Leaderboard

I just wanted to keep the group together, I enjoy the chats and even sometimes (though I'll never admit it) the arguments that take place. Sometimes they get heated and require a timeout to let people cool off but otherwise I despise the heavy handedness / on the nose bias some other forums or reddit have in terms of moderation. Also have to thank @Aaron44126 for leading the charge on archiving the posts from NBR. It may come time to have that information internet facing into the Forum. I am a heavy proponent of "The more authority you exert, the less you have" and I try to keep that in the back pocket for moderating here also and in leading my teams at work. You are henceforth BANNED FOR LIFE. No good deed and all that lol Honestly ALL infrastructure, planning, software deployment was all built by @Hiew. I may handle how we moderate and deal with escalations but without Hiew this forum would not exist. He's FINALLY starting to get motivated to build donations and/or subs to assist with forum expenses also so we just have to figure out a good time for both of us to pull away from work. Im hoping we get something locked in this year maybe around the holidays. In other news, a friend of a friend got a miship from Amazon for some 9070 XT's, I bought 3 for 575/each and sold one to a colleague. Also ordered another 64GB of sRAM and 512GB of Persistent Memory for my server totalling 1.1TB of useable RAM. Going to try my hand at some larger local models with the 2-3 9070 XT's Same colleague is trading his R5 3600 + 6700 XT for my 5800X3D that I no longer use so that makes it 3x 9070 XT's for the local AI server. I hate what AI has done to my hobby but I still want to get a working understanding of how to use it. Adapt or Die and all that

Posts like this make my day. I was never part of the NBR crowd myself, but when Reciever asked me to help NBR find a new home, I was happy to jump in. I’m honored you guys have kept NBT as your home all these years. Thanks for the kind words!

hey guys, just wanted to say THANKS for all the years in this community, i know were living in our own small hardware nerd bubble here, but i also know that for most of us its a little release valve, a safe space to just drop out of the often exhausting real ilfe for a moment and be among likeminded absolutely over-the-top insane but in the end harmless and well-meaning peers. no worries, this is not a suicide note or goodbye or anything like that. just a bit of appreciation for y'all and a perspective check for me. dont be sad or angry or frustrated on what uve missed / dont have / uve lost / any pain youve went through. be thankful for what and especially who you have, cherish those little moments, stay curious, allow yourself the chance to just be wrong and learn something new, keep that basic childish wonder as long as you can. cheers guys! PS: and FFS take good care of your 5090s, now especially more than ever! WVPII FTW! 😄 PS2: lemme tag @Reciever and @Hiew to make sure our NBT stars also get this 😛

Dont know if its everyone, but forum is running slow for me. I pinged Hiew to take a look when he gets up so apologies until then.

Well, tomorrow (Sunday) Mrs. Fox and I celebrate 40 years of marital bliss. That does not even seem possible. Where did all of the time go? God blessed me with a good one... better than I deserve.

I can understand it. This is what they are doing to all of us. Financial rape. Simple as that. They should watch out though. You know what they say about pay-back. (It starts with a "b" and ends with "itch" if you were not sure.) Companies that lie together die together. First EVGA. Now Galax. Wonder who comes next? Who will be left and who dumb enough to sell NVIDIA chips after the AI bubble breaks? Edit: https://community.hwbot.org/topic/248718-cpu-z-version-usage-limited-to-version-301-and-newer/#findComment-720971

Yes, it does. Just remember that it's better to look good than to feel good.

Herro all. Long time no see. I came here today for a couple of reasons. First, a question: Does anybody know if the latest BIOS update for my motherboard (Z690 Strix-F gaming wifi DDR5 version) has any issues I should avoid or is it safe to bump the BIOS up to it? Figured I might as well at some point since a bunch of features of this board quite simply do not work and some others are telling me they should function. Secondly, as you all know I'm not a benchmarker, but somebody today convinced me to run Steel Nomad DX12 with my system, so I clocked my card to hell and decided to crash it for funsies. It didn't crash. So uhh, here? Have my first run? It managed to get me all the way to 7th place worldwide for my hardware combination so that was surprising. So naturally, the next course of action was to run Port Royal and see if THAT crashed. It did not. This one also got me nicely on the leaderboards, 8th for my setup. So that was fun. I can still hang with the crowd I guess hehehehe Hope everyone's doing well! I'll be 37 in a couple weeks I'm becoming an old man. Need a cane and everything soon I swear.

We've seen the "barely off the line and onto the pallets for direct sale," song and dance before with both Cryptodemics we went through....no middle man just pure profit for the AIBs. I never thought the 5090 was discontinued. They've just redirected them to the AI market prioritizing that profit sector especially considering 5090s were being ripped apart and sent to China for AI deployment and I am sure elsewhere too. We just tend to narrow focus on China considering its economic and technological importance in the world. I posted earlier about not being a discontinuation and poking fun at Jensen: ---------------------------------------------------------------- New 7500X3D back from RMA working exactly like it should on the $237.50 after MC CC use 7500X3D + Asrock B850m bundle deal from Microcenter tested with the TG 2x8200 24GB sticks..... Refund already issued for the returned Noctua 420mm. I have the H9 Flow 2025 Edition here but right now all the components are installed still in the Phanteks but it will have to move seeing as I have no room to install the RAM cooling in the Phanteks due to its design with the Lian Li Lite 360 installed up top.... This is with the aRGB of the Lian Li not even connected...lots of default I'll need to address with OpenRGB or something similar to rein in the "Carebear Stare!" status once moved but hardware wise this is final boss form for the H9 Flow 2025 case change incoming....

Dept. of non-humanity. It's all getting scaringly good. When Heavy Metal Ruled the 70s

We've banned millions of IP's at this point the bot nets are elusive buggers. Were looking at moving the forum to another server, Hiew may finally be up to getting donations setup but Im hoping to prod him along as I'd like to take some time off from work also.

Oh hohoho look what I found! https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19351/intel-wireless-wi-fi-drivers-for-windows-10-and-windows-11.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/18649/intel-wireless-bluetooth-drivers-for-windows-10-and-windows-11.html?countrylabel=Asia%20Pacific&product=86451 Windows 10 drivers for a wi-fi 7 module you say? I thought wi-fi 7 required windows 11 (wink wink). I finally got the built in wi-fi module working in windows 10 on my Asus Maximus Apex encore motherboard this way. I'd been using a USB wi-fi adapter with wireless AX since I built this machine. I'm glad I get to free up that USB port now and get faster speeds as well. Note that these wi-fi and bluetooth drivers are for intel wireless modules. If your mortherboard has an intel wi-fi 7 module, these drivers should make it work in windows 10. I also found a windows 10 driver for qualcomm since I have an alienware m18 r1 AMD advantage edition (yeah, I know, BGA turdbook, but I can't get away from laptops as I still need them), and got that wi-fi module working in windows 10 as well. If your laptop also has a qualcomm wi-fi 6e module, these drivers should get it working in windows 10: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=7vt5x I've had some adventures on the m18 and will report on those later. While it is a BGA laptop, it's good for what it is and what I use it for. I also got it for a good price and really needed a second laptop when I got it. It's an excellent linux laptop (since it has an AMD GPU), and it's excellent for my software suite (which has a performance advantage on AMD GPUs, the main reason I bought this laptop). The fact it has an AMD GPU also makes it perfect for use as a Lossless Scaling frame gen machine (hmm, this opens up possibilities like using it as a terminal for a backpackable sff desktop, hmmmm).

Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Fox! I just celebrated 13 years last month.

Kept my 5090D HOF XOC because I love the dual power input and I may as well keep a 5090. I also picked up a 5080 Astral before the price hike, thank god. Now that same GPU is $2700 at Microcenter which is just absolutely insanely stupid. I actually still have not opened it yet, been way too busy with work and picking up extra time. Now I hear a 24gb 5080 is coming and considering returning the 5080 and waiting for that as my secondary card. I'm still planning on grabbing that Nova Lake day 1 as is tradition lol.

This one is dedicated to......

So, I got another 8800 CUDIMM kit (Corsair Vengeance) to use in the Unify-X with the CPU I was given by Brother @Talon. I started studying Intel DDR5 memory tuning and learned something new using AI (with links to the points of reference authored by humans). tRTP and tWR should be left on "Auto" because the timings get jacked up. Instead, set tRDPRE instead of tRTP and tWRPRE instead of tWR. (This may apply to AMD as well, but I have not tested it. As you can see in the screenshot, setting tWRPRE to 48 instead of tWR is actually a tighter timing and tWR reads as -2 (left on Auto) and tRDPRE set to 20 reflects tRTP as 20 (left on Auto). This also lowered my latency on L3 Cache. To get tWR to equal 48 you set tWRPRE to 98 if tCWL is 40. You should increase tWRPRE if you want to achieve a target true tWR of 48. The formula Intel use for calculating tWR on DDR5 is: tWR=tWRPRE-tCWL-8 When you set tWRPRE directly to 48, the motherboard's BIOS calculates tWR by subtracting your Write Latency (tCWL) and the DDR5 burst length of 8. Because tCWL is typically equal to or slightly lower than your tCL (which is likely between 30 and 40 on a Z890 setup), subtracting it drops the real tWR value to essentially nothing (hence the -2 rendering or glitching out in your BIOS. What to set: To get a target tWR of 48, you need to work backward using your tCWL value: Formula: tWRPRE = 48 + tCWL + 8 Example 1: If your tCWL is 38, you would set tWRPRE to 94 (48 + 38 + 8). Example 2: If your tCWL is 40, you would set tWRPRE to 96 (48 + 40 + 8). Leave tWR on Auto, adjust tWRPRE upwards based on this formula, and verify in a tool like AsRock Timing Configurator or MemTweakIt that your effective tWR reports at your desired target. (I used Dragon Ball, obviously.)

Ahh, you will miss it in a couple months when the 24 core 48 thread 10950x drops 🤣

😁

Nice to see both of you again. Glad you are still kicking. @D2ultima my oldest son is 37. He will be 38 in January. I will be 64 in January. Being old is a relative phenomenon.

Hey brothers! Just when I was going to start pivoting my YT channel to talk more about PC hardware and software, the industry continues to worsen for DIY buyers, buyers in general. Matter of fact, it seems more and more of the YT tech crowd are moving towards creation tools like 3D printers, desktop CNC machines and etc (and these have their own incoming perils). I guess it is a good thing that I was a tech hoarder and have kept a lot of mobos. Right now I am looking to pick up a 10850K/10900K and a 10980XE for some overclocking fun. I still have my X299 Dark (and X570) that I want to bring out of retirement. For the 10900K, I have several z590 mobos in my inventory that I forgot I had. LOL, I am now happy I picked up the 9070XT Red Devil and 5070 TI Prime when I did. Gosh, things are bad. I wish I picked up a 5090 when it was around 2300 last Sept. Anyway brothers, I'll update you all when I've secured some of these CPUs

Well said. Thank you for helping build this place for us.

I've often said, and ended posts here, with being thankful to even be in the position to have the ability to purchase and play with some of these toys and high tech items. I have a nice pile of hardware amassed. Only thing I'm on the lookout for atm is a decently priced set of the G.Skill 6000 CL26 1.40 sticks. I could use a few more NVME drives too but overall I'm good. After the shutdown and demise of NBR, @Reciever and @Hiew picking up the reins and running with it with NBT really let us carve out our corner again and just let it flow. I always like it when a long time member from yore discovers NBT and pokes their head in to say hi! And yeah, the WVPII is definitely a blessing on my 5090 which some say could rise to $10k in the new year as supply dries up. I have yet to have my cable deviate or yell at me yet (I'm running the MSI yellow cable included with the MEG 1600T), but I've got it locked down. 🙂

F***ing ay, been playing electric guitar for xx years, parts of this is (again scaringly) from another dimension or planet. Maybe it is, planet AI :O) & no doubt, they are feeding LSD to the AI.

Microcenter officially no longer carries the 5090 as every card with no remaining stock still lingering is now marked as, "No Longer carried." Only card left in stock anywhere for 5090 in Microcenters is the Asus $11k+ after tax bundle and only two of my five localish (~45-100mi away) have 1 in stock each. Why are they still there? Most likely because third party sellers have other models for sale for $4k cheaper.....I'm sure they will eventually move..... Just about every model of 5080 in stock but cheapest price is the $1699 (on sale for $1669) GB WF SFF 5080. Same for the 5070ti but the cheapest model is the Ventus for $1199 on sale for $1149... Newegg is completely wiped out of 5090s as is Amazon and Best Buy. All we have are third party sellers with the lowest price being ~$7k for a Windforce 5090. Only 7 models of 5080s in stock on Newegg with the cheapest being the PNY for $1699.99. Cheapest 5070ti is the $1179 Eagle.... Ugh -------------- I received an email from BHPhoto today informing me the Gigabyte 9070xt Gaming is discontinued. I forgot I had it on my "inform me when in stock," from eons ago. We'll see where that goes.... Cheapest 9070xt is the $800 Reaper and prices are rumored to be going up again.... Certain cards can't be found stateside (GB Aorus Elite and PowerColor 9070xt Red Devil are two examples) as most likely AIBs are going to start consolidating which cards to carry based on profitability. Smart move is to offer lower tier cards at inflated prices to weather the price storm rather than have more expensive models get too close to 5070ti pricing and potentially rot in this PC gaming market downturn, but again, we will see.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I said it before and I'll say it again... 270k is an absolute banger and price:performance it is a monster. Toss in Microcenter bundle deals and it gets crazy.... ----------------------------------------------------------- No thanks. Picked up my on hold at Best Buy H9 Flow 2025 Edition yesterday for $109.99 that checks all my boxes especially with my army of P14 Arctic 140mm fans. I think I have at least 12 of them strewn about for my build out..... I had $90 in rewards sitting in my account from when our TV decided to fail earlier this year and we needed a new one so final price was $21.38 He was mostly disappointed in the assembly frustration and MSI trying to be "fancy" and causing access issues and usability. Beautiful to look at but pricey, frustrating to build in and hard to access features once built. I can't imagine dropping $800 on a case. Then again I never imagined dropping $2k on a GPU so who knows in the future?! 🤑

I have a ring for Jensen to kiss. It's called a sphincter.

Yes, I just tested with my water cooled 5080 and confirmed it works 100%. This needs to be on the chiller to avoid overheating, but even with the insane thermals without the chiller and thermal throttling it came within striking distance of my Speedway high score.

SO it has all of the features of mvolt+ extreme plus the vBIOS features? Nice. Will have to check it out. mvolt+ extreme has been awesome because I have been able to run both of my 5080's with a 1000W power limit, and both GPUs use it all. It's crazy how badly the Green Goblin has gimped the performance of 5080. (Probably to make the gap between 5080 and 5090 as large as possible.)

https://github.com/b00nz/mVolt/releases This new version of mVolt is insane! It basically has vBIOS editing! No more need to disable secure boot or mess with drivers. You load your vBIOS file, set the limits you want, and hit restart driver and boom unlocked vBIOS power limits/current/memory offsets with any vBIOS file. It also survives reboot and then you can use MSI Afterburner for overlay, etc.

Probably a long shot but does anyone have a pair of RTX 3090 or 3090Ti they’d be willing to sell for a good price? wanna play around with nvlink 3090s next lol

Thank you. I finally got it finished and set in place where I intend to use it. Very solid build and more "portable" than most desktops can be. I forgot how hot air cooled DDR5-8400 can get so I added that articulating fan to blast it is air. I am going to be selling a SFF build with legacy parts (X79 Rampage Gene, 32GB of quad channel and RX 590) on FB. It is so little and cute, and It even has an easy carry handle on the roof of the case. I think it should sell quickly for the $375 that I intend to ask for it. it does a great job with 1080P gaming with ultra or high settings on most titles, and medium settings on the most demanding titles. (As long as there is no ray tracing to turn it into a slide show.) Yes, it is definitely better. It was almost unusable before, so let's hope whatever was messed up stays fixed.

Even with this 270K Plus being an unimpressive silicon sample, it performs at a level that takes a great deal of effort and a better than average 9950X/X3D/X3D2 silicon sample to achieve with 8 additional threads; and this sample's weak IMC still outperforms the flagship Ryzen SKUs in memory performance. The contempt for Intel's decisions such as continued use of Atom cores and doing away with hyperthreading caused Core Ultra to be disliked based on principle rather than practice, and understandably so. Those were the reasons I gave Zen 5 a chance to begin with, but it hasn't been given proper credit for being the better product.

The Apex Twins have a new sibling. I just got the hardware set up and in the process of installing Linux and Windoze. No tuning yet.

Did I post this before ? Anyway. Damn, that (non-existing 🥴) guitarist is beyond good...

Happy anniversary @Mr. Fox! 40 years is an amazing achievement! Hopefully we'll be tossing out congrats for your 50th! Maybe via a neural link...... 😁 Decent besides that AI voice over (Irony!)... So much pressure on Nvidia in line with OpenAI. They now have competitors coming for them from all sides with China and Google in housing their own chip designs now and companies, like Apple, opting to train on Google chips instead of Nvidia hardware for their AI along with others. OpenAI has lost almost 50% of its market share in 4 years as competition heats up. As for Nvidia.... Their strong handed tactics really reek of Intel back in the day with smaller companies. The forced outlay (channel stuffing) has to hit a logical wall and I feel like Nvidia is burning the candle at both ends. AMD is furiously coming on strong too along with Intel and Apple integrating neural processing in their CPUs. Now we have the DOJ investigating Nvidia's "no acquisition" acquisitions Either Nvidia is humbled by a thousand cuts and/or we will end up with some ASIC approaches to LLM and inference that will render the need for Nvidia GPUs null and void aka the cryptoboom. For us lowly end users, the key is finding the optimal moment to dump our 5080s and 5090s for max valuation if that is in play. The scariest part is Nvidia guaranteeing inventory valuation for lending and selling GPUs. That could mean they need to extend the life, and value, of the GB20X chips. It adds another reason to not rush the 6000 series to market anytime soon to combat any potential devaluation. Imagine being a company neck deep in Blackwell hardware sitting in the warehouse from channel stuffing waiting to be deployed when the grid allows it and now here comes the 6000 series.... Just don't confuse the bubble popping with AI going away. AI is here to stay and so many viable uses in real world scenarios; it is the future.

Probably so. Unless it is priced like a 9950X3D2 (or worse). The thing I like a lot about the 270K Plus is that it performs better than 9950X at half the cost, and overclocks much better (both CPU and memory).

Good news for ASUS Z890 mobo owners. The latest version of Dragon Ball reads memory timings correctly, unlike the crappy new versions of ASRock Timing Configurator and ASUS MemTweakIt. There is also a new version for AMD available. I downloaded it for the Unify-X and was happy to see it worked for the Z890 Apex. The only thing I have missed from AMD ownership is ZenTimings and now that is a non-issue. https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/msi-dragon-ball-and-dragon-power-for-z890.405338/post-2390679

My favorite comment on the video...

No end yet :O) w8 & old Dell Latitude doing fine, zero problems. Browsing, light photo editing, streaming, bt music. Browsing, some website errors here and there but almost ok using Firefox Extended Support, still getting updates. Not bothered by security concerns, w8 surely of minimal interest as a target, in view of the 4 people still using it. Nice behaviour (!) from MS, Defender support continues.

Holy crap.. So that’s why the price shot up. I guess word got out about EOL. So maybe xx90 is gone forever and xx80 will be king again. I suppose it doesn’t hurt for 5090 owners right now. And maybe in the next gen, we will have a viable xx80 or xx80Ti that’s actually fast! This may be a good thing in a few years. AI has gotten ridiculous. And they are gobbling the 5090, so maybe they’ll be uninterested in 5080 or 6080 or 7080. Makes sense though, they want to sell more fresh releases RTX Pro 5500’s for MORE MONEY! And they need those 5090 cores! 💀

Personally, I think prices are going to go higher. 5090s will now dry up everywhere and be hoarded for personal use or those who reach a, "I can't say no," offer will sell theirs off for what will most likely be AI deployment either domestic or abroad. Locally, there are a few buyers openly offering $5500 cash for any and all 5090s. They will come to you, test your card, hand you a fat stack and carry on. When they say, "Any brand, as long as it is working we pay $5500," you have a pretty good idea of where those cards are going.... Pricing will be fractionally in sync with the RTX 5500 and as eventually GB202 5090 dies are limited, even the RTX 5500 will go up in price along with the 5090s still out there. Basically, as long as purchasing and converting a 5090 into an AI card makes financial sense / profitable, pricing will continue to trend upward. Luckily, I have this sub $1k 5080 and 2x 9070xt (one being in the wife's system) cards so if the right offer suddenly appeared, I can't see myself turning down $7k but not till next year at the earliest and probably summertime at that. You also have to think that this EOL is fresh and brand new and whatever stock is out there is going to evaporate quickly and then the second hand market turns into a resource strapped buy/sell with prices trending up. Like I said above, I'm still holding onto mine for a few reasons and one of them being I expect prices to trend up a bit more before leveling off in relation to the RTX 5500 pricing. I'm still playing on the 9850X3D + 5080 config atm as I've been too busy/lazy to break down the current test setups and start the transition to final boss form. The performance hit is real in WoW. I'm not used to seeing full utilization and sitting under 100fps quite often but for the right $$$ I could live with it but it has to be a price point that is high enough to override going years with a significant and noticeable performance drop. $6k which would be a $4k profit won't make or break me in any which way, shape or form and I don't need the money, so is it worth the loss of superior performance for the next year+? I still get aggravated when buyers get salty over pricing. I've come to realize they fully understand current market conditions. They are just hoping to sob story / brow beat you into giving them yesteryear level pricing....

I love my 5090 but if I were in your shoes I would do it. Maybe see if you can chisel another $200-$300 out of the deal, given how insane 5090 prices are. Here's why: The 5090 has been declared to have an immature EOL due to the immeasurable dishonestly of the ghouls at NVIDIA. If something happens to your 5090 the OEM will likely do something crazy bad underhanded and dishonest rather than repairing it, paying you curent fair market replacement value, or replacing it at no cost. Up to and including finding a lameass reason to deny warranty. That is how almost all of them roll now with EVGA no longer keeping the industry honest. The PC part OEMs have never been so dishonest and crooked as they are now. Buy two 5080s and pocket at least $2,000 difference. A 5080 will never come close to 5090, but if we are honest about what we "need" it doesn't need to. Even a 5070 Ti or 9070 XT will do in a pinch. 5080 is more than enough for gaming. 5090 is the weapon of mass destruction we all love and want, but given the chances of a sketchy future get out while you still can and make a buttload of money off the sale. Don't consider it scalping because with the 5090 now being EOL it is going to be a collector's item only for idiots with more money than common sense. Anyone that gives push-back on the price being too high should be wished good luck finding a functional 5090 priced anywhere near the original intended retail price before AI made the world stupid, and then remind them that it is now officially a collector's novelty item with no ceiling on what a moron will pay for it. No different than a vintage muscle car that now sells for 20 to 100 times what it orginally sold for new. It's worth as much as an idiot that can't live without it is willing to pay. Use of common sense, intelligence and value are no longer playable cards for 5090 shoppers. If is seems kind of like I am hoarding hardware now, it is because I am. Motherboards and CPUs will probably end up being as poor a value proposition as RAM, GPUs and storage have become. I am buying things I don't need cheap now so I can sell them later for stupid prices. If prices fall, I bought the stuff cheap and will have spare parts available for personal use.

Yes I believe it has all Extreme features. But the new "Extend limits using BIOS override" lets you essentially take any 5090 vBIOS and modify it's limits. Essentially letting you XOC any vBIOS file. It then simply does a driver restart to apply those new limits and they stick even after reboot, so set it and forget it. I guess it was some backdoor Nvidia put in to allow for OEMs to test hardware without needing to flash? AI has lead to insane advancements lately. Hard to keep up with all the changes. On a side note, I have offers to buy my 5090 D HOF XOC for $6000 locally. I am considering it, but then I'd be left without a 5090 and only a 5070 Ti and 5070 Prime on hand.

I was out of town for NYCC, so I just got a chance to watch this. I liked what I saw. He's coming into it with rested, fresh eyes and open to BTF and other changes. That's a good thing. He isn't jaded. You KNOW those parts are binned AF especially with his buddy Shamino working there. I am sure that 9950x, 270k and Astral 5090 BTF are gonna RIP. Cardboard boxed MBs including 2x AMD and 1x Intel. Asus basically sent him $10k worth of hardware and you know what? I'm ok with it. Dude is a legend and I'm glad he's come back home. Oh they most certainly will except as much pricier AI cards. 5090 resell values will be directly tied to the pricing of GB202 formerly 5090 die cards so they will plateau around $6k-$7k unless prices continue to rise for the AI 5090 aka RTX 5500 which is estimated to cost ~$9200 with 84GB of memory but I suspect it will go for more and rise quickly and 5090s could eventually hit ~$8k. Eventually 5090s even on the second hand market will evaporate as they are snatched up for AI. If they start to resell for $7k+ by next year, there is a very strong chance I will let mine go but we will see in the moment. Either way, the 5080 GB203 is fully tapped out so the only way to see a true xx80TI card would have to be an even more cut down GB202 but with the way AI is snatching up everything, that ~15k core count card would probably be paired with 64GB of memory and sold as yet another AI product at this rate. Ironically, it is the limitations of the grid that could be one of the factors that slows down the onslaught of AI. It will hit a wall either through lack of buildout resources, debt fatigue, failure on ROI or all of thee above. Bad enough when they would message you telling you "a friend" had what you were looking for and to email them at *****@*****.tld, but now they're trying to use the old phishing approach of making names appear as close as possible in messaging. Definitely going to snag that. The amount of adjustability and features being unlocked recently is awesome. Everyone checking their ASIC scores? 🤣 I suspect they did it because the GB203 in the 5080 is full fat and to offer a 5080 Super in the future could only be a power bump so they went ultra conservative with its power profile. Of course if current rumors are true and they discontinue consumer level 5080 and 5090 models and only offer a 5090 24GB model, it will suddenly be a 600w capable unit too.....thank you Jensen....

Yes, I have purchased those cheap keys before and they always work fine for me. I have to use a script because I only run LTSC/IoT versions of Windoze 10 and Winduhz 11. I find that much better than starting with a bloated Pro version and having to spend a lot of time and effort butchering it to the point of acceptability. I need to install Linux on the Unify X build, but my stash of spare NVMe SSDs of 1TB and 2TB capacity is running low. I snagged a couple of 2TB NVMe on eBay for less than $150 each, but won't receive them until next week.

I get this way too with wallpapers. The motherboard is the conduit to all and if it is system themed wallpaper, it has to be to that AIB. I am also open to mash ups...like I'm running an Asus MB but with an MSI GPU...that's worthy of a mash up.

So I'm in need of a Windows 11 Pro key. Has anyone used gvgmall or ggkeys to purchase a super cheap one? I won't script auto activate, but I'm sure as heck not paying retail off the shelf prices either.... ------------------------------------------------------ Current rig is in "ghetto" mode with the 5080 and X870E Dark Hero running on the Noctua 420mm in the soon to be departed Phanteks. I ordered an NZXT H9 Flow to replace it from best buy on sale for $109.99. The Phanteks has no room up top to seriously mount anything 420 and 360 blocks access to the top part of the MB along with the case being so wide/long that any AIO that needs to front mount has to have longer tubes. Noctua and Lian Li both have too short of tubes to reach. It could use more room in the back too. I've used it for 5yrs and 8 months. It has earned a worthy retirement. I've been testing the Noctua 420mm against several AIOs I have on hand (Yes, I have a problem): Lian Li Lite 360 Lian Li Galahad Performance Arctic LF II 420 ID Cooling Frostflow 280 (hottest of the AIO lot) Arctic LF III 360 Performance (mid 70s...this was disappointing) eK Nucleus 240 Asus Prime LC 360 Trofeo Vision 360 Paladin EX400 Air Cooler Stock AM5 OEM cooler (Insta throttle for shiggles) All with a center dot of KPX Tested on AM5 9850X3D delidded Pure stock (~150w-160w max load) Final verdict? Noctua beats every other AIO from 4c to 10c EXCEPT the $85 Lian Li Lite 360 ARGB which tied with it at ~66.5c. I think I mentioned before the Lian Li Lite 360 was getting best in class temps in testing last year and rave reviews. Downsize is the pump noise but tuning the curve in BIOS to 50% took care of that when not under high load. Don't let the Noctua fool you. That pump is loud. It has three manual selections on the pump high balanced and quiet and only quiet truly made it near inaudible. The other two it is very easy to hear. Fans it is no contest. Noctua is crazy quiet under load vs the Lian Li, but at low loads both are quiet. Difference is the Noctua is near dead quiet. The secret sauce to Noctua are those fans. Under load, the Lian Li fans are definitely front and center. Not a deal breaker but under load the Noctua fan noise level is that of many AIOs at idle. I'm going to switch to the Lian Li Lite 360 for a few days and see how it fares for normal D2D usage vs the Noctua. If I like what I see, I'll probably return the Noctua but we'll see....

It "requires" W11 only because the driver developers are lame Micro$lop butt-kissers and you're required to use the new cancer OS because they've not done right by consumers in terms of releasing drivers for Windows 10 or Windows 7. The Redmond Retards told them not to and they obeyed. There are no true operating system incompatibilities, only a lack of quality product support. It is particularly bad today for me. Accessing anything is met with lengthy delays and unresponsive web pages. I had a good run in the sun with Ryzen and their latest generation is the only product stack that has been any good for me. No regrets, only minor disappointment with the limitations. However, I've always preferred Intel and I still think they make a better CPU all things considered. At least that is true if overclocking is your primary consideration on making a purchase, and it's no secret to anyone here that this is my primary consideration. Ryzen overclocking is very limited in comparison. The SFF build with the B850MPOWER and 4585PX is still in the family. It is my wife's desktop now and connected to the living room TV where she can use it as often (or as little) as she wants. It's a potent and respectable build and I still like it. I like the Unify X a lot, but the 270K Plus that came with it is a pretty crappy sample compared to the other two I have. I'm probably going to buy a better one and sell it to offset the cost. It is a voltage pig with a weak memory controller. Totally usable and a good candidate for a gaming or content creation focused build. I am going to move it to one of the Apex systems for testing to confirm my impressions about the silicon quality. I think it's probably very average and the two that I had already are better than average. I wish I had purchased another 270K Plus when Microcenter had them on sale for $199 about 10 days ago. I'm going to keep watching and snag one when they drop the price again. I'm not going to delid this since it is going to be replaced and will be easier to sell to a normie or gamer boy. That tends to freak them out due to general ignorance and the misguided belief that delidding is bad, or the preference to give priority to warranty over performance enhancement. The motherboard is very nice. Nicer than the Apex even. But the firmware is your typical MSI/Gigabyte "gamer-focused" trash BIOS that is lacking in features needed for world-class overclocking. There is a reason A$$zeus dominates overclocking leaderboards... A$$zeus is the only manufacturer that actually knows what they're doing when it comes to firmware now that EVGA has left the building. I'll probably reach out to Svet about the missing features and VNNANON 1.00V cap that is an impediment to D2D overclocking. It needs to be raised to at least 1.100V. I am very tempted to do something bold and crazy, like taking a dump of the Apex BIOS and forcing a cross-flash on the Unify X using an SPI programmer just to see what happens and see if it would actually work. I think it would actually be safe to try since it has a dual BIOS.

I love my PC hobby, but I've been Mac and iphone as my core setup for years now for work along with an iPad. With all the cross platform tools, there's a reason many of the big houses now deploy Macbooks for dev work. I agree with @Mr. Fox on this one @Papusan. You have to attack the problem on all levels and the reason Microcenter implements a one per household / ID checked policy on many products IS to prevent scalpers and also in this case straw buyers and agents from buying up 5090 products and just either finding a way to sell/ship them as is or ripping the cores and memory off the board and shipping them that way. This isn't much tighter than their valid ID on file / One GPU per month quota they had during the Pandemicryptoboom. It is also why Microcenter routinely has items in stock while you can't find them any place else online because bots don't work when you can only reserve items online for pickup and then have to eventually enter the store front to purchase and pick up in person. In short, on any level, any potential scalper/straw buyer/agent that is turned away by this new requirement opening up even one unit for a legit customer is a win. I agree the main culprits are the corporations and big AIBs/resellers, but would you rather scalpers and straw buyers be able to walk in and just buy out everything they want? Toss out the baby with the bathwater? Trust me, if Microcenter decided to go all Newegg/Amazon and just volume sell online, their stores would be even barer than they are now for many products. $7k desktops anyone? It is the one thing still hanging on atm for 5090s..... As for the 5070, at MSRP to me it was one of the sweet spot cards I called around launch. Yeah for a bit there it was running like dogwater.... I just load it up and go get something to drink... 🤣 I usually don't complain. I know you guys are all over it when you get time. Ruh Roh! You tend to keep things in threes.... This means either one of the Apex's is on its way out or you're heading towards being done with AM5 before Nova drops 🤣 Looks nice! Again, I was tempted to snap it up but I've yet shockingly found myself with a pile of hardware again that I will have to wait till January to downsize. I'm on the cusp of kicking myself up into another tax bracket because of this year and I definitely don't need that.... Or I am going to have to go the local/FB/CL route which I haven't done in a bit to offload some gear.