on it at all times if I want. Then picked up this Noctua AIO and very happy I did. The cooling improvement and headroom it provides me for Nova Lake is very cool. My system is Nova Lake ready lol. Grabbed the Logitech Pro X2 mouse with haptic triggers. It's a total game changer for me. I've never done better in games and just using the mouse on the desktop with a clean and satisfying mouse click. Also it's basically silent, so if my wife is in the office and I'm gaming, my trigger click is dead silent. No more annoying the heck out of her while I click away lol. Think I need to cool it for awhile lol.

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. 💖

I still love laptops and portables. I always have since I got my hands on a TRS-80 Model 100 as a pre-teen many moons ago. I just go with the flow and see what comes out and adjust to the hand that's dealt but the onslaught of thin and light and the effective EOL of true, customizable DTRs with truly upgrade enabled GPUs and CPUs still stings. I was down to two laptops but I was sent an HP Omnibook Panther based laptop with an Intel 356h in it, so that's been fun to run but it is severely constrained. Still rocking the sent to me Nitro 275hx + 5060 for the mrs and the Alienware 18 275hx + 5070ti for myself since they were all sent and no cost to me. I don't know if I can stomach purchasing another notebook anytime soon with the current crazy (and climbing) prices and "meh" offerings. Even the potential of picking up a 9955HX3D + 5080 MSI Raider was dashed with @win32asmguy short review on it in this thread. Belgium spanked us good and proper and then Spain shut them down fairly easily IMHO. No skin in the game now, but Norway or Switzerland winning works for me or at least NOT Argentina...... --------------------------------------------------- If anyone has a 5080 they want to let go for a decent price, let me know. I did find an open box GB 5080 SFF at MC for $1079.99 so $1024.99 + tax = ~1090 after MC Card discount I have on hold till Sunday for pickup, but I'm open to other cards.

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.

So, did a little bit of digging for elusive information online and found a solution that works with my TeamGroup CUDIMM kit. Forcing the clock driver to work for manual tuning without using an XMP profile allows me to keep the NGU, Ring and D2D values the same and still boot at 9000+ (example in above post). It will not work with my G.SKILL 8400 kit (non-CUDIMM). With the CUDIMMs installed after POST there is a new menu under the Skew Control menu in memory configuration. CKD Configuration and manually set Single PLL mode forces the CUDIMM clock driver to take over and do the heavy lifting on manual tuning. If you have not booted at least once with a CUDIMM kit installed or have normal DIMM installed the CKD Configuration menu does not exist.

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.

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.

I mean throwing in a $269 2TB Gen 4 NVME is better than some random 240mm AIO they usually try. NVME and DRAM are the modern day gold lol.

Um... uh. Ok. The NVMe was free. I guess that makes it ok.

If you have a local Microcenter, they're $249.99 atm...$237.49 with a Microcenter credit card. It's a crazy good processor. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Wireview Pro 2 in white looks slick..... ---------------------------------------------------------------------

@Mr. Fox++++ Still no need for the new buggy OS called Windows 11. Microsoft Extends Free Windows 10 Security Updates for Consumers Until October 2027 Published 36 minutes ago by Hilbert Hagedoorn 3 Microsoft has announced an unexpected extension of Windows 10 support for consumers, confirming that free security updates will continue through October 12, 2027. The additional year is provided through the company's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program and is intended to give users more time to transition to Windows 11 or purchase compatible hardware

Naughty kitty.

Yup. Asus going nuts.... This anniversary nonsense need to stop. What anniversary will they try use with next gen cards?🤔 ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 Edition 20 priced at €5,799 or converts to $6,650 +$2200 USD above an vanilla overpriced 5090 Astral or $4500 above 5090 FE. Nice. Can't be done any better. Gigabyte... You need to do much better. $5300 is all too cheap.

Hey sorry I havent been posting, busy season in my line of work its been madness. Still keeping tabs when I have a moment, 60 hour weeks and probably filling in for the overnight shift for a stint. Might be making a move into Engineer role if things line up. @Papusan Sorry to hear about your recent troubles but really stoked you are on the mend. @Mr. Fox is going to need a tag partner to keep these manufacturers honest. I have been thinking about trying to sell my 10850K system again as I would like to get something that is x16/x16 for GPU benching, just been too busy. Now that I have a sizeable slush fund it seems my guilty pleasure is trying to find a 1991 Honda CRX. I have certain designs for my RSX but would "need" something else to use while its being worked on.

Im struggling settling on a platform. My goodness. Now I’m looking at 270K Plus! 😂 I could order like (3) of them, and keep the best. And Z890 motherboards are cheaper as well.

Yeah, after the 5090 Astral I’m tapped, and all the other small losses here and there messing around with 5080’s. So I’m putting these up coming parts on the BB 0% for 12 months, then I can slowly sell off my current stuff to help recoup. 😁 Spending $699.99 plus tax on ram is not smart. I know they are amazing sticks. And the “Want” is STRONG. lol I feel like if I go with those rams, I need the Apex. I may go with these! Also, what do you think about the new Strix Neo board? Is the Hero maybe worth the step up? I’m going to skip the Apex. Cutting cost on ram, and motherboard, allows me to go with a 9950X3D2 over a 9850X3D. I think that’s probably a smarter move. I want to stay at like $2,000 for CPU/RAM/Motherboard.

exactly what bro @electrosoft said, my LFIII Pro with Noctua IPPC3000 fans in push/pull is a beast but im already itching when im seeing these crazy Noctua AIO results 😄 definitely added to my wishlist for a potential future upgrade. for now, im happy with my setup and just glad to be gaming again after months and months of RAM and GPU tuning 😛 CPU is STILL stock aside from the RAM tweaks, couldnt be bothered to OC it yet 😄

Im really curious to test that and see the gains in 4K compared to my current setup. I feel like my current setup performs well. But, I’m considering moving away from the 4K/120hz. It’s pretty big. I still run my 48” OLED Aorus panel. Thing has like 4,500+ “panel on time hours now” lol. 😂 Probably gonna run maybe a 27” 1440P. I didn’t hang on to any DDR5, I would only run one set at a time back then anyways. Other than the set that’s in my son’s rig, he has some nice 2x16GB Gskill 6400 Mdie sticks. I’m sure those can crank 8000+ If I made the switch, I do have a lot of DDR4 Bdie to offload and maybe recoup from. I have a 16x16GB set of Gskill Bdie 3200c14. The 9950X3D may not make sense, so maybe just a 9850X3D would be fine. Is there a significant different with the X870 Apex, and just a regular X870 Crosshair black? I’m not going to run a delid setup. Probably just pretty mild OC. Setup, grab a block, and swap it in to my current case with 3x480MM GTX, 4x D5.

I’m thinking about trying an AMD system, I’m going through BestBuy only for my parts for easy return/exchange options if needed. I’m looking at a 9950X3D2, and a X870 Crosshair Dark Hero, I am struggling on which ram to get. Any tips?

I'm banking on Nova Lake..... --------------------------------------------------------- One of those "hmmmm" videos where the 5080/9070xt/5070ti are close enough to really not make that much of a difference at 4k and I would posit even at 1440p go for the best bang/buck in many situations. With 9070xt's dipping back into the $600-650 range again, insane to pay $1k for a 5070ti or $1200+ for a 5080 unless you want the very best not named 5090.... You just have the 5090 sitting up in the clouds looking down at the rest shaking it's ~$4k head at the commoners.....

Pass for sure. Sometimes I have to wonder what Intel is thinking.