win32asmguy

Well I at least finally found the MSI bios setting for iGPU control, "Multi Monitor Support". I also found out that DDR5 on the consumer chips do not support gear1 (strangely the Xeon does support ddr5 gear1). Also set tREFI to 65k which dropped latency down to 57ns. IIRC you guys had your ddr5 tuned to sub-40ns on 14th gen so it has a way to go.. These sticks are actually Hynix M-die (4.D) according to HWInfo64. Kind of wish I had a Unify-X or other 1DPC board to work with here. I am guessing 8000 CL26-30 simply is not happening with a 12900KS either. I like the fact that in the hardware busters video he did not just run around the starting zone in circles at 500fps and declared that WoW can run on any system maxed out.

The Xeon was a tough chip to tune. In retrospect I think I purchased the wrong motherboard to go with it. I thought the W790-SAGE would be a good choice as it was 1DPC, but the CPU orientation did not help air cooling efficiency, disabled PCIe/M.2 with the W-2400 chip, and bios bugs. I think memory is more limited by mesh clocks for latency than pure timings. With XMP enabled I could see a difference of 15ns between 2.4ghz mesh (stock) at 3.0ghz mesh (max stable). I thought about picking up a Asrock W790 WS and see if it solves the issues I had with the SAGE. I should at least run XMP + tREFI 64k. Then see if I can go back and find a deep dive tuning guide to see what to do next. I will try the weekly boss out in K'aresh and see how it does. I also have e-cores disabled in the bios for simplicity. Ah, the MSI is moving on to its next owner. I had the same sentiment about its noise level. Its a shame that at the end of the day an Alienware is still an Alienware. I was majorly turned off from the brand after the M18R1 that leaked their stupid Element 31 LM/hybrid compound past their thin barrier from the factory. Waited a month for that to arrive DOA. It did not help that it had rainbow RGB on bootup by default along with high pitched fan noise. I still have the order for the new Pro Max 18 Plus open. It will be interesting to test out if it ever arrives.

I went ahead and swapped the z690 + 12900ks into my big fractal design r7 xl last night. Love working in that thing; plenty of room for my hands. With XMP stock it was getting 67ns latency in aida64. WoW felt much smoother and other than initial loading hiccups ran very well. The bios I am using does not let me disable the igpu surprisingly. I think the Alienware should do well with those fury sticks. Support for XMP in this Gen is a must have. They should also have options to tune sa fabric and d2d.

It is a MSI Pro Z690-A with 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance C32 6400 memory which is stable with XMP enabled. That 12900KS is the one I had bought for the NH55 but it was running much hotter than the binned 12900K. It is already delidded and has a nicely polished rockitcool copper IHS. I would want to find a different adapter to use my Optane P5800X via the primary M.2 slot (CPU lanes) instead of a PCIe slot (chipset lanes). It makes a great boot drive and is also good for testing stuff as it is a cacheless drive. I still think about a Z890 1DPC + 285K setup, but I don't use the desktop very much right now. I need to find a solution to keep multiple machines synchronized better along with a reliable KVM so I could use my laptop at my home desk as needed. So far the MSI QHD display built in KVM does not work well.

Wow the vanguard looks really nice! I wanted one of those too but the gaming trio was all that became available back in February without any silly bundles required. In theory they are similar but the vanguard has a vapor chamber. I still need to move mine into my z690 / 12900ks system so I can see if it does better than with the frequency limited Xeon.

Best Buy got the Intel Claw 8 in stock so I ordered one to try it out. The last handheld gaming console I owned was a Sega Nomad / Gameboy Pocket (can't remember which came out first) so this will be an interesting experience. My hope is that with the ConsolePort addon I can run WoW for non-raiding things, and Steam / Emulation along with maybe a few offline movies my four year old likes.

I appreciate this choice because they made a decision of function over form here. I doubt any engineers or users actually cared about how thick their mobile workstations were (within reason). Are we going back to M6800 sized systems? No. But it can at least be as thick as needed to sustain advertised performance in reasonable conditions.

A good telltale sign of the CPU location is usually an inch or less than from the memory slots for optimal signal integrity. Granted, the service manual photos do not really do justice showing how everything is designed and component locations!

Oh, tests with the dock will be great to have. They do usually ship them with the larger bricks as size is not as much a concern with something stationary. To me the biggest issue would be if its power limits are not consistent. Its not very useful if it might be at 200W for five minutes but then drop to 150W for two minutes. It can also make work tasks take longer than estimated along with fan speeds not staying consistent as well if the throttling algorithm overshoots. It would be great if it has some low latency memory options but they do not have all of the CAMM options available yet. I am guessing the CSODIMMs are probably just OEM 6400 CL52 1.1v. In the past Dell did support enabling XMP SODIMMs so that is another thing to test. How is the 120hz QHD+ display? I am guessing it also supports 60hz to save some power on battery and maybe VRR in Optimus mode.

They also advertise 300W power delivery over their new TB5 dock. So I wonder with the dock it could prevent / slow any battery drain issues under load (if present).

This is great information, thank you! Interesting to see the GPU boosting up as high as 170W. With the 7780 I think the limit was 140W, with combined loads being closer to 120W. If you do run combined load tests keep an eye on battery percentage to see if it draws down the battery in those scenarios. I feel like the 280W brick may not have enough overhead for 200W combined loads along with all other components.

Order is still in the build stage for me. Expected to ship August 18 so it should be build complete by August 13th or so. It's a new product instead of a refresh so I expected a delay to be honest. The 7670 was also delayed an extra month if I recall.

It's just a 285hx with the RTX 5000 blackwell, and a single sodimm. Everything else a base spec. It finally has a vapor chamber and three full sized fans so it should do better than the previous generation.

How much memory and storage does yours have installed? Maybe the temps with it maxed out could be higher than if it is only two SODIMMs and a single SSD. I could definitely believe quality control variance with the heatsink exists. Those should be using PTM7958SP from the factory along with their special VRAM putty. If yours has the 5070Ti mobile then I would also wonder if its using the same heatsink part as the 5080/5090 mobile variants. The latest one I have preordered is a Dell Pro Max 18 Plus. If it performs as listed on its spec sheet it could be a solid machine. Even better if their memory is set to gear2 when using 2x16GB instead of the aweful gear4 that the X580 and all other 2DPC laptops use.

That is disappointing to hear. When I spoke to my sales rep he said the 5090 would not be coming to the Pro Max 16/18 Plus. I did not see 5090 listed on the GPU driver either so I assumed that was accurate.

If you are comparison shopping HP has the configurations up for their Zbook Fury G1i 16 and 18: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/ConfigureView?langId=-1&storeId=10151&catalogId=10051&catEntryId=3074457345622038819&urlLangId=&quantity=1&pStoreID=hpepp The 18 can be equipped with a 330W barrel charger, and notably still continues to use a tradition trackpad with buttons. Sodimms may run slower in it though as without a camm 2-dimm interposer it is limited to 4400mt per intel spec this generation without overclocking.

All slots support a 2280 sized drive or optionally 2230 which uses a plastic bracket that makes the shorter drive a 2280 length. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/dell-pro-max-mb18250-laptop/dell-pro-max-18-plus-mb18250-owners-manual/removing-the-m.2-2230-ssd?guid=guid-eef383a5-e6cb-4327-9d89-29d50997c6d1&lang=en-us Funny thing about the configurator too, they now do not let you choose a 2230 drive (class 35) with RTX 2000 or higher GPUs.

As @Aaron44126 mentioned the blue circled ports are USB-C and can be replaced. It looks like they have pins that compress against the motherboard when screwed down. There is also a modular "power" daughterboard but I am not sure what it has unless its something related to USB-C power delivery and the systems shipped with the 165W adapter get a different board here. I think the stacked drives could have thermal issues. The memory would hopefully be ok although its hard to say until we have numbers from a system under sustained load. The unified vapor chamber should help things this year paired with the three full sized fans. Hopefully under max sustained loads it does not constantly trip bidirectional PROCHOT which would drop CPU cores and the iGPU to 400mhz for short periods of time on the 7670 and 7780. I really hope they have a better built in microphone this year. Everything from the 7560 my wife uses, 7670, 7780 all have issues with it periodically dropping voice in calls probably due to some AI enhancement in the driver that could not be disabled.

I have a feeling that eventually Micro Center or Costco will get MSI to make a Raider 18 with 9955HX3D, 5080/5090 and QHD+ 240hz IPS that they can price around $3000. Late last year there was also a Titan 18 with QHD+ 240hz so its certainly in their capacity. I usually found MSI Silent and Balanced profiles to be decent enough for use. Performance on the other hand was far too agressive and could not pick a speed under sustained loads. Probably because WoW can bounce around TDP as much as 100W depending on what you are doing. In the case of the Hydroc G2 the GPU performance really does not feel much better than the 4090 laptops I used. The real benefit (for me) was the presense of iGPU connected video outputs. The air cooling is a bit underwhelming as it has trouble keeping up with 150W combined loads at 75-80F ambients and 60% fan speed so its around 40dBA.

It looks like the USB-C ports are modular according to the service manual, so if they wear out one would have to pull the motherboard, unscrew the port connector (appears to be something like DGFF if its similar to the XPS 13), and screw down a new replacement connector. Its definitely a must too as power jacks commonly wear out first as they are frequently used. I guess those USB-C ports can function as power / video / data so if your USB-A or HDMI ports failed they could be used in lieu of board repair.

I could see the X3D being a popular option once they are available. I hope Eluk will carry the X3D with both 5080 and 5090 options as MSI is a disappointment this year only opting for UHD+ panels in the Raider A18. I think you can tune most Intel models to catch up in 1% lows so if there is a chassis that otherwise has good options or price it is not a complete lost cause. I still appreciate Jarrod's reviews as he always checks display output support and Linux compatibility.

Do any of the OC options modify D2D / NGU / SA Fabric? You might also try the Kingston Fury kit in the Alienware too, as it may let you turn on XMP which should do much better than any of the JEDEC CSODIMM kits. Its a shame these new Area-51 laptops have all of the video outputs always wired to the dGPU, else I would be testing out one as well. Alienware should also add a "go dark" option in the BIOS too, so there would be a way to disable all of the RGB before AWCC loads or if one was dual booting into Linux. I would personally also probably take it all apart and remove the Element 31 hybrid paste, replacing it either with LM or PTM7950. I am going to test out the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus as it (finally) has a vapor chamber, a third full sized fan and higher wattages this year.

I have not gotten any info about TDP and TGP from my sales rep but have a Pro Max 18 Plus on order. I will share what I find when it arrives. This time around these workstations finally have a vapor chamber and a third full sized fan so they should do better than the 7780. Hopefully the memory will not be running in Gear4 as that is a huge latency penalty compared to Gear2.

I have a stored score in Benchmate of 38850 at 202W. I would actually be more interested in how it performs with the CPU in combined loads with the GPU active and fan speed limited. If it can do meaninfully better than the 275HX with the CPU at 75W and GPU at 150W-175W then it could be worth considering. I hope that with all of the layoffs Intel is doing that the quality of their drivers and linux support do not drop. I have a feeling that their contributions to coreboot and edk2 may just disappear if some big wig decides that open source isn't a profit generator. That could be the end of my caring about their products if it happens.

I have another friend with one of these who likes it as well. I would shy away from it due to it's likely aggressive RGB and reliance on AWCC for configuration. In the past it seemed to be rolling the dice if the biweekly update would work or allow the same performance from the previous week. The zbook 18 workstation has me interested though. Might try to pick up one once they can be ordered. The hydroc g2 continues to be fine other than some minor control center bugs.