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While I missed the boat on the best pricing for 8000MT+ RAM, I am happy I spent the 150 to 180 for each of the nine 4TB NVMe SSDs I got over 2025. I went nuts on the Acer GM7000 SSDs. I did a quick calculation, I have over 100TBs in SSDs (spread across 8TB, 4TB, 2TB and 1TB drives) in operation. If I were to buy them in today's prices, I'd have to spend over 30K. Damn! I guess being a frugal data hoarder has it benefits once in awhile.

I've applied for a lot of jobs I am ideally suited for and could do with my eyes closed that have not worked out. Ageism is illegal, but it is more real than anyone wants to admit. I have one that looks even better that I have my third interview for today that I pray works out and it would probably end up being the best one I have applied for. The one that looked promising that you referred to is not off the table, but the President wanted to see how how the financials looked for 2025 and how January revenue looks before adding a new c-suite resource to staff. On the WireView Pro... when you get around to it, this screenshot might be useful if you run into any complications getting Windows to correctly identify it. I think the key is manually installing the driver in Device Manager, immediately powering off and unplugging the PSU long enough for the board and everything attached to lose power. It appears there was some sort of delivery failure. I replied and it shows to have been sent, but you evidently cannot see the reply on your end. Thanks for checking on me, brother. I really appreciate it.

Not everyday I see the editors/writers from Pcworld use their brain. If you buy Razer’s insane $1337 mouse, I will be very disappointed in you I remember the first time I bought a Razer mouse. Inside the box was a letter printed on fancy vellum paper. It opened with, “Welcome to the cult of Razer.” It appears that this isn’t just a cheeky marketing slogan, Razer means it genuinely. Because only brainwashed cult members would pay $1337 for a mouse. It is, in a word, repugnant. In a more accessible word, it’s greedy. In a more all-encompassing and entirely appropriate word, the Razer Boomslang 20th Anniversary Edition is bullshit. Razer is taking pre-orders for the mouse in four days. If you buy one, and I want you to imagine this in the most overbearing and judgmental dad voice possible, I will be very disappointed in you.

The least they could do is pretend they love us and say nice things while they are choking us and pulling our hair.

soooooo i used my last three days of sick leave to get some shit done at home, including computer stuff 🙂 > applied full backplate coverage TG Putty Pro - check! if anyone is interested, you need about 250-300 grams worth of putty to cover the whole backside of an air cooled 5090. > while the gpu was out, i used the opportunity to also install the wireview pro II and replace the gpu power cable (angled back to straight, both seasonic) > good news: both cable and socket were still pristine, not even a whiff of discoloration or burn marks. > good news 2: did a quick max OC test in alan wake at max. settings with the gigachad vbios, max. variance i saw between pins was 1.1 amps (7.5 vs. 8.6) under load, that i can totally live with! > also finally came around to delid my second 9950X3D and put it under the TG high performance heat spreader with LM > while i was at it, did some dusting and cleaned the tempered glass windows, clear views to the RGB rainbow puke once more 😄 still need to do testing with regards to gpu / cpu temps after the changes, as well as check how the RAM OC was impacted. you might remember that i suspected a suboptimal cpu mount for not being able to reach my previously stable 8000 setting. fingers crossed!

Hey Guys! On the z490-h for now until the replacement motherboard arrives. I have also acquired the GPU risers to split the x16 lane into x8 so I can do 2 GPU's off the single lane via bifurcation. 3090Ti will be coming out of retirement to some degree for Lossless Scaling but in the interim I did test it conceptually with the 3090Ti as raster and the 1080Ti as Frame Gen. Seems to work pretty well in the couple of titles that I have tested. Allegedly you dont want the Raster GPU to be fully saturated as it increases the time it takes to send the frames to the secondary GPU. Honestly I am pretty surprised how well it worked given the software's price point. Main game I have tested were Monster Hunter Wilds and Borderlands 4 both games have piss poor engines. I was able to hit 120 FPS in both, B4 did crash a couple of times but I was mucking with the settings as that game cant run without some Scaling or FG. I did also try Horizon: Forbidden West but I should have to the DLC area as its more GPU intensive. For people that dont want to pony up the cash for new GPU's I think this may be a viable option on the table much in the way SLI/Xfire used to be for me in the old days. Nvidia still pisses me off though. If I install 591 driver, 1080Ti doesnt work, If I install latest driver for 1080Ti (581) then the 3090Ti doesnt work. I have to let windows install 560 in order for both to work until I figure out another way to go about it.

I can smell it, too. This gal lets a Jensen in the car. Or, is it a Nadella? They smell the same. And, I can feel it.

Record setting Precision 7550 with a 7750's 110W Quadro rtx 5000 shoved into it https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/151229648

Hey fellas. Yeah I’m just burned out on just barely gett’n by is all. I’m 35 years old now been contemplating life a lot lately, me and my wife both work full time from home, life is good in the new house. Bills are paid, but that’s it lol. Things are getting really expensive lately like (Daughters new braces 😬) kids will need cars in a 2-3 years (I’m broke). I need to do something on the side and make some major moves. About ten years ago I use to buy and sale junk cars, this was extremely lucrative. There were times when making $2,500 on a good day wasn’t impossible. I have been complacent and living on auto pilot for several years now doing the minimum.. The 5090 had to go though, I needed the funds to help fund a truck+car trailer+winch. In this case, not a truck but close, I bought a clean and well kept used Tahoe Z71 4x4. Lately I learned that we got to step outside of that comfort zone and take some risks in order to gain something or see change. If nothing changes, nothing changes. Life is hard, none of us make it out alive. 😂

It is definitely overclocking season - I am about to take my new purchase (yes, I went the dumb BGA route and got a 275HX/5090 Lenovo 7i Pro laptop) into the snow. I got a great deal on it with 64GB of 6400MT RAM. I kept haggling with the seller and he kept coming back - 64GB of laptop RAM cost around 500 to $600. However, I got it for the price of 2800 (before taxes), my max budget. I am hoping I can sell my old 7i (11980HK/3080 (16GB VRAM) 32GB of DDR4 RAM) for around 800 to $1000 to offset the cost. February is the best time to sell things, because people are going to be spending their returns. My area is projected to get around 21 inches of snow - at 5F (-15C), with a wind chill of -10F (-23.33C). @Papusan I know this snowy weather is tame compare to what you have, but us people (well most) in the Northeast are celebrating. We haven't had snow like this in years, normally our max is 12 inches of snow.

THIS is why I love MSI...... MSI just contacted me about my RMA on the AI1300P to inform me they have zero stock of the newer revision (AI1300P PCIE5) and would the following PSU be an acceptable replacement: https://us.msi.com/Power-Supply/MEG-Ai1600T-PCIE5/Specification Uh, yes, that will definitely be a suitable replacement!! I'm going to wait till it gets here and then do my system with it along with the swap to Ultra 265k, WVP2 and custom 140mm fan cooling for the DDR5.

OK. Enough of the silly gamerboy normie crap. Back to speed trumps everything.

ha not with me they didnt! upgraded all the way from a 6700K to a 9900K in my Clevo machine 😄 suckaZ! and big thx to bro @Prema for that one 😛

im 3rd at timespy with my CPU/GPU combo... n even the 7950x + 9060XT i would be 3rd too, n 9950x + 9060XT i would be 8th 😄 no new CPU needed when u have DDR4 with B-Die n totally optimized 🤤 n just noticed this score was with my old B350 board, i should do a run with the new B550... AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB Grafikkarten Benchmark Resultat - AMD Ryzen 9 5950X,ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac

Oh its just the waterblock (EK-WB) not the GPU proper, if someone listed a 3090Ti for 70 USD I was assume its a scam be it from the sellers end or my own lol

Which 9070 XT do you have, Brother @Rage Set. (I think you mentioned it before but I do not remember.) I got bored and decided to mess with slower memory speeds to see how fast I could make it go. This is stable so I will see how low I can get tCL before it unravels. 6400 1:1 is snappy feeling even though it is a bit slower on read/write/copy.

my dudes, we can consider ourselves lucky to have covered all our bases with regards to hardware. our 4090s/5090s will stay at the top of the pack until 2028, lets just hope they dont go up in flames / melt until then 🤣 boy am i glad that i got my 32TB of pcie4 m.2 ssds plus took care of the ram binning with 10+ kits back in the summer of last year. prices were at rock bottom then ("good old times"). and even though i overpaid for my 5090 at +25% above minimum pricing (3300€ vs. 2650€ incl. 19% VAT and shipping), a whopping two thirds of it (2100€) was made up by the sale price of the 4090 😅 besides, even when the suprim currently IS available, its offered at 4000+€, absolutely insane... long story short: i guess compared to other unlucky users who are currently planning on building a rig, were pretty well off at least for the time being...always good to count and be generally aware of your blessings 🫠 mixed news on the ram tuning front: still cannot reach anything above 7600 stable but at 7600 im now reaching way way tighter timings than before, actually best ive had thus far overall on this mobo. final results pending, as u all know ram tuning takes quite a while...

Cracks in Nvidia's armor starting to emerge.... "Exclusive: OpenAI is unsatisfied with some Nvidia chips and looking for alternatives, sources say" OpenAI wants to move to SRAM based inference (Like Apple uses FYI for their M architecture) and exploring alternatives... Google is already turning inward using their own custom designed chips.... AMD is starting to chip away at Nvidia's AI marketshare.... Microsoft questioning the profitability of AI..... I can smell that change in the air ever so slowly....

5090's back in stock shipped and sold by Newegg reflecting the beginning of new pricing insanity incoming when they are stocked..... In their defense, Walmart is selling shipped and sold by Walmart the PNY EPIC 5090 for 4299.99 so this is the way things are going for 5090s..... MSI Liquid 5090 is also listed on MSI's site at $3699.99 too....

an angry thunderstorm now and then. @Papusan -21c is not too terrible. We will get that here in Idaho from time time. 60mph on a snowmobile is not as much fun when its that cold though!

Sorry to hear about the adverse weather. Your temperatures look to be about the same as Brother @Rage Set and a significant portion of the Eastern US (even the Deep South) is experiencing brutal and abnormal ICE and snow, downed power lines, etc. I suspect that Brothers @tps3443 and @electrosoft are also getting hammered pretty severely right now. The Arizona summer heat can be deadly, but Arizona (and most other states in the West) very seldom have severe or catastrophic weather events. Most of the horrible and catastrophic weather events occur in the Central and Eastern states. Brother @Raiderman and I do not see very many temper tantrums from Mother Nature.

I'm going to try a bit more tonight luckily I unplug a few cables and I can pull the whole thing out but it's still a pain to work in due to the water loop and how it's routed. Problem is work is rampant due to the winter storm so I just don't have the time to troubleshoot. There was a local listing for a x570 strix but it's 3 weeks old so I don't expect to hear back I think for the time being ill set up the z490 system just to prevent me from making an impulse buy, I can still play with lossless scaling with the 3090ti + 5700XT foe the interim. Also gives me a chance to play with my pixel 10 pro and how well it handles desktop mode on android since unraid handles most of the grunt work. But that's all just me trying to make lemonade

Hi everyone, I have some great news for my Desktop-GFX project! This graphics card from MSI is the perfect fit for the P870xx. The card is called MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X PZ! Other cards also work very well, but this one is a perfect fit.

Someone used the wrong screw and drilled through the card @Mr. Fox lol what the heck. People are something else man. I’ve had mine apart like 4 times now. You would have none of these issues though. That’s not a screw that would be included with it either. All the screws in that section do not look like that at all, and they all match.

I feel like if cable makers really didn't cut corners it would at least put a nice dent into many of these problems. Watching that brand new Corsair cable be absolute trash was alarming from its loose fit to its readings. It seems like Cablemod learned their lesson that first time around and all the issues with 4090 cards and really came back with a high quality cable with a snug fit and good amperage distribution. Trash connector that needs perfect conditions to properly thrive Trash AIBs shaving pennies on quality adapters even to their own detriment Trash end users treating it like it is as robust as 8-pin and twisting and pulling it with reckless regard.... I DO think this connector is here to stay, but I do feel like with a few more refinements it will be declared "safe" lol, I tried to avoid that club! 🤣 lol, well I'm going to let you know it doesn't get any better in your 50's! 🤣 I turned the corner today and my fever finally broke after 4 days but I know this wet cough and general malaise is going to be with me for at least another week. Speedy recovery brother! -------------------------------- @Mr. Fox It's like we talked it up..... 3090ti vs 5090. 5090 is two generations newer and fully 66 to 133%+ faster than a 3090ti with a lot of that on the low end being an inability to fully utilize the 5090 even at 4k....it would be even worse with a 3090. 5090 is just a beast. I am glad we were able to get ours at a somewhat sane (in the realm of 5090s) price... --------------------------------- Zotac first out letting us know massive price hikes coming specifically to the 5060 and 5090 and kind of throwing Nvidia under the bus but they are the reason so.....yeah.....

If you do end up trying another, the only logical model is the Red Devil. You get the highest phase design, 3x8pin and I would say one of the best and quietest air coolers, but we know you would rip that off ASAP. Even though it is a kick in the performance sack, I wouldn't be adverse to running a KPE3090 again if it came to that and a 3090 is where you wanted to go. We didn't realize that was truly the last of a magical time in GPUs. 😞 Based upon how AMD implemented mobile considerations with their effectively transplanted desktop chips, I think you are better off with the 275hx. I have yet to encounter an AMD laptop that doesn't have poor fan tables and fans revving up vs the now three 275hx based laptops I've tested. Even the hot box Acer Nitro 15.6" with 5060 and 275hx that thermal throttles under heavy load runs relatively even and quiet vs the Acer 16" AMD OLED, Acer AMD 7325 + 4050 15.6" and my former Raider 7945HX3D. Unless AMD changes something in their mobile implementation, I am going to stick with Intel moving forward. Since the launch of their Ultra chips both true mobile and desktop shoehorned into laptops, they just run quieter and more even for D2D use than AMD....at least in my testing/use cases. We only ended up with a paltry 6 inches of snow. So disappointing..... (Sorry @Papusan! 🤣) I was wondering if you had a preferred card one over the other, but as Nvidia stock dries up there's plenty of 9070xt cards available even though prices jumped. Hopefully AMD can make some more inroads. lol, thanks! It really is the best model on paper out of the 9070xt lineup for several reasons. I didn't even really give it a serious look till you went with one and I went "Hmmm, if @Rage Set is going with it, maybe there's more to it that I missed," and then read some reviews, watched some videos and realized it is the best 9070xt this time around overall IMHO. Ugh, Thursday night after the gym I had a scratchy throat and itchy sinuses. I woke up Friday feeling like someone hit me with a baseball bat. High temp, throat feeling full of glass shards. By Saturday, it had moved down into my lungs and chest was hurting and nose flowing like the nile. Sunday temp spiking to 103+ and now a tight, juicy cough with lots of green stuff that would make even Slimer proud. Took a home test and yep, Flu A. I skipped my flu shot this year too and this was a nice reminder why I shouldn't skip it. My wife got her flu shot and she picked up Flu A from me and besides some mild sniffles, she's fully functional while I am coughing and hacking up all types of stuff with spiking fevers going on day 4 and I'm just wiped out.....luckily I have enough energy to at least play FO76 and WoW 🤣 Like you, and I am sure the bulk of us married, I dunno how we would survive without our significant others. I will say this though, I will take the flu over Covid any day of the week.....Covid wrecks me in a way no other sickness ever has and I'm down for the count for 6-8 weeks depending on how close I contract it to my vaxx window and even after I am weakened for quite awhile. I've had Covid 5x now in the last 6 years (including on "launch" in early 2020). My wife caught it with me last February and it was the sickest she's ever been in her life. In her words, "I now see how this crap can take someone out...." I think one reason I tend to skip my flu shot from time to time is because even at its very worse it is maybe a 5/10 vs covid for me. Oh, and you're relatively young. You're what? In your 30s? Yes, it gets worse as you get older.... 🤣

If only we could get some moisture here in the PNW. Normally the valleys would be coated with white stuff this time of year, but we have not had any measurable snow fall dating back a to a year ago. It was however, 14 degrees this morning in Nampa, Idaho which would be nice for some OCing.

Hey guys, since having looked at a bit of the lossless scaling app, thinking my next daily driver system should align with that for my 7900 XTX and 3090Ti since Im not too keen on the newer connector + pricing of it all. Are there X3D variants of threadripper in the rumormill? If so I might start saving up... I got the 512GB of Persistent Memory (Intel Optane 2666Mhz 4x128GB) installed in my C622 server, Gigabyte was kind enough to not include a switch to dedicate it to system memory and I cant activate it via a Linux VM, so I wont be able to see the RAM pool until tomorrow (family is asleep).

As already stated...MSRP is a fat lie. Nvidia have now stopped subsidise the MSRP cards. Gigabyte have improved RTX 5070 Ti Windforce OC with v2 to fit into more of the modern tiny trash boxes. What could go wrong going cheapo way as greedy Asus? I have seen similar from Asus before. They preffered cool half the vram with nothing more than hot air from the fan for their 1060/70 Strix models. Also older mid tier models come with half baked cooling design. The worst part with Gigabyte... They did it right with the V1 models. So they improved the card to the worse to save a few $ and sell more cards to uninformed people with cute mini pc's. First let em bleed... NVIDIA is being sued for using 500 TB of pirated books to train its AI Today we learned that NVIDIA is facing a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California, USA, for using pirated books to train AI models.

This evenings efforts, iout Gain was stuck at 300 so effectively I was able to push the card again. Around 650-700w, I wasnt able to change the Iout gain from 300 so ran as is. Next time I'll try 250-275. Core 3475 Mem 2764 Voltage 1.158 Card is stuck at 683 again after one of the failed attempts so I guess thats all for tonight. Wasnt able to breach 3500 Core. :(

I always make things more complicated than they aught to be, like using 3x PSU's for each 8-pin on the bottom shelf, an ITX system since HEDT has been more or less dead to me since the X58 days (though Im sure there were options since, poor decisions didnt allow them to be obtainable) so anything beyond ITX or cheap laptops like the M4600 were simply not even considered. Then naturally a UT45 make perfect sense in my hodgepodge of parts. Since the 5800X3D sips power and is locked a cheap Thermalright PA120SE does fine for gaming though if I go the 9800X3D route I could definitely see a second UT45 in my future. During the era where I surfed OCN AIO's were still called CLC's mostly targeted at ITX users who later got to deal with the pumps dying or tubes coming undone and leaking over everything, I never considered CLC's since they were considered "Cheap Low Cost". Anyways it feels like I have been typing this post for a week now. I was making progress when perplexity recommended changing the power plan in Windows. Ever since then I have not been able to get the EVC2SE to change the register for the IOUT Gain so its stuck at 683 which is the default. I tried a couple of fixes but for the evening I am going to call it a night. Core: 3450 Mem: 2764 Now my clocks are back to stock and until I figure it out, I cant get them past 2850 in Steel Nomad, a far cry from 3450. Was working on getting 3450 sure stable before moving on to 3500 then seeing what I could do about the memory. With a 16c ambient, 21c idle, and 30c peak load temperature I feel like I still have some performance to get out of the 7900 XTX. Hot spot was "bad" from a differential standpoint, 30c at its peak so it peaked at 60c. Still well within margin for benching (105c throttle). Since it wasnt working before, I tore down the loop and took apart the GPU to reflow the solder. Worked great after that. I also checked on the LM application and all was well on that front as well.

In for a penny, in for a pound eh @Reciever? 🤜 Very nice! You really embraced water cooling nicely....I wouldn't be surprised to see a chiller on premises in the near future at this rate.... 😁

RIP - Bob

Hi, Many thanks to Darius. I'll pick up the card on Monday and continue building and developing. The first small subproject is the internal and external cable so that an internal display and an external display can be connected. I've already developed the schematic and, with Darius's help, I can now determine the exact length of the FlexPCB and start routing once I know the exact geometric ratios. The cables should work for all future generations. The second project will be the cooling system. In the short term, it will be water cooling, but there is also the option of making a vapor chamber like the original. However, I don't know the exact costs for that yet. That's all from me for now. Thanks for your support.

Yep, more than what they do for their GPU division.....

Here's the consumer nothingburger from Intel. Intel have more than enough feeding China with pricy server CPUs. So as you can see, not only Nvidia and AMD are in love with China. Every tech company making microprocessors love China. Corruption and greed around the microprocessor industry have no limits! And none have the balls to stop the madness. https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-reportedly-cancels-core-ultra-9-290k-plus-but-keeps-270k-250k-arrow-lake-refresh-skus Based on our information, Intel explains the change as a shift toward performance-per-value. The company plans to keep the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus in its lineup, according to materials shared with partners.

I did get curious about formal Xfire/SLI + Lossless, if you set Dynamic framerate target then one might be able to mitigate some of the failings of that method of generating preferable framerates. It'll have to wait until I get my replacement motherboard but it would be an interesting experiment.

I attempted to overclock my laptop twice outside and within minutes, had to scurry back into the house. My fingers man! Early morning (around 4am EST when I awake), the temp is between 2 to 4F (-16C) for the past week, not including wind chill. The kind of cold that just inundates you, but man do I love it. I guess that is why I earned the cheeky nickname, Ice Bear, from my family. I love the first few hours after a snow storm, everything is covered and it is super quiet. I'll have some 3Dmark benches from my laptop and perhaps the 14900KS/9070XT combo later.

The most logical path considering they want that memory for AI which is much more lucrative but they can't just flat out put a full on "pause" on their consumer section but they sure can clamp it to a trickle... If there was ever a time for the 5070ti on down crowd to switch to AMD, it is now..... It is brutally cold (relatively speaking) for us right now coming off of that snow storm which just left everything frozen over. Right now it is a balmy 4f (~ -16c) here.... When I was younger, I loved the cold and looked forward to it. Now? I can see why people move to warmer, more even tempered states. Stock has either dried up and/or baseline prices are getting a bit slap happy. Lowest prices on part picker: PNY 5070ti = 969.35 Asus Prime 5080 = $1364.99 Gigabyte Aorus Stealth Ice 5090 = $3579.98 Gigabyte Gaming 9070xt = $719.99 So glad I snagged that Red Devil earlier this month for $683 ($879.98 on PPC) and Vanguard 5090 $1971 (Basically Unobtanium status) back in August from Microcenter. That Vengeance 2x24GB 9200 kit I managed to snag in December for $389 is now $969.99 I picked up a couple of Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB drives w/ heatsinks when I saw the writing on the wall for ~$149.99. They are now $229.99 Luckily, CPUs, Motherboards, cases, PSUs are suffering the most in the pricing downturn and their prices have stayed the same or fallen a tad. Anyone looking to build out in the US, Microcenter bundle deals are just crazy good value atm. CPU, Motherboard and DDR5 memory in many configs and priced fairly even before the Ramapocalypse.... I'm set for hardware now till Nova and even then I will just need a MB and CPU..... Good call not waffling..... Unfortunately the big players will take the hit on the books and pass it along to us in the long run. The Googles and Microsofts will just keep it moving. AMD will take a minor chip on the chin. Hardest hit will be AI focused entities and Nvidia. I look to the day Nvidia has to come to us on bent knee, hat in hand, tail firmly tucked between their legs asking for our forgiveness.... I will never use any Micron consumer products again even if they fire back up the Crucial brand post AIB (AI Bust).

Brother @Papusan it looks like there is a solution to use the Matrix BIOS on your Astral. I am using it on my Solid OC and it is the best one. https://www.overclock.net/posts/29553948/

The cliché expression that failing to plan is a plan to fail directly applies here. Accumulating stuff is more important than having a plan for many. Unfortunately, most try to pin the blame on other things when, more often than not, it is a problem with personal perspective and priorities for most.

He mentioned it in the post linked by Brother @electrosoft

damn, this is one club i didnt invite u to for a reason 😄 u had to come join anyways eh? hahaha. stilll recovering here, second week of sick leave from work. for me covid and the flu are actually very very similar thats why i took a test right away when symptoms started last week. aww nice to know i can still pull off some "youthfulness" 😄 unfortunately, the big 4 has already gotten ahold of me several years back.

Hopefully the idiots like Jensen, Lisa Su, Nadella and the rest of the AI cartel will be the first robot-murdered human beings when the machines take over.

Enterprise is the same as Pro except for some added crap for domain networking. LTSC in totally different and dramatically less bloated. IoT has a longer service window than LTSC if you care about updates. Rebloating to play games is only necessary if you play games that are trash-dependent, like crap from Micro$lop Game Studios. Enterprise (non-LTSC) has all of the same bloat you find in Pro already baked in. No difference in terms of bloat between the two. Server performs the same as W10 and W11 IoT LTSC overall. W11 Pro starts to show its bloat a little bit in terms of CPU overhead, but still so close between the three that I don't think it warrants the effort of a clean install for the sake of performance gains because the results are within a normal margin of error. If one needed to do a clean install for other reasons (cancer updates, corruption, malware, etc.) then IoT LTSC is still probably the best option. There is less trash in IoT LTSC to deal with. Server is similar, but has other added nonsense that has to be disabled (like Server Manager loading at startup). At the end of the day none of them are particularly good OSes and there are no dramatic differences. W11 Pro is the slowest OS of all due to the payload of filth and product regressions in general. We already knew that, so no surprise. Unfortunately, I do not have W11 IoT LTSC installed on this system, but that is probably good for the average user in terms of this comparison since it highlights the dumpster fire better. Here are some additional photos with just ordinary gamerboy PBO overclocking (thus lower Cinebench scores and higher CPU-Z single thread scores) versus manual overclocking. Using PBO is probably a better way to compare them since you are leaving the OS to impose its will on hardware versus hardware imposing its will on Windoze. Here are the same images before that you could not see for some reason. The drive tested is the W10 OS drive so take that into consideration on the write speeds.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm optimistic when I shouldn't be most of the time, but I honestly believe (and truly hope) the AI clown circus house of cards will very soon collapse super hard and burst into flames. I hope that it spooks investors badly enough that they all pull out frantically and leave the developers with no operating capital to function with and cause GPU and memory prices to hit history-making rock bottom prices with an oversaturated market flooded with new and used parts and cancelled orders that have to be sold for pennies on the dollar in order to get rid of it. I think there's a good possibility that the stock of parts available, (or visibly seeming to be absent,) in reality, is not an accurate reflection of the apparent lack thereof we see at the storefront. I suspect there are secret GPU and memory stockpiles that nobody knows about that are being held for the highest bidders and reserved for corporate customers that pay excessive prices and submit to scalping just to get whatever they want and need. It would be awesome and hilarious if the highest bidders and corporate buyers all suddenly have no money and most of them go out of business, vanish or change their focus to something else. It would be fun to watch Micron/Crucial, NVIDIA, Samsung and others in the silicon production space have to get down on their knees and beg consumers to buy their brand and offer it dirt cheap, even below cost just to unload it, after their back-stabbing treachery.

Nice results! That board and CPU look like a great value. I'm extremely confused by Intel's decision to delay a Refreshed SKU until that time frame given Nova Lake is supposed to be out later this year. Reminds me of 11th gen and 12th gen. Either they had to heavily bin to get chips able to run the new clocks or they actually fixed some things under the hood. I'm leaning towards heavy binning, but hoping for actual latency fixes that can make the refresh something that will be more impressive over an overclocked ARL chip. I also ordered a 12 core BTL-S chip lol. Mouser had them as out of stock backorder, and I decided I wanted something else to mess around with. The order went through and according to them, they have ordered one from the factory lol. I'll be shocked if it ever arrives, more shocked if it works. 🤞🤞

I think most of the OEMs use Laird thermal pads.

Lol, nothing worse than multiple teardowns trying to fix cooling issues, but it all ended up great and it makes you wonder what thermal pads Asus is using..... What thermal compound are you using on the GPU Core? Nova Lake looks so good. Hopefully they stick to their "late 2026" launch and don't drag it into 2027.

Decided I wanted to repad my RTX 5090 HOF VRAM as the memory temps are atrocious since I got the card. Even with an undervolt and gaming at 500-600w, the memory temps would climb to around 82-84c which is a bit toasty for me. My old TUF ran around 70c on memory temps under load. I for some reason though the pads were 1.5mm and so I ordered some thermal grizzly advanced minus 8 pads. Turns out they were actually 1.0mm (still tried them as they compress decently). They were just too thick and the core wasn't getting good contact and it was hitting 86c lol. Tore the card down again and tried some old 1.0mm I found in my closet collection. These were absolutely shit, worse than the stock pads. Hitting 96c on memory temps with good core temps. Thought I was out of options and was just going to put it all back together with the stock pads. Decided I would try my spare Asus TUF 5090 pads I had on a spare heatsink I had purchased (long story). Luckily the pads were all in good shape and I was able to easily remove them for use on the Galax card. They were also 1mm and super compressible. I applied the pads and booted up with my fingers crossed I wouldn't need to tear the card down again. These pads are amazing, my memory temps now peak around 66-70 under 500-600w gaming loads with better than ever core temps. Finally this card is running awesome with the air cooler. I still need to break it down and to full water, but I'm waiting for my rebuild with Nova Lake later this year lol. I'm planning to finally swap PSU, coolers, the works at that time. I figured I'll go water then. TLDR; the Asus thermal pads used on VRAM is actually some super quality stuff which is why their memory temps are so good compared to other brands. I think MSI also uses similar pads as their vram temps are also amazing and slightly better than both my Asus and Galax card.