win32asmguy

I do think the Raider A18 is better than the other 18 inch options and the pricing was much more sane than the Titan 18 while also being better equipped for gaming than the Intel Raider or Titan 18. It could probably be perfectly fine at Ultra 10 with RT in WoW.

I usually have settings at 10 ultra with RT. I have not tried TWW outdoor raids. Will need to do that. 5080 seems like it should do better than a 4080 Super I think. The 7800X3D + 7900GRE was just not a performance boost much beyond what laptops can do. The MSI x670e tomahawk also kept dropping my m.2 drive. The 7945HX3D is better but it's capped to 100W courtesy of AMD. There are a few other bad bugs like the audio system dropping out until a reboot. It is one MSI system where silent mode actually works and quite well. 55W on the CPU and 100W on the GPU is enough for a good experience given the quiet fan noise. The new steel series controller is also horrible because it has a rainbow RGB boot effect and cannot remember an override. A have read a lot of posts on Reddit and whatnot about people excited for 9955HX3D but it's going to be a poor product if its buggy like this and artificially capped. AMD apparently has to play a bigger role with bios development on these machines so you may as well not consider it being a typical good unlocked MSI laptop bios.

I found the 4080 Super was generally doing ok even in some outdoor raids (those 20th anniv. world bosses). It did not fall below 50fps generally. That is with CPU at 4.8ghz, mesh at 3ghz, memory at 6400 CL32 and only using a QHD display. I do not think I would want to go back to a non-HEDT chip. I did not like the 7800X3D and the 7945HX3D is equally unappealing. 14900K and even a 285K would be to close to laptop offerings so I would just use a laptop again in that case. I guess at least the desktop GPU's (5080 or 5090) should not really devalue that much so if I go through the trouble of getting one it would not be a big deal to just resell.

Would you say upgrading from a 4080 Super to a 5080 or even 5090 would be worthwhile for WoW? In theory I could push core clocks up to 5.2ghz on the Xeon but I am not sure how far it could go beyond that so there may be a CPU bottleneck. The 4080 Super I currently have was $1029 and can be returned to Best Buy until Feb 1st.

More info and photo in this press release: https://wccftech.com/xmg-neo-16-up-to-24-gb-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-gpu-evo-ultrabooks-amd-strix-ryzen-ai-300-apus/ Still heatpipes for cooling but better breathing room around the RAM area for 1DPC configurations. Higher fin count fans.

Info is starting to trickle out about the Schenker Key 18 Pro. Still no photos of its cooling system but it is a start. https://www.techpowerup.com/330672/schenker-xmg-shows-off-laptops-featuring-geforce-rtx-5090-laptop-gpu

I think 2xSODIMM is actually an upgrade for the Titan 18. These are the 24GB M-die sticks that should go into it as well: https://v-color.net/products/copy-of-ddr5-specifications-so-dimm?variant=45911957373095 I am disappointed to yet again not see QHD+ 240hz in the specs here. It was a joke in 2024 that it took 9 months for them to actually release a Titan 18 config with QHD+ while they very well had panels available at day one.

The key will be if they decide to use better cooling on it than the X370. I have compared the PE60SNE with the X370 and it is significantly better just by having a vapor chamber instead of heatpipes. It also needs better M.2 cooling and ideally would be compatible with RAM cooling upgrades as well. It also could use better speakers as the 2x1W solution on the X370 was barely adequate. Because the motherboard has four memory slots it will not do as well with 2x16GB, likely capping out at 6000MT/s even with the best SODIMMs. You can see a photo of the backside of the X580 on Clevo's site now too: https://www.clevo.com.tw/product/product_list/1

The X370 has serious issues with overheating compared to the X170. It cannot really sustain the advertised 250W combined loads and even when it does the excess heat bleeds into the RAM heating it up over 85C and the audio AMP causing distortion in the speakers and headphone output. Clevo has a smaller model, PE60, that has a better cooling system and can properly run its components at advertised speeds. That is their true flagship model, it just tops out at 4070 mobile, but is a good complement device to a desktop as it turns out. I do not think we will get any full socketed models in the future. BGA HX chips exist from both AMD and Intel so its going to be the path they provide for these laptops.

I think the RCD chip on the memory adds 20-30ns latency. It is clocked at 6400 CL32-39-39-84. I think 6800 or even 7000 may be possible. I know its not as good as a 14900K can do but it is the price for having over 8 P-cores and no e-cores, while not being the AMD option. I will submit a full report to Finalwire. It would be nice if it could detect everything properly.

I am testing mesh at 3ghz with 1.065v. This is what I progressed with so far: 24x 0.905v 25x 0.925v 26x 0.945v 27x 0.965v (failed) 27x 0.975v 28x 1.005v 29x 1.035v 30x 1.065v For some reason setting a Cache offset voltage over +5mv in the bios causes hwinfo64 to BSOD when starting up. I checked the existing VF Curve for cache and from 18x to 23x it added 20mv for each step as reported. I checked AIDA64 a couple of times as I was progressing and memory latency seemed to benefit along with L3 bandwidth and latency as well. In games 3ghz feels more responsive and has little to no frame rate dips any more (that chunking effect Electrosoft mentions in WoW). One other guy I found mentioned that 30x mesh was stable for him at 1.08v, but he was not able to get 31x or 32x stable.

Well, so far I am trying to boost the mesh by increasing 100mhz and 20mv steps and let it run an hour of y-cruncher component test for stability. One nice thing about using the P5800X as a boot drive is that since it does not use a cache it seems like BSODs do not easily corrupt the OS.

Are there any good guides out there focused on mesh overclocking? I was looking into that as it seems like memory performance can scale up quite nicely if combined with a higher mesh clock. 2.5ghz seems stable over stock but more needs additional voltage as the VF Curve tops out at 2.3ghz / 0.885v on this chip. There is a method that System76 uses to disable the ME altogether in firmware. I am not sure if there is a measureable performance difference but it is a nice to have feature. You can also choose any microcode patch desired or none at all. There is a cost to that configurability as they usually charge $500 over the cost of the same machine from Sager.

The desktop workstation route is a pretty good option. I think even a low end Threadripper build is still cheaper than most comparable mobile workstations unless you get a very good refurbished discount. I went with Xeon just because I wanted a high P-core count monolithic chip but with desktop systems you can pick and choose pretty much whatever you want without being locked into the rest of the system components. For laptops I have finally found an excellent option from System76 / Clevo. The PE60 has a vapor chamber, offers good on-the-go performance as a 14900HX + 4070 mobile combo. 2x SSD and 2x RAM is obviously less than what a Precision 7680 can do. It also still has a modular keyboard. The 1920x1200 165hz display is perfect for Linux and W10 use. It has a single TB4 port wired to the iGPU so I can hook up an external dock without waking the Nvidia GPU just like on any Precision. I have the open source bios and EC from System76 modified so I have undervolting, a custom fan curve and microcode 0x12B applied. The 4070 mobile is obviously going to not be as good as a 4090 mobile with more VRAM but it performs well enough for on the go use. Clevo's heatsink for their 4090 flagship model, X370, had issues keeping the system cool so it is basically inferior compared to the PE60.

Got everything transfered into the Fractal Define 7 XL tonight. Much more breathing room now! It is definitely one of the most versatile cases I have used. I need to work on cable management but it should be better for now to do more testing. System is still stable with XMP activated. I think it may have been a bad interaction with the "Performance Mode" option in the bios.

Yep, this chip / platform is a lot of fun. I guess a 7970X Threadripper would have been higher performance, but I really wanted Intel and a monolithic chip. Strangely I let it run with the XMP profile enabled looping memtest86 while I was at church tonight and it passed just fine. Booted into Windows and no BSOD yet. Yep, picked up the Sage from Micro Center over the weekend and really liking it so far. I will have better airflow for the whole system once I move it into the new, larger case. Liquid cooling may be on the table. The CPU thermal throttles at 94C at 46x all core with the current bad airflow. I think the horizontal orientation of the U14S is sub-optimal but from reviews it appears the NH-D9 4U is smaller and less capable. I think the 3400 chips can cool well due to the massive surface area but there may be more heat generated from those tile interconnects. I would actually have been pulled to the Asrock W790 or Asus W790-ACE more if they only had four memory slots instead of eight. Lots of good info on level1techs for sure. I have noticed the HEDT crowd seems very AMD biased though. Even just going to Micro Center to pick up the Sage the sales reps there were confused as to why I was building with a Xeon instead of Threadripper.

The Sapphire Rapids build lives! Getting almost 54k in CBR23 at 46x all core with the Noctua U14S and very poor airflow. The Antec Neo P7 barely fits everything and it does not have a good path to exhaust hot air for the Noctua in a horizontal orientation. I have a Fractal Define 7 XL on the way which should be a much better fit for everything and be easier to work on. Other specs: W7-2495X Asus W790E-SAGE SE 4x16GB Teamgroup XMP 6400 CL32 RDIMM MSI 4080 Super Ventus 3X OC Optane P5800X 800GB Corsair HX1500i MSI - MAG 274QRF QD E2 27" QHD 180Hz (testing this for its built in KVM functionality) Sadly the XMP 6400 profile was not stable when activated. It crashed with a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSOD.

Thanks for the insight. I agree 1DPC should always be superior. With the SAGE using a W-2400 chip it uses the two closest slots on each side. Hopefully the further slots for the non-present memory controllers are not as detrimental.

@tps3443 @ssj92 Do you think the Asus W790 SAGE would be better than the Asrock W790 regarding memory overclocking, as it is only 1DPC instead of 2DPC? I will only use the 2495X for now with 4x16GB, a single GPU and a storage adapter card. The SAGE also fully supports W-3400 so it could be more useful if I ever picked up one of those chips. Both of these boards are the same price right now and the $500 Asrock W790 R2.0 is not available at the moment.

Wow, these Xeon's are big. Sadly I ended up not getting a CPU carrier from either the used boxed processor or the new motherboard so still waiting on that to arrive separately before the weekend hopefully!

Got a few parts in today for the Sapphire Rapids build. Still waiting on the W7-2495X. It may arrive this week if the ebay seller decided to use USPS instead of UPS. Otherwise it was a holiday weekend so if its delayed that is fine. For now I will try to fit the build into my Antec P7 Neo. It isn't exactly a great case but was one of the few that did not have a window and also had a built in 5.25 drive bay. The same company here in Colorado that sells Clevo laptops with open firmware also has a line of custom desktop cases they manufacture in Denver. They have a model that can fit EATX called Nebula49 which should fit the board other than maybe needing to remove a fan header and not use the custom CPU heatsink duct if it interferes with the Noctua U14S.

They have multiple OEM SSD and RAM brands that could potentially be used. I have seen SK Hynix or Samsung DDR5-5600 and Samsung or Micron Gen4 SSDs. I believe the 240hz QHD+ 18 inch display is only made by AUO.

Yep I like the Team Group 4x16GB 6400 kit for $450. The 6400 CL32 kit should be a better bin than the 6000 CL32 kit, correct? I like the ASRock W790 WS. It has a good slot layout and other features. From what I read most or all of the bios bugs have been ironed out. The 2495X seemed like a decent deal at $1500. It should be a fun build and was more interesting to me than 9950X or 285K. It should hopefully lead to selling off all of my laptop projects other than my current one so it should be cheaper in the long run to mess around with.

That is awesome! These humonguous monolithic chips are too tempting. I picked up a W7-2495X off of eBay and am going to build a Sapphire Rapids setup. Thinking ASRock W790 WS but still need to figure out a good memory kit and power supply.

I was told the 100W limitation and iGPU being active in dGPU mode was per AMD design specification. There was a new bios update that did fix silent mode. However I think the audio dropout issue is AMD specific as it has also been reported on the Strix Scar 17.