Mr. Fox

I ordered this as my second Z890 board. Price for a 2-DIMM is hard to beat. This is a LONG review and he actually does live memory overclocking and does a teardown on the board.

Sold to our beloved friend @Reciever

Sold to Brother @Reciever. A pleasure as always, friend. Thank you.

It never ceases to amaze me how much better temperatures are bare die.

I believe Brother @Papusan does Yeah, I sent the tools back already. Hopefully @Jor3lBR won't mind letting me borrow them again. If I sell the Apex components I will need to buy another Mycro Pro block as well. If that happens I may buy a GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Elite Duo X to replace it and see how that fares. Looks like a good 2-DIMM option without having to pay an Apex tax to avoid having a 4-DIMM mess. It looks like Z890M (mATX) options with 2-DIMMs and a debug LED are essentially non-existent, which is very unfortunate. A memory cooling kit will definitely help. Even the legacy type with generic heatsinks and a waterblock bolted on top is a huge improvement and not that far behind a direct touch RAM block.

No worries, brother. Putting the needs and concerns of your family first and the ability to provide for them takes precedent over anything else and you are making a good/right choice in doing that. I would be disappointed if you allowed any kind of hobby or fetish to draw your attention away from that duty. I only offered it in case you were interested and able. Since you are a friend I wanted you to have first crack at the stuff based on our recent communications about the CPU and memory overclocking experience you have had with it. If your main use of the PC for pleasure is gaming there is no point in returning what you have or buying a 270K Plus CPU and Z890 mobo. AM5 is going to live quite a few more generations and what you have right now is way more than adequate for a world-class gaming experience. Superior overclocking capabilities using the highest end parts (like those you already have) is not of any remarkable value in the context of gaming. It would only be worthwhile for eking a little bit more life from an antiquated setup or marginally adequate hardware that stuggles with gaming workloads.

These parts are currently in my daily driver build. I may regret selling, but I could use the cash to fund another project. I am not "parting out" at this point, (so don't bother asking,) but willing to sell it all as a bundle. I really like this build and I am not desperate to sell, but asking a fair price on these super expensive components. Here is what is included: X870E Apex motherboard (includes box and all original accessories) 9950X3D2 CPU - Delidded (will include IHS and retail box) Buyer's Choice of: Thermal Grizzly IHS, Thermal Grizzly Mycro Pro DD block, or IceMan DD block G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo 6000 C26 (2x16GB) Memory F5-8400J4052G24G 1.450V Supercool Computer Direct Touch Memory Cooler (will include stock RAM heatsinks) If you do not want a 9950X3D2 CPU for some reason, I have a decent 9950X that is delidded and also runs 8200 stable with tight timings and I will discount the price to reflect the cheaper CPU. (We can discuss that via PM.) Price: Asking $1800 including shipping and insurance to a US buyer in the lower 48. SOLD Item Location: San Tan Valley, AZ Shipping: As noted above. International Shipping: I will consider selling internationally but buyer will pay all costs associated with shipping outside the lower 48 states unless a shipping forwarding service is used (with a US address). Handling Time: I will take the system apart upon receipt of payment, so the following business day it will ship. Payment Options: PayPal Friends & Family or regular PayPal plus 5% to cover the fees (regular PayPal will let you use PayPal Credit or Pay-in-4 options) Condition: Used - excellent, near new Warranty: none from seller, mobo still has time left on ASUS warranty Feedback: eBay Profile; OC.net MarketPlace

Listed at oc.net: X870E Apex - 9950X3D2 - G.SKILL 6000 C26 - Plus Extras Bundle Listed here:

I sent him a PM asking for his PayPal. If he has not quietly sold it already I will buy it. Probably not a smart move, but most things we are passionate about produce behaviors that are not very intelligent. Too bad I already sent the delidder tool and heater back. This will drive me to sell the parts I had offered to @tps3443 to pay for it and fund the replacement motherboard, etc. I honestly have not had time to put either the delidded 270K or delidded 9950X3D2 through their paces to say definitive gains in performance were achieved, but the massive thermal improvements alone made it worth the effort in both cases. I've had too many competing interests consuming my time. I'm going to expect decent performance gains on the 270K. I'd not expect as much from AMD simply because things are so limited by design by AMD. But I would delid them both again in a heartbeat just for the thermal gains even if nothing changed on either one in terms of performance. Bare die is the only way to fly. I need you to build a custom loop and stop settling for an AIO, brother. Since he spent more than I am offering to sell him the parts for he could come out ahead moneywise and with a better and stronger system if he were to return what he bought and use the money to pay for it. But, maybe the return window already closed. No matter the situation, I respect the decision to say no for the reasons that he did. Priorities are always God, family, work, play... in that order... and the first two are hard to separate. If the last two get out of order everything falls apart.

You are being wise, and that's what all of us should be. Fantastic score and yes, crazy good silicon I think the 9950X3D2 works best for me on a BIOS released several months before the CPU was released. On one hand it kind of sucks that A$$zeus has burned most of their calories on maximizing performance using the G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo 6000 CL26 part numbers but, on the other hand, if you own either of those kits it is awesome and you're happy that they have. This is using the A$$zeus 8000 BIOS profile. Fully tested... very fast and very stable. These are not my best scores, but they are close and I haven't spent any time tuning the memory or the CPU. Just click and run in my crazy hot Arizona home office with a 78°F ambient temperature.

@tps3443 let me know he is not able to obtain these items, so if anyone here is interested in grabbing it for $1600 let me know. If not I may list in the marketplace at oc.net for probably $1800. 9950X3D (delidded) IceMan Bare Die Block (or Thermal Grizzly Performance IHS - buyer choice) X870E Apex G.SKILL Trident Neo 6000 C26 32GB (2x16) 1.450V F5-8400J4052G24G Supercool Computer Direct Touch Memory Cooler kit

If I had not already purchased the 9950X3D2 I might have considered it, but 3x retail is too much even if it is an amazing silicon sample. It will be obsolete too soon to make it a smart buy. Kind of nutty when you think about it. No response from him yet. Crickets. I'm surprised that I didn't hear from him. I offered all of what I mentioned for $1600. You could not even buy the mobo and memory for that, not to mention all of the extras it would be like getting for free. Maybe he did not see my text message. Yeah, there is not much difference in anything except memory benchmarks to be brutally honest about it. A little bit, for sure. Not a lot. And, a little bit doesn't mean very much when it comes to gaming, and it won't mean the difference between winning or losing. A little bit really matters when you've barely got enough to make things work.

I made @tps3443 a crazy low offer on the 9950X3D2, X870E Apex, IceMan Direct Die block, G.SKILL 6000 CL26 RAM and Supercool Direct Touch RAM cooler. That CPU is a WHOLE lot better than the one he has. So is the motherboard and RAM for that matter. If he doesn't want it, if anyone here is interested I will let it go for the same utterly insane low price as a complete package. Ready to use, turnkey. Speaking of 6000 CL26, this is the best that the garbage V-Color dual rank trash kit is capable of doing. I spent about 5 hours yesterday with it installed in the SFF build and it just doesn't have much to offer. As the low clock speeds it is capable of it performs actually quite well, it just can't hit any clock speeds that are worth a darn. It is not even bootable at 6400 in 1:1... debug code 00 on every attempt. Great example why one should never judge a book by its cover. With EXPO specs like this kit has one would think it is a fantastic memory kit, but it really sucks unless you run it close to stock. As sucky as it is, it will be good enough for the SFF build since it is not going to get put through the benching meat grinder. It will have a mundane existence that is limited to the mediocrity of web browsing and 3D gaming.

I am making a little more progress. This dual v-cache CPU doesn't like being rag-dolled like my other CPUs. It is more sensitive. That's not a good thing, but it is good I am starting to better understand what it can tolerate, and when I treat it kinder and gentler it performs better.

@Reciever I don't know if we're experiencing another DDoS attack or what, but the forum has performed miserably all day. Very laggy and sometimes unresponsive and inaccessible.