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Happy New Year everyone.

Just got my 7900 XTX blocked, liquid metal and minus 8 pads for memory and vrm, used the ek thermal pads for everything else. Depending how I feel I may get it installed into the loop tonight. Also set up 3x 800w psu's from the crypto days, one for each 8pin. This is mostly just to keep their fans at a lower rpm. Last time I used just one psu and it started to sound like a jet engine. Also rebuilt the other open air bench finally, what a pain to rebuild. 10850k will run with the 1300w. Everything is beginning to take shape and thank goodness because my room is a disaster lol

There are some new ones for just $431 on Amazon right now. I hope you get a good one! I actually had to return an Apex to Amazon for absolutely shit tier memory OC. I learned it's definitely possible to get a bad binned board, something I had not experienced before. I really want Intel to drop the ARL Refresh in January since I have vacation and will have time to tinker and bin. But I saw a rumor of a March release which to me is just wild. Why would they drop a new CPU refresh, about 6-9 months before Nova Lake. But maybe the rumor I saw of a fixed IO is the reason. If Intel actually fixed the IO, then we might actually see the latency fixed and there could be significant gains. The rumors of 10-30% gaming gains could be true then. If they fixed gaming that much without huge cache, then Nova Lake with this fix and huge cache could be an absolute monster.

Happy New Year from Norway to all my good friends🙂 The rockets is already fired up. Money down the drain, LOL

The 12V-2x6 / 12VHPWR petite arson cable is just a ludicrous scam. NVIDIA (and Jensen) need to burn for introducing this stupid POS. I'd love to see NVIDIA financially obliterated by the largest-ever award of damages in a class action lawsuit. A just award would be that everyone that can provide proof of original purchase of a brand new GPU made with this connector gets a full refund of their original invoice amount, non-transferable unconditional lifetime warranty on the GPU connector and PSU and keeps the GPU. The tech space is just overrun with garbage now. Bad enough that almost everything new is trash, but it adds insult to injury when the trash is overpriced by double or triple what a person of average intelligence would be willing to pay for it. Speaking of trash, I found one less excuse for running Windoze. One of the things that has always been an impediment is needing to use Micro$lop Office for work. Linux doesn't have any 100% fully-compatible and truly acceptable substitute. Well, no longer an issue. I even got PowerBI to run on Linux now.

https://videocardz.com/newz/cinebench-2026-released-with-support-for-amd-rdna4-and-nvidia-blackwell-gpus Cinebench 2026 has been released. New software to punish our chips with. https://www.maxon.net/en/downloads/cinebench-downloads

All of my 32GB ECC DDR4 are in use, unfortunately. I do have one W-1290 server that I only turn on once per month with 128GB of 2933MT/s RAM (32GB x4) that doesn't particularly need that much RAM. I only purchased that much RAM to max out the server. They are UDIMMs though. The crazy part is the price for them didn't change. I paid around $850 for the two kits around three to four years ago. They cost the same now. I am starting to realize I only buy RAM during shortages...LOL.

MSI finished my RMA and got the FedEx package today. To my complete shock, they gave me a brand new unit and the new ATX 3.1 version. Honestly a great RMA experience with MSI.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Blessings to all of you.

Merry Xmas and happy holidays to all! It bit funny and ironic we just talked about your adventures with Best Buy.....good luck! Two observations on the yellow tip again: If it were black, you wouldn't be able to see even the mild scorch marks. Companies should start including these in white or yellow for clear visibility of scorching. I still suspect there are plenty of black connectors out there already with scorch marks. You just can't see them. The bottom row strikes again with the weaker, [ ] design which I posit is susceptible to physical stress and speeds up the cycle as they are heated up and in conjunction with the physical stress are pulled ever so slightly open making them even more susceptible. --- These connectors really should not be physically stressed at all and the weaker the design (like MSI's bottom row array) the more the stress can cause meltdowns in conjunction with migrating imbalance of amps over time for various reasons.

Merry Christmas to all my extended family in this thread!!! Now, I am in a bit of a dilemma. Bestbuy has the Prime 5070 TI for $749.99, brand new. I just spent that on the "Like New" card from Amazon. I am going to cancel the card from Amazn and begrudgingly buy from Bestbuy. Here goes nothing....

Isn't it infuriating when the bias is clear in these videos for CPU comparisons? Either run default vs default EXPO vs XMP based on actual AMD/Intel speeds or take the time to properly test and OC each platform with similar levels of overclocking. I'm fine either way, but be consistent. The problem is 99% of viewers won't go over the fine print or even care. They run right to the results and move along. One reason I still watch FrameChasers and especially BlackBirdTech is they push max tuning on each so you can actually see the end product if both are OC'd within reason to gather some data for your own analysis.

Micro Center also has the Z890 Apex for ~$294. The Unify would be nice but its a lot of trouble to change around boards unless there is a good benefit to it. The Z890 Apex + 285K I bought from Talon was finally delivered today. Hopefully can test out this evening!

WireView Pro II was just delivered.

The $431.99 one is sold by Kova Trade and shipped by Amazon. Shipped and sold by Amazon is $441.99. With these types of products via Amazon, I tend to lean towards both shipped and sold by Amazon just to be safe unless the price difference is meaningful. That is $70+ in my pocket 🤑 for picking up an open box new and worse case scenario is I return it and pick up the $441.99 variant. Most times open box new is box damage with Amazon so we will see. First thing I'm going to do is check G4 9200 on down to see where it gives up the ghost . Hopefully this one is a good one though! If it isn't, welp, back it goes.... ----- I was waiting for the refresh after reading about the node refinements, IO improvements and better IMC incoming. I'll just continue to double down around this 265k atm while sorting out the memory end of the DDR5/MB combo and then go from there. Worse case I tune it around 8400 unless it is an OC dud on top of that then off to eBay it goes... Nova with latency refinements and bllc could clock in as a legit AMD gaming killer. I would be ready for a return to Intel's glory days but remember....this IS modern day Intel we're talking about. We might want to lower our expectations......

Yeah, its great working with Asus bios. One bios that's pretty annoying is ASRock lol. My sons Z790 DDR5 bios is a pain and very confusing. Theres like 4 different settings for CPU load line. The ASRock bios reminds me of Aorus/Giga bios.

So I bit the bullet (the itch wouldn't stop itching) and picked up an open box new Z890 Apex from the zon for $371. This gives me the Z890-A Strix and Apex for motherboards along with 3x of memory on hand atm (TG 8200, KB 8400, Corsair 9200) along with this open box 265k which I am 99% sure is capped out at 8400 at G2 but we'll see. I'll also be able to verify the Z890-A Strix capping out at 8667 in G4. Z890-A Strix is rated to 9066 but two review I've seen now show it capping out sub 8800 under stress test so this isn't a surprise as mine will boot 9200 G4 just fine but falls apart about 5 minutes into the stress test (TM5 1USMS 90 min). Return window is Jan 26th for the Z890-A Strix or I'll hold onto it and the 265k for the Hyte White Y40 I have. ------------ w00t! That bodes well for my ship window thank goodness and it will be in your hands sooner than later to start getting some data. Thanks! I just grabbed it. I'll patch it in a few...

Playing the newer Avatar expansion. Native 4K with Frame Gen on, graphics on Unobtanium. Card reaches almost 1,000 watts! and averages around 800-900 watts from my 5090FE. Been running a few hours now. Cable melters DREAM right here. My 5090 spends its life pumping pixels, and I’ll say this is on the higher end of what I see in games, even more than Starwars Outlaws, and a cyberpunk 2077. It also uses 20GB VRAM.

Happy New Year brothers! ------------------------------------ Again, not that it makes it 100% safe, but even the makers are giving guidelines for connecting and routing your cables for the 12v2x6 dragon flame edition connector.... This is what I mean when you are not being proactive about giving the connector the best chance possible of surviving.... ----------------- As noted earlier, prices are slowly on the rise for the 5090 again and supply dwindling ever so slowly.... "Instead, we expect NVIDIA to ignore rising flagship pricing and either delist the Founders Edition or wait for the market to stabilize. One thing seems certain, though. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the RTX 5090, we do not expect the card to become widely available at MSRP, which seemed possible a few months ago but clealry does not anymore." ----------------- Ditto. All upside, no downside. I already dropped $2k on a GPU. I'm not going to squabble over $140USD for such a device and what it offers. This is exactly the approach to take when using a laptop. You are never, ever going to approach the flexibility or cooling of a desktop and that is just the nature of the beast and physics. Toss in all the added heat and component life and you just can't approach laptops like you do desktops. Your prioritization list is apt and on point for what most consumers need from their portable devices as they are tools to be used first and foremost for various tasks. Would I love to lug around something like the old mALX or even a Predator 21 and have a no compromises experience? Absolutely, but I know I am so very far into the minority of customers. Bean counters are very good at their job and know what the market wants and it isn't us. 😞 With that being said, I still love laptops! 🤣

I do not remember using it with my Sager 15" 8086K laptop. I remember benching/gaming without any sort of phantom throttling. I was battling heat with that thing most of all. The biggest issue I have had with this laptop is not really throttling, but the bios is so locked down that I could not turn off the CPU power saving features. When I play games on it, Intel SpeedStep and C1E were just always working at their hardest. So, all of the CPU cores were flickering down/up/down/up/down to lo/high frequencies. All of the CPU core frequencies looked something like this graph below. And this was causing GPU usage to just tank. Since installing throttlestop, I have turned those features off, it has allowed me to change the max pwr limit some as well. It was also causing micro stuttering really bad. For the first time, the machine actually runs smooth. PS: I am running my default GPU bios again with full performance. I am not sure why its performance was gimped before. The machine is able to run normal 5.1-5.2Ghz in games, and 3.9-4.1Ghz on the E-Cores in games. I keep my 4090 undervolted to 2.1Ghz@800mv so the CPU always runs full speed in games, and those two are not fighting over power sharing.

you juuust beat me to it 😄

On the topic of WireView Pro II...

There is still some small hope that people can get 5070Ti at more decent prices. If you are lucky and take your time. You are crazy if you rather go for $1100-1800 USD 5080 cards that in reality should be the new xx70 Ti tier in the 5000 series. $600 is an quite decent price. Or better say the more correct price. Edit. Some people don't grasp it. Why they need to defend a bad purchase/bad product for the money they spent? And as usual... The r/Nvidia modteam remove/close such threads. The old 14th gen Intel is still a monster chips. And Asus want to be one of the first offering price hikes for the New year. Their products is all too cheap. Of course they prefer to be first. Asus announces product price hikes starting January 5 https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/asus-announces-product-price-hikes-starting-from-january-5-and-ai-is-to-blame-ram-and-storage-cost-pressure-cited-as-main-trigger-for-pricing-increases 1000 Limited Edition cards, LOL ASUS ROG MATRIX also has RTX 5090D V2 version with 24GB memory, 807W max power teased Joke or stupid rumors.... I don't know. NVIDIA Pushing RTX 5090 Prices to $5000 in 2026, Rumor Claims Yees, flood China with US tech. This due Trump admin's ease on AI export controls. Feed it's worst enemy with whatever they want than helping their own citizens computer needs, is just disgusting. Sad. TikTok owner ByteDance to reportedly purchase $14 billion worth of Nvidia AI GPUs in 2026 Despite numerous setbacks, ByteDance spent 85 billion yuan on Nvidia chips throughout 2025, marking a significant increase for next year, South China Morning Post reports.

That’s insane! I’m shocked by the MSI cable burning up on people, you won’t see me running one now with a shunted 1200w 5090fe though. But, I did run a MSI 1KW BABY PSU with yellow tip cable on my 4090 Gaming OC which had the 666w bios on it. Never had a single issue. I didn’t undervolt that card much, I just blasted it to the max 2,940Mhz daily that it would run in 4K. No issues with the yellow tip MSI 2x6-12v cable while I had it. I have been playing the new Mafia Old Country game lately with my 5090, I was playing for hours, decided to check MSI AB graph after closing the game out. Little did I know it’s chugging along at 900 watts during cut scenes. Little dinky Lian Li 2x6-12v cable is doing the job well though. They are plugged in completely. Power usage goes crazy when I’m not looking though, I don’t really keep an eye on it like that anymore. Definitely shocked to see a 9070xt burn like that, when my 4090 was excellent. These cables are nuts. I don’t understand it.

ThrottleStop with laptops is unfortunately or fortunately the way to go still. Luckily the DEV still provides updates and I also used it with my 13900HX to really unlock that beast. It sort of lets you bypass the cancer that is X-Load limits on gaming laptops. It also lets you have really fine control over power limits when you want them, which is ideal for tuning for each game/load scenario. Luckily some laptop OEMs provide some pretty great tuning, while others are pure trash. Lenovo actually provides a pretty great gaming laptop product, with really good tuning. Unfortunately they don't have fully unlocked BIOS, and the latest version apparently patched out the backdoor to get into the unlocked BIOS. So if I do consider a new laptop again in the future, it will have to be MSI again. They still provide their unlocked/hidden BIOS, the tuning is all recoverable within reason and their BIOS is more desktop like with it's menu options actually working and not bricking the machine.

Hey everyone. Man, throttle stop is amazing. Am I just learning how to use this tool, and what it’s actually for? What the heck is wrong with me lol. 😆 i have been over here dealing with some low GPU usage, and very weak CPU clocks, and poor 1% lows. Now I’m gaming and my 14900HX will nearly hold 5.2P/4.1E in most games FOREVER. After long duration, it’s still holding 4.9-5.1P, and eventually goes back to 5.2/4.1. I had reinstalled windows on my machine which was running very poorly. And speed step was kinda hindering its performance. I’m super impressed here with this 14900HX, never really liked it all that much until now I suppose.

Well, that's what I get for waiting a few days before ordering. I ordered my WV2 on 11/3. Looks like we both got pushed back, but myself ~3 weeks after yours. Well, that's a lot of data I'll get to soak in from you and @jaybee83 before mine arrives. 🙂 ---- Agreed on the GPU front. I think @Papusan noted several months ago (while I had my 5080FE before jettisoning it due to locked out vBIOS) the juice wasn't worth the squeeze vs the 5070ti in terms of cost MSRP vs MSRP and then obviously AIB models that completely went off the tracks especially for 5080s ($1800 for an Astral 5080?) and obviously 5090s (~$3800 for an Astral 5090 LC?). Then again, the way the market is going, next gen AMD is now rumored for mid 2027 (or later) and I suspect Nvidia will follow suit. I would not be surprised if we don't see 10k and 6k series cards from AMD and Nvidia till Fall of 2027 at this rate with the RAM market hopefully coming to its senses by fall 2026 enough for Nvidia to offer Super cards by Jan 2027. And we still have price hikes incoming. Along with scaled back production due to memory reallocation from Nvidia to more lucrative markets In other words, hug your 9070xt's and 5090's and hunker down..... Not the greatest 9070xt, but Microcenter has Asrock Challenger 9070xt in stock for $579.99 They also have several 5070ti models at $749.99 and one at $729.99 Bang for buck, that 9070xt can't be beat.... Even in RT only testing, the 9070xt trades blows with the 5070ti: 5080s are running off the rails with the lowest cost being $1300 at Microcenter.... Cheapest on the part picker is $1129.99.... For myself, I'd either scoop up a fantastically priced Challenger 9070xt for $550.99 after MC discount or pony up a bit more for the Zotac 5070ti for $693.49....

That sucks, but I trust that TG is producing a good product. I know if I ever go down the path of securing a 5090, I would definitely be picking up a WireView. In other news, the 9070XT Red Devil arrived last week and the PRIME 5070 TI will come today. It doesn't escape my mind that I essentially spent nearly $1500 for two GPUs, when I could have put down another 500 for a 5090 at "MSRP". We all know they don't cost that, so I am fine for now. If anyone needs a 4070 TI (Gigabyte Windforce), let me know. I might just build a PC out of spare parts and sell it.

still plenty of stock, albeit prices are continuously increasing and the low point waaay out of reach by now. out of 40 models listed, 6 are available shortly, with 29 directly available in stock. cheapest is, funnily enough, the FE at 2650€ 😄 at 19% VAT that would equate to 2227€ without tax or equivalently 2621 USD, again, thats currently the cheapest available, so seems like norway @Papusanhas some better luck now with 5090 pricing 😛 oh snap, say wat! didnt expect the next version to be out so soon already. @electrosoft btw bud, just got notified today that my TG wireview pro II was shipped out, hows it looking on your end? 🙂 guess now its time to also order me some additional pots of TG putty pro to completely fill out the backside underneath the backplate. every bit counts when flashing the matrix / XOC 😄

That looks totally awesome, brother. I love it. To protect the GPU SMDs around the core you can use clear nail polish, the red Thermal Grizzly conformal coating (or other conformal coating) and the Thermal Grizzly GPU Guard gasket. I use clear nail polish covered by the GPU Guard, so double-protection. My recommendation would be doing that. You not only protect the SMD components, but everything else beyond them. The gasket also minimizes exposure to air, so the liquid metal should be less likely to oxidize. https://www.titanrig.com/thermal-grizzly-tg-gpu-guard-nvidia-gpu-set.html

I've had to do a few RMAs with MSI over the years, including my old x670e Carbon, and it always went well. Either repaired properly or usually they just sent me a new one. They really won me over back during the 1722 17.3" laptop days with parts and repair accessibility. Untill they, PERSONALLY ( IE bombarding me with anecdotal examples means nothing since my anecdotal evidence says otherwise), give me a reason to not deal with them, they will always be on my top 3 list for consideration. They still have the best mass commercial market laptop BIOS on the market and to a certain point, they treat their laptop BIOS like their desktop BIOS and I like that.

This is my desktop project showing how the desktop graphics card is installed in the P870xx! Here's a photo showing the MXM adapter board and power board in the 2.5 hard drive bay.

Well turns out there is a wrinkle on part of the server :/ Gigabyte did not enable bifurcation on the motherboard, it can be enabled with a BIOS mod just really didnt want to do that sort of thing. The Sage has it enabled by default and works on my Precision Towers so I fully expected it to be commonplace on this one. I'll look at the guide in a bit and toss a coin for looking for the hardware programmer I have somewhere. tl;dr the 4xNVME PCIE adapter is only showing 1 drive from the 4. Otherwise Unraid just booted right up, reallocated the array of drives and the cache on its own, didnt even have to point anything anywhere. See's the 80 threads available to it now with no issues. Just been cleaning up what ever I was doing at the time, server is nice and cool, and more importantly more than quiet enough to be placed in the second floor living room (hybrid office kind of setup). Overtime I do plan to replace the older 4/6TB drives there are still present in the array, they are getting looooong in the tooth so if I do anything with this system that will likely be the first step. drives on the right are 12TB each but 2 of them are being used for parity, so it doesnt add much to the "useable" pool of storage. Onto the next project for now :) Decided to go with the server build first to get my confidence back, its been some time since I built something outside of my wheel house. Damn near thought I had some crap karma for a minute there because the server wouldnt post when I tested the motherboard. Turns out, its not guaranteed that it will default to a GPU for video out since they have a chipset video output via the VGA port on the I/O. Once that was squared, then realized, sadly, one of the sticks of RAM was bad :( Anyone got 2933Mhz/3200Mhz 32GB DDR4 ECC laying around? Damned things are stupid expensive now :(

Project #1 almost done, just needs to be setup in unraid again then hopefully don't touch for 6 months lol.

Great card! Congrats on the snag! I also like the all dark aesthetics. I am almost certain you will pick the 5070ti over the 9070xt. When push comes to shove, it is the superior card. The 9070xt shines MSRP vs MSRP but if the prices are anywhere near close, 5070ti would be my pick everytime. Amazon Resale is so hit or miss and the descriptions rarely match. "Used - Acceptable?" Well hello, it's basically brand new. "Used - Like new?" Hey, looks someone ran over it 10x before shipping it out but made sure to remove all the accessories before doing so.... --- I still have a sealed Nitro+ 9070xt that was planned for my daughter's rig but I am almost certainly going to send back unopened to Amazon. WoW was running great the last 3 months but with the new patch/update, it has gotten super chunky on the wife's system and suddenly my old friend AMD timeout errors have returned on her Gigabyte 9070xt. Googling wow crashing and 9070xt for the last month and yep, it's back. Nvidia? Smooth sailing as always. With the Xpac around the corner, I can't really take any chances of incurring her wrath. I woke up Saturday with her literally standing over me going, "WoW has crashed 2x already....FIX IT!" 🤣 If things don't change quick, I'll be picking up a 5070/5070ti myself for her rig and the 9070xt becomes a backup/play around/sell off candidate.

Congrats brother. Have fun. Here's some ideas for the 3D printer jockey🙂 I'm sure you could do it for the Prime 5070 Ti or any GPU. Maybe some fun for the coming Christmas/New Year holidays. Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 with 3× Arctic P9 PWM PST Deshroud

Absolute banger card. My local MC sold out of all 25+ they had over the weekend. $749 beast with high power limit, good cooling and compact size. I sold mine recently, but honestly such a great card.

Just snagged a PRIME 5070 TI from Amazon Resale - Like New condition for MSRP to compare to the 9070 XT Red Devil that is coming before Christmas. Due to all of the fraud I have heard about, I am going to unbox both on camera. I am hoping the 5070 Ti has damaged packaging and isn't actually used. Whichever card performs the best for my use cases will stick around and I will probably either send the other back or sell locally. I saw a 5080 for a little over MSRP, but I can't justify spending over 1K for the same 16GB and average of 15% better performance over the 5070 TI. Even in video editing apps, the 5080 isn't much better than the 5070 TI. I don't understand Nvidia's thoughts on the 5080 but I assume they were always planning on making the 5080 Super (which may or may not be cancelled). At the very least, if GPU pricing goes all to hell again, I can resell the 5070 TI for what I paid for.

My update was in two parts (ASUS 4242 and PD-GX) and each firmware update was run independently and worked automatically unattended. The first,4242, gave a clear and present progression status in dos text showing each step. The PD-GX showed me absolutely nothing on the screen so I checked events / task manager to confirm it had run its course. Then I rebooted After a reboot, all ports were front and center and my second (of 4) USB-A front port now works normally where before it basically did not work at all after the bios update. This was after a BIOS flash from 1512 -> 1805 as previously mentioned.

Every time I see more reports of cables giving up the ghost, happy to see my 7900 XTX still chugging along even after I pushed 850w into it. Though while I may think of my card as something akin to a muscle car, 4090/5090 are still going to dust it like some exotic supercar. Rest of the watercooling stuff showed up today, tomorrow I run to Home Depot for some wireframe shelves and distilled water. Once that is done I have to move a bunch of stuff around which will probably take the better part of a day alone, then get to flushing the loop if I have enough time. Trying to not get too excited, dont want a repeat of the Sage motherboard.

290K only most likely, even if I already know that all Intel has likely done is set D2D and NGU to 32x on both, and slightly binned or overvolted the cores a bit to push clocks. Very likely some sort of Intel APO fluff with new titles as well. If they've somehow fix latency a tad I'd be really shocked but I don't expect it. Still, if I can eek out a couple hundred Mhz on the P/E cores over a 285K, it will be worth it for fun. I imagine we will get a CES launch/announcement with a late Jan street date on the refresh. It sorta blows my mind Intel has waited this long, but it is what it is. I'm also hoping they launch the Sapphire Rapids HEDT at CES. The cache on those chips looks insane, and honestly it might make for a very expensive gaming CPU if it can be clocked. HEDT was always more fun.

I'm in the same boat, it may be covered by warranty but, it's still an OC profile. A warranty and what it covers doesn't change what is listed on Intel ARC. Just finished brushing, rinsing, air drying (pc duster) x2 my Pa120se (AM4), NH-D15 (10850k) and Red Devil 7900 XTX. The cost of running open air and a/c unit, dust lol. I did buy another open air frame, should be here in the afternoon. Probably going to have to switch to one of those multi-tier wire frame shelves. Running out of space on my old' wood chest. Started outfitting the server box with drives and SDD's. Also replaced the E5-2650's with E5-2697A's in my last dell tower. I really underestimated the homework for older GPU's and modding vbios, casually going about it for a bit each night before I go to sleep. The time consuming part is going to be backing up all the vbios but maybe I can just do that as I go, we'll see.

Hey friends just a quick note. I used Microsoft Copilot to help with some more undervolting profiles. And it actually works very well and gives good numbers very quickly, it makes it a little faster too than testing each profile. So far this method works with my GPU. I told MS Copilot that my 5090 can run Furmark 4K at 3,082Mhz@940mv and it can run the same test at 3,322Mhz@1075mv. So then I can quickly ask it “what frequency” it can run at every other voltage point in between. It told me 3190@995mv, which also works perfectly fine. I type it in, and it runs it completely stable lol. It helps to know the top and low with your GPU of course. And you must be keying in 100% stable high/low profiles. You might have a profile that seems stable, but crashes in games after 3 or 4 hours.

It’s because he’s using the Intel 200S Boost profile which is official and warranties for 8000MTs. AMD has no such official warrantied profile. While I do agree it’s not fair, it’s a fair call in that one offers that profile fully covered by warranty and one does not. Also he’s not Intel biased IMO. His channel just focuses on more workstation and creator tasks and not shilling 1080p low gaming benchmarks as if it’s the only task that matters. Those Intel excel at given they aren’t selling 8 cores as mainstream like AMD has been for years now. 8 core is the Intel quad core of years past. At one time those other outlets shit on 1080p gaming, called 1440p mainstream in 2017 when Ryzen arrived and focused heavily on creator and workstation tasks in reviews. Today it’s all about low settings 1080p gaming for them.

Only if they are bare copper. It is very beneficial with bare copper. It is pointless and not necessary with nickel plating. I would recommend avoiding bare copper for anything, but especially liquid metal application. It's not harmful to copper, but the absorption is just an added hassle that you avoid with nickel. Even when you are not using liquid metal the bare copper starts looking pretty nasty with normal use and keeping it looking sharp is a real pain in the butt. It looks nice when it is new, but looks horrible when it begins to tarnish.

If things don't work out, let me know. I have so much tech that I don't use, I might have a fire sale one of these days. I am keeping most of my EVGA motherboards - like X299 and X570 Dark motherboards. I still have my 6950X and ASUS ROG RAMPAGE V EDITION 10 motherboard sitting somewhere around here. I wonder if I can ever find a cheap 10980XE processor.....

And, we thought the 5090 FE was an idiotic design, but this is far worse. What an absolute abortion. Should be interesting to see what kind of water cooling contraption will be developed for this goofball piece of crap. The Green Goblin has lost its mind. In stark contrast, this is quite the engineering marvel. I am not a fan of SFF but this is truly an elegant creation that oozes quality from every pore. Imaging how great a full E-ATX tower to support triple 420mm radiators built like this would be.

TechSource picked up a Matrix 5090 and it can't memory OC past +275 for some reason while his Astral hits +650 no problem but I am wondering why neither of them can go full tilt memory OC in AB? (Timestamped at memory OC fail point). Couldn't offset at stock as much as the Astral, but that makes sense considering native boost and still landed ~60mhz higher in Heaven bench run and scored higher overall. OC wise it was better at stock voltage, but quite frankly neither one of these cards is worth the scratch IMHO. I loved my Astral for many reasons, but ($3359.99) ~$3400 after tax and BB rewards just didn't sit right. To pick up an open box Vanguard 3 months later for ($1971) ~$2100 when all was said and done after tax with MC discounts and be a much better sample really has altered my expectations going forward with the 6090 whenever it drops. I'll patiently wait and/or take a 6090 for a 60 day spin in the interim during the return window via BB if required like this last cycle ended up being for myself. We all know those 6090s (especially if AI is still here) are going to be min $2299.99 if not higher. I know from personal experience and talking to others, being over qualified is a red flag because most companies assume the job you're willing to take is most likely a stepping stone and as soon as you're afforded, you will move to a better paying position reflective of your skill set / resume. Not that everyone isn't always looking to advance their careers, but those who are over qualified tend to do it more often. The market also continues to tread downward and I expect more layoffs and contraction over the next few years. @tps3443 in current market conditions, depending on what you actually do and its overall market viability/demand, holding tight is the best option atm especially with a young family and a new house but always keep your ear to the ground too.....quietly. I can name several friends and family that were a little vocal/forward facing about looking for another job and their current employer, ah, expedited their job search in the worse way by letting them go.

No more stickers! Looks Much better. I don’t know why I have always left those on laptops before.