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5090FE is fine man. If I didn't like it, I would not keep it that's for sure lol! I had a 4090 Gaming OC and @johnksss that thing was cheap as hell, flimsy, light weight, and loud as hell with bad coil whine, but not this card, this card feels nice and premium and heavy etc. So, it's okay for $1,999.99 (People do try to convince me that my own GPU sucks though, they do not like it, that I like it I guess 🤣) Last I checked, Astral+Block = $4,000, too much for me to afford. But at least they perform TOP NOTCH once you water block it, flash it, and solder it.. Yes, the FE's have weak coolers; I cannot hold that against it. It's going on water/shunt anyways. I mean, your Astral is probably faster than an RTX Pro 6000, but that doesn't mean it's better than one. FE's have weak coolers but not weak cores. Definitely an acceptable GPU for the price tag and performance. Card scores perfectly acceptable for a stock cooler, hot, non-shunted 5090 FE. Plenty of other 5090's that cannot hit these numbers out there, and this is the hottest one you can buy. 🥵 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 video card benchmark result - Intel Xeon W-3175X Processor,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ROG DOMINUS EXTREME

@Mr. Fox Not sure if you know this but..... The Best Computer Store in Phoenix, AZ The Wait Is Almost Over – Micro Center Grand Opening Coming in 2025! Micro Center is coming to Phoenix with over 25,000 items in stock and the industry’s best customer service. Phoenix, get ready to experience Tech Heaven for yourself—stay tuned for opening details! https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/phoenix.aspx You might be able to rent that 5090 yet!!

Why? Because.... 1. MSRP. 2. I like the look/form factor of the FE series. 3. Price:performance it is actually one of the best (if not the best with 9070/xt temporary launch pricing now a thing of the past) just like the 4070 was retail pricing which I pointed out back during ada. Of course the above is no longer true because the temporary introductory prices of the 9070 and 9070xt no longer exist and the MSRP is now higher while the 5070 FE has remained the same. People seem to get stuck on the whole VRAM issue. I am one of the few who thinks the whole 8gb fiasco is blown out of proportion and an 8GB card is ok depending on your use case. I also think 10GB and 12GB is just fine too. I watched the reviews of the 5060 and 5060ti and went, "Ya know, it's not that bad at all..." Same for the 9060xt w/ 8GB of VRAM. Moving that 3Dvcache underneath the CCD has made a major difference. Once they slap it on both and improve their interconnects even more, it will be near perfect. Oh, and go ahead and offer a dual binned variant and call it "Extreme Edition" if you want ala Intel style and charge a touch more and I'm there for it.

But that is what everyone says about everything? If I didn't like it I wouldn't keep it. If that is the case, I would expect far more for my 2000, for as heavy and premium as you say the card is, but then say the cooling is crap. So i'm kind of at a lost on that part. I'm not here to convince you my friend, that your GPU sucks. As I have been down this road with many other ideas I have had over there years and people have said worse. (AC on laptop or pointing in case at GPU or using a water chiller before that was even a thing) And boy did people have nonsense to say. You either buy what you want or you buy what you can afford and that's it. All the rationalizing in the world just means a person can't really afford it. Example: And this went for something as cheap as 50 cent cheeseburgers at McDonalds. Those things are like 3 bucks now. Astral + Alphacool Block + 2 year Accidental Warranty cost me 3,771.36. Potential loss at the end of the day? About $600. That's why I look at it differently. Now if I sell the block then that 600 drops lower. If I give it to @Mr. Fox then the price stays about the same. The astral is not faster at stock for stock for the very obvious reason that the Pro 6000 has more Cuda cores automatically makes it faster at stock. Over clockers are not getting the card to bench it stock. So if that card can not get past the 600W max, then it's just a 10,000 dollar "Hey look at me I spent 10K so I can say I have better stock numbers" card is just foolish. If you bought it to just game/Ai/work and the occasional benchmarks and said nothing, then it's your money and buy what you want. Why? Because that person is not bragging about it. So until that card is unlocked/shunted/modded and cooled, it's just another GPU in the world of over clocking for numbers. And at this point I'm pretty sure no one wants to be represented by Nvidia in the world of over clocking because Nvidia would just take what the people showed them to make it better....A way to lock it down further. Just like Dell/Alienware did. Unfortunately those scores are not acceptable in my book, but that is my opinion, but they are acceptable for gaming. A shunted card doing 16,6K in Steel Nomad is crazy to me. Again, only my opinion. If I'm gaming I would not even bother shunting it. And in reality, this is like the 2nd card I have shunted in 17 years. I would rather not have to do that. That last line is debatable as that is based on user. But I will keep hope alive in that they figure out why the shunt is not working as intended, but I would recommend them not sharing that in the open forums or the next FE will be locked down even further. These are facts and not opinions. Edit: It's not Nvidia as a whole, it's mainly these old timers at the top that do not want to go outside there're comfort zone. Like any company their are a bunch of bright minds that get stifled because of that BS seniority rule. So new ideas do not get seen or past on to the customer. I saw this first hand with Clevo. Not everyone at Nvidia wants to follow Jensen and senior staff, but when it comes to running your mouth or keeping your job....Those people would rather keep their jobs.

I'm glad you don't care what other people think. That is how it should be. It only matters if it affects them and this doesn't. The fact that you like it is all that matters. There are some people that make their decisions based on what their friends think is best or coolest, (without anything else to base it on,) which is really dumb.

Maybe better have a nap😁 Not all average Joe see it this way. If the PC cost above $1000 then it has to be good. And don't expect everyone know the difference between 8 and 16GB vram. You shouldn't give so much credit to humanity. Even stupids can be great people. Sad seeing they become screwed. See bolded text.

I share similar sentiments regarding the 8GB VRAM from an abstract stance, that being said the people who most likely need to be the ones checking in advance as to if that should be a concern are also the most likely to never consider it in the first place. I can think of a litany of uses for 8GB VRAM, but at 24GB Im not thinking of use cases anymore.

@tps3443 is making want to go buy another Astral right now and run it at stock just to see what it gets today. LOL I would do an FE, but that card is like a 4 leaf clover at our Micro Center.😂

Yes, I am sure he does know. He has to know he is our buddy and we think very highly of him. But even so, sometimes a guy feels like an underdog if everyone has a different opinion. The important thing is that a person doesn't change his opinion based only on what others think in order to have their approval or feel accepted in the echo chamber, but it is OK to change it because you have changed your mind as an exercise of your own volition.

w00t w00t! we got separation! 🙂 Stick No. 5 of kit 3 is stable at DDR5-8600 😄 Fun fact: this is one of the open box items, thus significantly cheaper than the new kits 😛 now off to 8700...

If everyone would be smart and say eff ewe to companies selling $3400 5090s and $1200 9070 XTs there would be no companies selling $3400 5090s and $1200 9070 XTs. They'd be selling them for what they are actually worth and making a reasonable profit in the process. They have priced them based on how much an idiot is willing to pay for them. Too many people have issues exercising self-control, restraint and prudence. They are driven by their desires more than intelligence. They know this and they are exploting this flaw in their humanity.

Check out this free mod from GOG for DOOM 3: https://www.gog.com/en/game/doom_3_phobos

I mean I *DO* have options now lol. I must reiterate, first thing is my room really does no longer turn into a sauna even with the 9070xt running at full tilt. World of difference between ~550-600w vs 330w pumping into my space which is what WoW pulls when doing anything not player heavy. Door open, ceiling fan going and sporadic AC wasn't enough to overcome the 5090. Even if I eventually pick up a 5090FE, I still have almost an additional $1500 to play with differential at my disposal, but as each moment passes, I am zoning in on that $2132.48 price tag after taxes more and more while this $667 9070xt (total cost of ownership) is really holding down well enough in the here and now for Fallout 76 and especially WoW at 4k. And I am the type who can pick a 5090FE up, look at it lovingly in my hands and go, "I know you are a mediocre card compared to most if not all the other 5090 AIBs out there for overclocking and air cooling, but gosh darn if ya aint the cheapest, smallest and prettiest of all them dang cards! Now get yer keister in this here SFF!" 🤣

Why the 5070 ? Maybe the worst SKU in nvidias's lineup. I know you won't keep it but support Nvidia this way ain't very productive.

thats really impressive for that pricing! no way i could compete with those speeds / timings tho lol. i for one am just happy i finally got 8000 stable. i finished tuning the primary timings: 8000-40-47-49-76 is the best i can get in my D2D OC stability tests. secondary and tertiary timings to follow, ofc but that will take a while 😛 still, nothing to sneer at, considering 8000CL40 is the same latency ratio as my previous 7600CLC38 or the universally recommended 6000CL30, but at much higher overall bandwidth. curious to see where my results will land once ive gotten all the timings dialed in.

X170KM-G WATERCOOLING MOD I stumble on the internet with this Forum and found a lot tips and help to build my own Clevo X170KM-G. I just wanted to share my own experiences as well, I will try to make it short. Bought the X170KM body case from ORIGIN with its motherboard for a very good price. I had to slowly get the rest of the parts. I like these type of laptop where every part can be remove or swap, gives you a lot room for improvement. I thought a lot on doing overcloak since the CPU was capable of, obviously I also had to upgrade the Cooling system. I had in mind the one in Aliexpress but after watching some comments I opted to make my own. It was too expensive and not so reliable. I made various sketches and pipe routes to get the best outcome and thermal contact. For test I had an extra heatsink. Bough normal copper pipes from a hardware store instead of the already self made pipe from Ali, those were a bit smaller for my likes (4mm (O.D.)X 3mm (I.D.)) I got something similar as my own laptop. 5mm by 4mm for More area covering. First water cooler was fine I could score 15265 points on Cinebench multicore and had 90c ~95c around, drawing 180w ~ 190w. And 83c on GPU scoring 6976 points on Superposition (stock, couldn’t make any proper overcloak I am still new on that area) I also delided my CPU (11900k) but didn’t got any better cooling performance, was poor, still I didn’t know what was wrong (on idling was hitting 40c ~50c, it wasn’t like that before on the stock heatsink but the watercooler performed well enough). I wasn’t satisfied about the first cooler and decided to add an extra pipe, thought it throughly, could had 2 intake and 2 exits but it wouldn’t be so practical and esthetic wise, so had to be inside with some kind of joint. On the making of the 2nd watercooler I had to practice a lot soldering with torch, I couldn’t find any “Y” joint that would fit on the pipes, those were bigger. After couple of days I manage to solder it properly (note: with solder iron is also good, very strong but it could desolder when soldering back to the heatsink, soldering onto the heatsink you really need a lot of heat 400c about and heater plate + a heat gun, the heatsink does suck a lot heat). I made all the necessary measurements and bending and flattened the whole pipe, step by step, everything had to be done in order. I didn’t have good tools but good enough to do the job. So when all was done I test it for water pressure and flow, it check out to be good, zero leakage, so time to solder it onto the heatsink. Every step was complex, I didn’t expect to runout of solder paste (low type 138c) but I manage to cover all the pipe underneath and add extra on the side, still wanted to add more, since I don’t have much time I had to do it that way. Had to expend about one week 4 hours per day, no everyday I could work on it. I also wanted to paint it as I did but not this time, looks like this heat proof paint doesn’t adhere well on copper, so just raw watercooler. Prior making the 2nd watercooler when I was removing I did realize that the CPU and GPU wasn’t getting proper contact as the stock one, had like 1mm of gap, the thermal paste was not spreading well on the edges. So fixing that gap gave me the normal temps on iddle, about 30c. After mounting the heatsink on the laptop I was surprise that I got extra -10c to -15c on CPU and -30c on GPU. I believe the CPU could still perform better if I apply more solder, the top of the CPU area which is not flat unlike the GPU, Is all pipes. I just run the normal profile as the 1st watercooler to see the differences: - CPU did perform better on temps 80c~85c, on the scores was nearly the same, (as I did mention I didn’t change the overcloaking profile.) - The GPU performed a bit better and had very low temps on Superposition Benchmark. Score: 7691, temps: about 56c max. Well so for now I am leaving it as it is after I reorder the solder paste, I am also looking to solve the fan issue, it does start slow on high temps, I wish it could be programable to start early and gradually increasing speed. Some 3rd party fan software mentioned in the forum didn’t help me yet. Cannot identify all the fans. Maybe I am not so familiar yet. Note: I did use thermal Grizzly Liquid Metal for the delided CPU and MX6 thermal Paste on top, AAIRHUT thermal pads on the rest. I also made a 2nd watercooler because the bottom cover wasn’t closing properly, I didn’t foresee it was too long. XD the rear RBG light couldn’t fit in. I did upgrade the BIOS AND EC from XMG, was more stable, no crashes. Thank you for all the precious information. (removed single pipe cooler) (Pressing softly no to bed the copper underneath, preheating the heatsink) (I always used a thermometer to control the heat, I worried about the pipes bursting, but they are pretty good at cooling, even at 400c the heatsink was about 90c, the solder never melted properly even with heat gun and solder iron. (3 solder device at once). (Water test and pressure) (Delided CPU, first watercooler setup) (Freezemod pump with speed regulator, ThermalTake T1000 water cooler) (2nd watercooler - the bottom cover close properly now) (Benchmark and temps: to the left single water pipe cooler, to the right double pipe.) (First watercooler finishing) [Please know that everything was done in a controlled environment to avoid self harm. ]

Yes, it works fine. I have it enabled by default since the day I received it. Update on the X870E AORUS Master with the loose NVMe heatsink damaging things. No replacement from Central Computer yet, but here is what I found out. Mine was not the first one. I encouraged them to open the box and examine the replacement. I told them I had no reason to think it wasn't like that before they shipped it to me. The box had no damage and did not appear to be handled roughly. The reason I do not have a replacement is all of them (over 20) were unboxed and found to have similar problems. They're going to have fun dealing with Gigabyte on this. Apparently Gigabyte is not latching them securely when they leave the factory, or the latch is coming loose during shipment. I am actually surprised that this does not happen more often. The silly trend with the toolless NVMe heatsinks that all brands are implementing is an invitation for this kind of shipping disaster to happen. God forbid that a gamerboy would ever have to touch a screwdriver to remove a heatsink. That's way too much to ask of the point-and-click kiddos livin' la vida loca in 2025. I spoke to their RMA rep today and they are going to send me an X870E-E Strix instead. I confirmed before agreeing to it that it DOES NOT have the same design defect as the Apex and putting my Sabrent Quad NVMe card in the bottom X16 slots won't castrate the GPU with X8 bandwidth. Should still work at X16 as long as I only install the one NVMe PCIe 5.0 in the slot above the GPU, ignore the other two and the two PCIe 4.0 chipset NVMe slots at the bottom of the mobo can be used with no effect. Two of the three PCIe 5.0 NVMe slots (those below the GPU slot) cannot be used, which is pretty much standard for all X870E thanks to AMD's obsession with mandating wasted PCIe lanes on utterly worthless USB4 crap that I don't care about. (Not sure where Intel, AMD and NVIDIA are finding idiots for product design engineers, but stupid seems to the the new normal for those employed in that vocation.) Strix mobos have almost always been decent for me, so I am OK with the compromise. Just send me the dog-gone motherboard so I can move on and be done. My new 011D XL EVO is patiently waiting for it. https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-x870e-e-gaming-wifi/ I bought this KingBank kit. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSZPHLCX?th=1 - very inexpensive It is not advertised to have an EXPO 8400 profile, but lo and behold, it does. @jaybee83 I can't do 8400 with my CPU but it runs stable at 8200 with custom timings. Nice to not have the rainbow puke eyesore. tPHYRDL is matched. I bet it would handle 8400+ on the Gene or Apex. This kit performs pretty much identical to my G.SKILL 8000 TridentZ Neo EXPO 48GB kit. A bit slower than Neo 32GB 8000 kits, but to be expected with 48GB modules due to looser timing requirements. The heatsinks are A WHOLE LOT BETTER than the G.SKILL heating blankets. I will continue to do some tuning/testing on the Master and the Strix (once I have it). If it turns out to be a reliable kit then I will probably buy another one and sell the G.SKILL rainbow puke sticks just for the reason to not have to install any kind of bloatware to correct the rainbow puke rubbish.

This. Nvidia can just stop the card from function properly afterwards with just the geforce driveres.... I look at you Maxwell (Nvidia killed voltage tuning with newer drivers and the voltage slider is greyed out/not working anymore even with kingpin cards and their own XOC software). And people want/need newer drivers as months goes, so.... Isn't that nicly done by Nvidia? And I'm 100% sure Nvidia could easly open up the max vram cap for 5000 series cards with their drivers if they wanted (this will overide any firmware lock). Both for desktop cards and those castrated soldered chips (better word for BGA) for Jokebooks.

100%. That's what they do. They do it at the hardware/firmware level and they can do even more with cancer drivers. They've always been that way. I still remember and resent their clock-blocked crap on notebooks about 10 years ago using drivers. If you wanted to play games that required the new driver then you were SOL on overclocking. Very scummy.

In the words of everyone here....Form over fashion my friend. And all air cooler cards do not suck, just because they don't cool a card down to 30C. Not sure how this has become stand practice now. Cards run in the 70's at some people houses. And max is what 88C or something like that? Yes and no. I ran mine without a chiller and still got better numbers. 17699 to be exact. All I had were fans. I keep trying to tell you, it's Nvidia blocking the performance. My Astral is on chiller now. And I gained about 450 points with block and chiller. So nothing fancy there, but then I know why it's not higher. Everyone on planet earth knew the FE was always cheaper, I thought that was a given? I sure hope so, because right now, that card does not look promising when it comes to benching numbers, but gaming... it's great. If that card can't crack 17k shunted on stock cooler then there is a problem. And I don't think it's the user. Just my opinion. Still hoping you crack to code so we can see it move into the 17k range.🙂

@johnksss That FE cooler is a 2 slot cooler, so while it is nice, 2 slot doesn’t cool as well as 3+ slots (You know this). But I think all air coolers are gonna suck at the end of the day when trying to bench right? So that dudes shunted FE would need to be on a chiller for some better scores. Is your Astral on a chiller right? I am merely saying, I think someone with a 5090FE chilled can squeeze some nice scores. Not saying it’s the fastest in the world. But it’s cheaper.

lol, you do know we're just teasing ya @tps3443 right? I consider you a friend, and I know with my friends we constantly joke around with each other. 🤣 I agree with @Mr. Fox. Buy what you want and enjoy it for your own personal reasons. I've made plenty of left field purchases some questioned. I just let them know if they wanted to foot the bill I'd be open to listening to and using their personal recommendation. Remember when I was the only sucker, er, enthusiast who picked up a KPE 3090ti? 🤣🤑 And you clearly know how I feel about the 5090FE. SFF dream card with great aesthetics. You know when my VPA pops and/or BB drop, I'm grabbing one and maybe two and bin them for best for a SFF.

Well, we have no idea what Nvidia's hotspot is because they took the reading from us....I wonder why that is? 😞 Memory temps are spicy though! Depending on which card you use, your OC can be much ado about nothing as all cards tend to top out under load around 3200-3300 or lower. The Gigabyte Gaming/Masters are already coming out of the box hitting 3ghz+ at stock settings so there's not much room left. AMD has made massive strides in RT and basically looks like they've caught up to Nvidia. I'll be real curious to see @Mr. Fox block his and bring those hotspot and mem temps down. His tops out at ~350w OC'd, while the Gigabytes are topping out ~360-365w OC'd with some transient spikes into the 400w+ range. So basically the same @tps3443 we've grown to love and adore over the last 10+ years..... 💙

I'm starting to think @tps3443 is doing a little side work for Nvidia as hard as he is pushing this FE card. The card is the bottom of the barrel. It always has been, that is why it is the cheapest to buy, but also usually the hardest to mod because Nvidia is in control and after each rendition of cards they take what they have learned from us in the forums and make their cards that much harder to crack. Nvidia does not like to RMA GPU's, they want them to be sold once and not returned for 4 more under sketchy warranties of.... it died while idling, but forgot to mention that a drip of water landed on the PCB while the card was "idling"😂

Well almost a week since my bowl surgery, I am sitting at home, cannot do any consumables since I don't want to cough. ha ha. But here is a mind blowing, face melting performance for Ya'll. I really just stumbled on this and HOLY POOP. My favorite group now!

I'm sure you know the answer (and you say so). Black tubing is the only option for me. I used clear tubes many years ago. But only for a short time. Black is pretty. Black is classic. And black tubes offer less maintenance. So best of both worlds🙂 What a fantastic stupid connector design choice for the cards. They (the engineers) know the fragile tiny trash can melt/overheat and burn up, yet they prefer to hide the problem behind the 4th fan. Aka you'll never know what about to happens before it's too late. You may get lucky and get blackscreen and can find the problem. But not everyone understand what't about to happen. Here's @Mr. Fox looking on the stupidity from his smartphone... Aka nowadays computer for the young ones. Make stupid design choices... Then hide the tiny connector/cable to make it more pretty🙄 Gigabyte Launches the Aorus GeForce RTX 5090 Stealth Ice Graphics Card Here's one more. Hide the power connector behind plastic covers.... Out of sight. Out of mind. Until you can smell some burnt plactic. AX Gaming GeForce RTX 50xx X3W MAX Series Debuts With Hidden Power Connection System

i guess it all comes down to optimization by the mobo manufacturer. in my case i havent had any luck with EXPO kits, but XMP kits work quite nicely. AHA! "finally" errored out at 8600 😄 now for a full 8500 stress test to dial this stick in and then off to the others. should go more quicklly now that i have a rough idea of where to start testing.

Yeah, I think I am going to return this kit for a refund. It performs quite well but I cannot stop it from erroring out. So far every Intel XMP 48GB kit I have tested on the AORUS B850 Elite, X870E Master, X670E Gene and X870E Apex has not been capable of being stablized and every EXPO kit has. I think I am going to stop wasting my time with XMP. Something is off with the XMP profiles that isn't good for Ryzen. What is weird is if I have stable setting with an EXPO kit and replace it with an equivalent XMP kit the stablity is gone even with the same manual memory tuned setting. I can't really explain that. There is something different. The 48GB EXPO kits are also harder to tune than 32GB EXPO kits.

@jaybee83 this just booted and ran fine with the Intel XMP-8400 profile. The only adjustment I made was maxing out tREFI and turned off GDM/PMU manual to 0. I didn't touch voltage or anything else on the memory. Even the latency is good for no tweaking and sloppy default XMP settings. Now I am going to see what Gigabyte AI Snatch does. I just discovered that. Let's see if it is a gimmick.

Yep, AMD's performance these days screams. This is the reason I've switched over to only using AMD GPUs. Nvidia's drivers have a CPU side bottleneck that holds your framerate back. My how the tables have turned. This kinda stuff seems cyclical. We had Intel/Nvidia be the go to combo in the past, now it's full AMD. They'll continue leapfrogging each other. The great thing is, we get increasingly more powerful toys! I don't have any brand loyalty, but I sure am a fanboy of whoever has the best stuff at the time.

RTX Pro 6000 is absolute pure baller class. If price was no object, I'd scoop one up ASAP and pray it doesn't sound like Der8uaers.... 🤣 It is the 5090FE TI Super edition..... As for the Astral 5090, I had fun for two months playing around with it. Trying several vBIOS, OC'ing it, benching and collecting data in WoW, Fallout and Deus Ex along with 3Dmark stuff. Testing V/F curve offsets vs traditional, idle testing and all the fun stuff that was offered along with the 5080FE from launch moving through all the drivers and such. I'm good right now with the 9800X3D + 9070xt. $3600 is steep and personally I loved the 5090 overall but the bang:buck just wasn't there especially in WoW. I think I said it when I got it the problem was the 4090 was already being underutilized in PvP/PvE content and the 5090 just extended that even more. I really gathered a lot of data between the 9070xt and 5090 with WoW and I don't know if it is driver overhead in combination with the WoW engine but when the 5090 is firing on all cylinders, it is firing monstrously. Put the 5090 in an area with zero players and letting the CPU feed it properly and it was almost doubling the fps of the 9070xt (also at 5x the price) with both cards hitting 99% utilization. The problem comes back to player data/physics and when raids/orbs/assaults come into play, both cards tank hard but I found in let's say the new Radiant Flame assault and the final boss fight that the 9070xt actually gets better fps than the 5090 on the bottom end when the CPU is just getting hammered overall. I ran it over and over switching between the 9070xt and 5090 using two independent SSDs with their own W11 installs and the 9070xt just handled the CPU tanking better than the 5090 which results in better game play overall when fps really start to dip. I think I said it during my first round of ownership with the 9070xt when AMD fixed their drivers (understatement) and while the 9070xt was getting overall lower fps, the gameplay was just "smoother" than with the 5090 or 5080FE in WoW. Having run numerous Tier 11 delves solo, the gameplay, smoothness and responsiveness of the 9070xt is >=5090 even when it is getting ~160-170fps vs the 5090 clocking in at 238fps capped to monitor 240. This is with all the cards running 4k Ultra RT max. I'm tempted to pick up another (that would be my 4th or 5th) 7900xtx so I can see if it is fixed properly too with the newest drivers and runs just as smooth but its Achilles Heel was RT on just brutalized it and it was always recommended to turn it off. The 9070xt doesn't suffer from that problem in WoW. It seems odd to say it, but I'm finding the 9800X3D + 9070xt providing the best overall WoW experience atm especially during crunch time vs the 5090 when the CPU is gasping for breath and GPU utilization plummets. On the other hand, the 5090 absolutely wrecked the 9070xt in Fallout 76 and when dealing with outdoor bosses or dailies with plenty of other players, you can definitely feel that difference between the 5090 and the 9070xt. 9070xt is completely playable, but man that 5090 brought the high heat and then some. In the end, it was the $3600 just like in the end it was the $2665 for the KPE 3090ti that I could not reconcile.... The only cards on my radar now are potentially a 5090FE via VPA/BB because while it too is priced stupidly it isn't AS stupid but I'm in zero rush and that's because I want to dabble in some SFF build outs with it and that's the last area to explore with the 5090 for myself. When I get one, if it is a coil whine mess, off to eBay it goes.

Bartlett Lake confirmed! Looks like we won't have to go to Xeon CPUs to escape the E-core madness after all! https://wccftech.com/intel-confirms-nova-lake-s-nova-lake-u-p-core-only-bartlett-lake-s-desktops-panther-lake-laptops/

I like to think about the 4090 compared to the 4080. My experience was a substantial upgrade very nice boost in games. Everyone with/without a 4090 talked about it, and thought it was +$400 more well spent going for the $1,599 dollar 4090. Now consider the 5090 is also +$400 more than 4090 but an even larger upgrade than that was. I’m beginning to seriously question if anything is ever good enough for me or most people. When we all had 3090’s, and the 4090 came out, we complained because the 4090 was too damn good. It was so fast with frame Gen it made the 3090 instantly obsolete (Nvidia was no friend to us gamers because our 3090 is obsolete now) But now the 4090 owners complain because that didn’t happen again. I don’t think we can ever truly be happy with high end hardware no matter the product they give us. I really don’t think any company or product can fit the bill for what we actually want that would make everyone happy and sing praise lol. All we can do is waste our money, convince ourselves into buying the GPU, then we sing our praises about the things that are true.

I wonder how the 5070FE with MFG compares to 9070XT though. This seems like a feature I’d want. People pick on it, but It is a great feature. Going from 60 real frames to 240 fake frames looks and feels so much smoother.

i can see that 5090 budget burning a hole in your wallet hahaha i for one am done with hardware purchases for the time being, back to tuning the installed hardware (finish RAM and havent even started with the CPU yet!) and also more gaming! just finished Deliver Us Mars and also discovered a third installment is already in the making (Deliver Us Home). Now I am starting with Doom Eternal + Ancient Gods, first time ive tried it. Lets see how it compares to Doom 3 and Doom 2016 🙂

I haven't had a chance to install it yet. I've been testing out the items I picked up from GTZ over on the OC forums. Fast and as advertised as always. Just a good guy all around. I wish the tech forums had a 1000 of him. I'm going to move that 13400 from him into this B760 Gigabyte Gaming AX board I have w DDR5 6400 and install that before I give the 5070 a whirl in a few days. I've finished testing my 9070xt just about. 2fps+ Max OC'd vs stock on min and avg in Deux Ex, WoW, Fallout 76....yay? 🙂 Uh oh! Time to test one against your two other 9950x's? I must admit, I'm still on the fence about maybe ordering a 285k instead and building out for comparison. I wish a decent (SP85+) would pop up for cheap to take the binning out of the process.

ooooh joining the X3D club? nice, looking forward to your findings vs. the regular 9950X.

The 5070FE working well? I like FE’s always have since owning GTX 1080FE /2080 Super FE/ 2080Ti FE etc. They give off that new premium vibe. Does the 5070 overclock really well? I saw a VFcurve on one of these from a guy on overclock.net and they are like hand picked to be low voltage queens and low power chips, unless they are just naturally like that due to only a fraction of cuda cores intact. Maybe you can share its VFcurve. But this one 5070FE I saw ran about +1,000Mhz more than my 5090FE does at 0.800-875mv. I’m guessing it is because fewer cuda cores changes the curve, but It’s still incredible though.

Agree with pretty much everything you said. 👍 Yeah, these are really good memory modules and incredibly affordable. They were recommended by gupsterg at oc.net. I had never heard of the brand before, but I was watching a YouTube video earlier today where they were used. They look very good, too. There is a little design decal (triangle) on each corner on one side that I believe are covering screws that bolt the halves together, so the heatsinks should be easier to remove than most. The only thing I don't like is the "KingBank" name on the sides of them, but I would prefer that all brands would leave their branding off of them. I don't like that about any brand. I have a tracking number on the mobo,, so I should have it pretty soon.

I like the tool less design of the heatsinks along with the 90 degree lock down fasteners for the SSDs, but obviously they need proper QC. I've never received a MB with them floating ever (knock on wood). I agree. The Strix boards have always proven to bring the heat and strike a pricing balance (in the Asus inflated stack of course) price wise. You get a lot of the upper tier functionality along with SP rating. Hopefully this works out. Those heatsinks look a lot like TG heatsinks which are excellent and that price is nice. I sold off all my lower tier sets (6000, 6400, 7200, 8000 2x16) and I have just one set of 6400 along with my TG sticks. Might pick up a set. They are less than half what I paid for the TG 8200 sticks last year. G.skill heatsinks are atrocious but the worst I've ever encountered are still the Patriot heat blankets. TG heatsinks are the best I've encountered so far and they look slick with their circular logo on the front.

Dedicated to @Mr. Fox😀

Went to two different Best Buys earlier with my daughter to pick up a few things (Matcha Kindle + dance dance 2025 for her). We had to travel out of our area to find one with them in stock we don't frequent. So odd to see a 5090 and 5080 along with a couple 5070s in stock and on the shelf at a Best Buy: I snagged this while I was there for some benching comparisons and fun in WoW/FO76 vs the 9070xt: Impressed with the fit and finish of even the 5070 FE. Dense in a good way and like it's big brothers, very aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Just checking. My first GB card would lock up with fast mem enabled after heating up unless I blasted the fans at 100%. The open box works fine with it. Final check with Deux Ex in each state vs stock and total compilation. This is with the newest 25.6.1 drivers. I guess every little bit helps, but I see myself running mine with fast mem + -50 UV for a little extra punch and no added heat or watts. -75 is a touch unstable and can lock up randomly. Final tally = +2.3% Avg, +1.9% on mins, +6.4% on max..... Bask and Bow in the glorious light of those uplifts.....so say we all. 🙂

You have what you have, and I’m working with what I’ve got to work with. In my situation it’s not the fastest 5090 in the world, I have a msrp 5090FE, and a waterblock on the way for it! But I’m going to break 17K+ Steel Nomad with this card. It’s going to be really fun to try. Seems doable to me though.

I think all off-the-shelf GPUs that are not a K|NGP|N or Galax HOF are going to suck and fall short of their potential to some degree. The Astral we can all buy will never be all it can be with the firmware that it comes with, just as a K|NGP|N or HOF fall short with stock firmware. They are all gimped and only the Chosen Ones get special firmware for publicity stunts. The rest of us are never gifted with an opportunity to compete with the Chosen Ones because it's all rigged, planned and designed for publicity stunts. The rest of us get to practice soldering skills and are forced to rely on warranty-voiding hardware mods to try to make up for crappy firmware that comes from the factory on the overpriced lipstick on a pig products we buy in hopes of getting our money's worth.

AMD CAN run hot but Nvidia pushing the TDP 575w AND removing the hot spot sensor can't just be a coincidence nor limited to the FE edition. It comes down to cooler design and fan profiles too for the 9070xt: XFX clocking in at 53 core, 69 hot spot and 82 memory respectively while pulling 358w on their Mercury OC..... I think we'll really see what happens when cooled properly once @Mr. Fox blocks his Gigabyte. I was surprised as you too. Last gen was pure garbage for WoW across every single 7900xtx I tested. From the first XFX I purchased right after launch to the last MSI Gaming I tried last October. So many problems from DX12 and crashes to horrific RT performance and lockups/stuttering. Turning on RT basically turned the 7900xtx into a 3080. Even when I swapped in the 7900xtx to my Intel rig the problems were still there just that then Fallout 76 performance was at its all time low out of all four configs I tried with the 4090, 7900xtx, 13900ks and 7800X3D. This generation has gone much better since the 25.4.1 Adrenalin drivers for WoW. Zero problems or issues on this 9800X3D+9070XT. I'm running 25.5.1 (newest). With my first 9070xt, the launch drivers (25.3.1) had all types of problems but the next revision cleared up most of that and it's just gotten better for WoW. ---- I'll reiterate. When unhindered due to CPU exhaustion, the 5090 is an absolute monster and trounces the 9070xt, but when both cards are suffering from CPU exhaustion, I have found the 9070xt plays smoother at those lower fps than the 5090 with higher fps overall. During normal game play, I find the 9070xt hitting 99% util more often than not whereas the 5090 would routinely tap out the CPU hitting 30-40% more frames than the 9070xt. I like the highs, but the lows are of more concern. This was my 5090 on the last Radiant Flame final boss before returning it: I'm to the point, I want to test another 7900xtx to see if the drivers have gotten this much better or if it is the 9070xt architecture or a bit of both. You should scoop up a 9070xt to play with and test out to compare it against your 7800X3D+7900GRE sad times.

welp this was a nothing burger 😄 turns out, once u insert TWO sticks instead of one the rules change completely. the 1.30V kit that was previously stable at 8000 is still king. while testing the two best 1.35V sticks i couldnt actually get them stable at 8000 with the same settings 😄 sooo anyways, RAM binning done, will keep the 1.30V kit and see which speed will give me the best bandwidth / latency performance 🙂 thatll take another while.... RAM OC rabbit hole is real 😄

This has been the current price for a while now. And that is before tax as our stores do not post items including tax as tax can be based off of your zip code in some areas. I look at that as you guys finally are catching a break after a gazion years of paying more.😂

Been like this since last night. +25 Cards https://www.microcenter.com/product/690032/asus-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-rog-astral-overclocked-triple-fan-32gb-gddr7-pcie-50-graphics-card

currently on the third stick, so far theyre all maxing out at 8500. seems like these kits are more narrowly binned than the others. curious to see how they perform in pairs, maybe then ill have more of a spread. id definitely welcome it, since ill need to decide which ones to return 😄 nice! looks like ill be holding off on upgrading my lady's machine until Bartlett Lake shows what it can do 🙂 also hoping for additional fixes to stave off silicon degradation. when it comes to my lady, stability is everything! us hardware nerds can live with a bit of instability when it means MOAR POWAH 😛

thx for the headsup, ive actually tried those in the RGB version (lights manually switched off for daily operation and stress testing, i just go with the RGB version for higher resale value), but no luck on my mobo. BUT the four additional kits of the G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-8000 F5-8000J4048F24GX2-TZ5RK arrived yesterday! This is the 1.35V sku, there is also a 1.30V sku under the same model number, which is the kit that ran 8000 stable in my previous testing. Im now testing the 8 sticks individually and so far i havent found an upper limit for the first stick LOL. DDR5-8400 running well, upping in 100 Mhz steps 🙂 Will update you guys once i know more 😄 Ofc im aware that with two sticks the frequency limit will be lower, but this nevertheless already bodes well. First time ever ive even seen anything boot up and run stable at 8100 Mhz or above on my mobo 🙂