Talon

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

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

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

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

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

Haven't bothered updating to latest Asus Apex BIOS yet, but this has been my daily Arrow Lake tune for around 6 months. I just laugh when I see 80+ns as "fast" Arrow Lake memory setups. This is on a clean install with shitty virtualization/hypervisor running on the system which hurts latency a tad. It absolutely wrecks gaming performance on Arrow Lake. In Cyberpunk 2077, it's almost a 17% penalty at 1080p high settings in the benchmark.

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

APEX.

It’s disgusting lol. I picked up 2 sets of 2x32gb 6000 CL30 Gskill A-Die kits from Microcenter over the last couple years for $160 open box lol. Both run 6000 CL28 on my 9800X3D when tested. Both overclock to around 7400 CL34 on Intel rigs which is insane for dual ranked kits. I have so many DDR5 kits I don’t need to worry lol.

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

75ns latency on 265K LMAO. GTFO. Garbage. 60-63ns is a tuned Arrow Lake 265K. Below that is amazing tuning with lottery IMC. But 75ns and that terrible bandwidth, LMAO, straight garbage. Literally tuned the TREFI to 65535 and left the 265K stupid low. Why the F would you do that other than attempting to misrepresent performance? Also heavily agree on the RTX 5090 voltages. It's amazing how good my Surpim SOC clocks with it's default 1.15-1.12v.

MSI issued an RMA for that PSU that is having the low voltage issue. Hopefully I get a working unit back.

Pushing NGU and D2D have almost no affect on temps or power. Air cooler will be fine if you keep the power limits in check like always.

Despite my gut feelings or fears of a bad unit, I pulled the trigger on that Asrock 1650w Titanium PSU. Grabbed it on Amazon before the price hike this afternoon. I figure if it doesn't work, back it goes. Hoping I don't get a bad batch lol. The price is just too good for a 1650w Titanium unit with dual 12V2x6. It's times like this that I truly miss EVGA, their PSUs were bullet proof. I've been using this 1600w T2 in my rig for years now and it's not showing any issues yet. Hoping EVGA is still around should I ever need warranty support as I think it's still covered for a few more years yet.

265K is best value chip of Arrow Lake, mine tuned the same as my 285K chips on P/E cores.. My 265K had no issues running 40x D2D, 34x NGU, 8600 CL38 Gear 2. I ran the P core at 5.6Ghz locked and E at 50x locked for a daily. Unfortunately mine had that stupid bug where if you go above 1.2v it would log WHEA Cache L2 Errors. They didn't cause any instability or corrupt anything, but it was concerning. So I backed my E cores OC down to prevent the errors. My 285Ks have never had this issue though.

Torn between these PSUs. https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Warranty-Japanese-Capacitor-Cybenetics/dp/B0DNNZ9G46/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OOLPXBUQPTMA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pBmkATu6jq8mTeFHC0sFB6DptC0lfjWcuKxj1t0dWcrAo_0ohxOxSP5BKJoMAsb_b6P-d3RW68EOKt3yvIfF1R-RD8HImRsmxQWTD4ij6-YifJ8r25m02hxnpY2BvW41hpQGV_qe_X27LC42LKxQKaSViw4qVOIuy1s08aKfgDwpiKCAmonH6SNYU6uc0_DqmPvbq5pstwqjgSO4NM0_HhR-hydCHarYU8b7IChoREY.eTpIgbjCxrEElKZRPxqPSNQhhijfBCy6TUEoGLA-6ZY&dib_tag=se&keywords=asrock%2B1600w%2Batx%2B3.1&qid=1764867203&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1&th=1 https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Warranty-Japanese-Capacitor-Cybenetics/dp/B0DNLP39SR/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OOLPXBUQPTMA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pBmkATu6jq8mTeFHC0sFB6DptC0lfjWcuKxj1t0dWcrAo_0ohxOxSP5BKJoMAsb_b6P-d3RW68EOKt3yvIfF1R-RD8HImRsmxQWTD4ij6-YifJ8r25m02hxnpY2BvW41hpQGV_qe_X27LC42LKxQKaSViw4qVOIuy1s08aKfgDwpiKCAmonH6SNYU6uc0_DqmPvbq5pstwqjgSO4NM0_HhR-hydCHarYU8b7IChoREY.eTpIgbjCxrEElKZRPxqPSNQhhijfBCy6TUEoGLA-6ZY&dib_tag=se&keywords=asrock%2B1600w%2Batx%2B3.1&qid=1764867203&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1&th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Seasonic-TX-1600-Noctua-Ultra-Quiet-Efficiency/dp/B0DMW5F3GG/ref=sr_1_2?crid=OOLPXBUQPTMA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pBmkATu6jq8mTeFHC0sFB6DptC0lfjWcuKxj1t0dWcrAo_0ohxOxSP5BKJoMAsb_b6P-d3RW68EOKt3yvIfF1R-RD8HImRsmxQWTD4ij6-YifJ8r25m02hxnpY2BvW41hpQGV_qe_X27LC42LKxQKaSViw4qVOIuy1s08aKfgDwpiKCAmonH6SNYU6uc0_DqmPvbq5pstwqjgSO4NM0_HhR-hydCHarYU8b7IChoREY.eTpIgbjCxrEElKZRPxqPSNQhhijfBCy6TUEoGLA-6ZY&dib_tag=se&keywords=asrock+1600w+atx+3.1&qid=1764867203&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-2 Honestly the Gold Asrock seems decent, and DUAL 12v2x6 is a nice addition for what will likely be future requirement IMO. The Seasonic Noctua is likely S tier but debating if that's worth the price. Edit: After reading some of these reviews for the Asrock 1650w Taichi, the Caps are failing within weeks. Asrock is out, I'm not risking my hardware with their first go at PSUs.

LMAO, you’re toast! I also have the 9600 GSkillz 2x24gb set that was very briefly offered. They’re Gear 4 XMP which is annoying. But I just use the very tuned Apex profile for 8600 CL38. It’s pretty epic as it’s tuned extremely well and no real FAFO needed. I set 1.4 IMC and 1.3v VCCSA as auto is wild high. Also I’ll be binning some 290Ks, at least a few. How’s your 265K? Can it do 40x D2D? The chip I sent @win32asmguy is a 40x D2D chip.

O I'm trashing those cheap fans LMAO. I looked at them today, not even worth saving. I'll be using my Noctua's I have on hand. Appreciate the help! So put my living room rig into a new case this weekend, and finally decided to swap in that 1300w MSI ATX 3.0 PSU I got on Amazon Warehouse almost 1.5 years ago. The native 12VHPWR cable is tiny and I grabbed a universal CableMod 12v2x6 cable with thicker gauge wires. Unfortunately both cables drop to around 11.6-11.7v under 600w gaming loads. This can't be healthy. Does anyone else have this large of drop on a native 16pin cable? I usually use the 4x8pin to 16pin CableMod cables and they never drop below around 11.9v under extreme loads. I'm about to rip this PSU back out and just drop in my 1000w P3 and go back to the 4x8pin to 16pin like I was using in my old case. Never had a issue and voltages were strong. The PSU was able to bench 800w all day on this GPU. Very strong EVGA PSUs.

Thank you! I ordered 2x of the QD2 male and female fittings. Already shipped, hope to get the build done by next week. Any recommendations on tubing? I might need to order something different than what they shipped because it looks a bit short.

Don't get too excited, I sorta am just dipping my toes in half-assed on it lol. I went sort of a hybrid AIO setup based on someone's recommendation over at overclock.net. It allows for a real full block, and all parts are real DIY watercooling parts, but the pump/reservoir are contained in a combo deal on the radiator. Again, all reusable parts, at least the block, fittings, radiator, etc are reusable. Also you can add additional rads with pumps to expand the setup. I really just wanted something a bit easier to deal with, and will decide to go further if needed. https://www.ebay.com/itm/196057615070?var=495915734111 I went with this 360mm setup. I might add in an additional 120mm setup on the rear of the case to add more pressure through the system and cooling capacity eventually. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002QWBGQ2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title -- Went with this fluid, again recommended. I am still trying to figure out how to setup a drain, and which quick disconnects I need/want to make it even easier to move parts around in the system. I assume I need a drain planned into the setup.

Thankfully I got one from AliExpress a couple weeks back! Thanks though.

Sold my Z890 Apex and 285K to @win32asmguy Paid for and shipped to them this afternoon.

Rocking my 1600W T2 still. Dual 4 8 pins to 12v2x6 connectors from cablemod. Works flawlessly. should have sold you my spare apex and 285K lol.

My Suprim Air is the better card with 800w Matrix vBIOS, but the 5090D with HOF XOC vBIOS is great too. I got all of my water cooling parts together, I still need to block the card lol. Just been lazy. But the Matrix vBIOS just had something special and it's a better sample chip. But at 800w, I was feeling the cable and it def felt warm, but not sure how much that means. But having the dual 12v2x6 connectors does make me feel good and not have to worry about the cables melting, at least in theory. So I guess I'll daily my Galax card in my main rig, and the Suprim will stay in the living room setup. Honestly such an overkill card, but after I saw the Matrix vBIOS, I wanted to dump that TUF 5090 so fast. Now lol it could have had the XOC, but I still think the Matrix is best for daily. Lots of words, prefer the Suprim card, insane cooler, Matrix vBIOS with 800w is ideal, and +4000 mem isn't really useful TBH. But peace of mind with the dual cables has me wanting to stick wtih the HOF, plus it's super unique. I also had a 5070 Ti Prime but sold that last week too. So 5090s it is until I get bored again. I really do need to put this HOF under water though, ASAP. Especially with the cold days coming this week, I could try and push the card. Maybe go outside and bench in the garage lol.

Very nice for your Astral LC card! Hilarious that magically Asus can release the XOC vBIOS after the Matrix made their entire 5090 line (except white Astral) complete garbage overnight lol. Good to see them realize most will never flash this vBIOS and it's only the very enthusiast community so risk is tiny.