Mr. Fox

Right now it is on the test bench with a Lian Li 360 AIO. I'll probably order TG delid tool and heater and a direct die block for it in the next week or so.

Now I am a dual-Apex predator... purple now. Dang,it feels good to have some blue back. I've got to figure out some of the tuning. A lot to re-learn, just like switch to AMD had a lot to learn. Very different than Raptor Lake and pre-Raptor. I'm pretty sure right now I am butchering things.

You are in our thoughts and prayers, brother. Are you getting enough sleep? I very rarely ever get the amount of sleep my body and brain need me to, but when I do it always lowers my blood pressure. I'm wondering if yours is lower in the morning because you were sleeping and not stressed out as much as you are when you are awake.

Brother @Papusan how are you getting along? I hope things are looking better and you are feeling better.

I will have to do more testing once I decide where the Z890 Apex is going to land and if decide that I am going to disturb the AMD builds. Depending on how the Intel testing goes, I anticipate the X870E taking the 4585PX from the B850MPOWER and going into the O11 Mini with the 5080, the Z890 Apex going into the O11 XL with the 5090 and the B850MPOWER taking the 9950X and going onto the test bench with my spare AIO and air-cooled memory. If the move back to Intel doesn't impress me the Z890 Apex will remain on the test bench, but that seems unlikely. I anticipate the change will be welcomed since I have plateaued on my current hardware and my interest is beginning to wane. If I like it, I will end up having to purchase a delid tool and heater and a Mycro block from TG because it is extremely unlikely that I will find contentment with anything less than bare die.

If you can run 6600 C28 in 1:1 mode that is already more than what most people can accomplish with the CPU, mobo and RAM kit they have. Many can't even run 6400 1:1 with the crummy silicon they were blessed with. Your CPU would have a very good IMC to do that, so I am not sure why you are having issues with 8000, 8200 or 8400 unless you are not using enough VDD/VDDQ/VDDIO. If you are able to run 6600 C28 1:1 then I doubt there is anything wrong with your motherboard. I'm glad you did not buy it. I think it would be fine for an average Joe type of gamerboy that just sets XMP/EXPO and moves on without bothering to actually tune anything for maximum performance. The plastic covers that look like a heatsink are a joke though. Gupsterg (oc.net member) discovered a V-COLOR kit he had purchased had plastic covers as well. It kind of pisses me off that they would even sell garbage like that. What a ripoff. I think the marketing info and specs not disclosing the dual rank design and plastic covers qualifies as a scam and I think they are very conveniently not disclosing what they know would make it a hard to sell product. I debated whether or not to just go ahead and install it anyway in my son-in-law's build with the other upgrade parts. The performance would have been fine for him, but I think the high temps could have been an issue with the plastic covers. I decided he was better off with the generic green 2x8GB Hynix A-die with nice aftermarket heatsinks for stability and reliability. Things get kind of toasty in his SFF build with an air-cooled GPU and air-cooled space-heater mounted on top of his CPU, both working together to create a toastly little hot box. He doesn't need 32GB of RAM. 16GB will handle anything he would throw at it just fine.

8000 2:1 with CL34 and other tight timings is slightly better than 6400 C30 and other tight timings. Bandwidth is higher and latency a bit lower. They are close enough to probably make no meaningful difference in experience, but based on my testing the idea that slower is better on AMD is a myth and running 6400 1:1 is pointless if your system is capable of running 8000 or higher with tight timings. Testing done by Blackbird PC Tech also confirms what I found: 8000 is slightly better (smoother and more consistent FPS) than 6400 for gaming, even with an X3D CPU, but not by a lot.

Did you try BIOS 9961 yet to see if that helps? Here are my older and tighter timings. I just reapplied them and ran a couple of benchmarks. They need to be loosened a bit to keep stability on AGESA 1.3.0.1 or newer. tRCDRD, tRP and tRC are too tight with newer AGESA, at least for my CPU. But, the read/write/copy and latency are better with the older BIOS even with the same timings and using "Normal" Bank Refresh. With "Mixed" Bank Refresh, performance degrades measurably. (Mixed is only a workaround for a security concern and I refuse to use it due to the performance hit.) If you are able to run 6600 C32 1:1 that is better than what most people can accomplish with their CPU, mobo and memory kits.

I did not notice any difference, but I did not do much testing other than Karhu and AIDA64. They seemed about the same as single rank to me with the minimal testing. They perform as expected up to 6400. But, otherwise this kit is pure junk. The chips on both sides doubles their heat production and I am pretty sure the covers on them are plastic, not metal. They were cheap by current overpriced standards, and I can see why. I am going to keep them only to use in case of emergency (DIMM failure). Below is a photo of the label. Avoid these.

Thanks to the kindness of a wonderful friend, I have a 270K Plus now. Thanks, brother. Z890 Apex is a day late. Should be here tomorrow.

That's good. If you do not starve the voltage you should be good to at least 8000 or 8200 CL34 or CL36 with the Dark Hero. My V-Color 32GB crap kit is Hynix A-die but they are dual rank with 16 1GB ICs (8 1GB chips on each side of the PCB) and they suck. Being Hynix A-die doesn't win them any points because of them being dual rank. I bought two 8GB Hynix A-die generic green modules for an upgrade to my son-in-law's PC that had the X79 Rampage IV Gene and DDR3 and they overclock much better than the dual rank V-Color kit. The easily handle 8000 C34 in his new Gigabyte B650 AORUS Elite AX with a 9600X CPU. These dual rank 6000 CL26 turd sticks actually work fine in 1:1 mode up to 6400 but anything past that they suck real bad (don't even want to boot).

The Ryzen fanbois gamers are probably not going to like this. Starting from the meat of the video.

Yes, it should be able to do at least 8000 C36 and likely C34. My X870E-E Strix was able to and my MSI B850MPOWER is able to do 8000 C34 with a 48GB kit. It will depend on the IMC and memory modules as well.

Still respectable performance for such an old (and very affordable) GPU. And, DDR3 quad channel is on the heels of a modestly tuned DDR5 system.

What BIOS are you on? If you are on the latest it could also be causing you issues. A number of people (me included) saw reduced stability and performance. This is the best BIOS for me, and it is available for the Dark Hero as well. If you are on a newer BIOS you will need to flash using the renamed file and do the BIOS recovery with the button on the back of the I/O or the motherboard firmware will tell you it is too old. ROG CROSSHAIR X870E DARK HERO TEST BIOS 9961 based on 0701 Do not use older versions of cmo files, they may cause problems with agesa 1300a bios 1. Update AGESA version to 1.3.0.0a 2. Apply new odt rules for 16x2 6000cl26 1.4v and 1.45v kit Download

The first 9950X that I owned maxed out at 2175 FCLK and the 9950X3D that I returned for a refund (a horrible silicon sample) had very high voltage needs, a weak IMC and it would not boot with FCLK at 2175.

Just for Giggles, check the SPD tab in CPU-Z and confirm it shows "1" for Ranks. I have a V-COLOR 6000 C26 32GB kit that is dual rank and it will not boot at 8000. (You can also see memory chips on both sides of the PCB.) Dual Rank DDR5 sucks at overclocking. I never would have wasted money on this crappy V-COLOR memory kit if I had known it was dual rank. The voltages you are testing with are too low for 8000 and won't work. Also, you're going to need about 1.600V for VDD and at least 1.550V for VDDQ. Set them both at 1.600V to start and if that works you can try lowering VDDQ. (MSI and Gigabyte BIOS makes them the same value by default and you have to manually change them to different values, so you could leave them both at 1.600 with no problem.) Leave VDDIO on Auto. 1.400V is way too low for 8000. Auto should take it to roughly 1.475V.

If you are using the latest BIOS you might want to test something older. I think the version numberings are the same on the Apex and Hero. 9961 is one of the best for memory and CPU overclocking. Some of the latest with newest AGESA are crappy and hinder CPU performance. (Edit: Not sure if older BIOS is compatible with 9950X3D2.) 6000 and 6400 being the "sweet spot" for AMD is a hold-over myth from the days that Ryzen motherboards couldn't handle 8000. (They made up that excuse rather than admit that memory overclocking sucked.) For the best gaming experience you should be targeting 8000 with tight timings and latency below 60ns. It doesn't matter a ton with X3D but the higher bandwidth does help with the "AM-Dip" that Jufus the Dufus talks about. Turn off GDM and set Bank Refresh mode to "Normal" (not mixed). Feel free to give these Dynamic OC Switcher and 8200 memory tuned settings a try and see if they will work for your CPU. Compare my V/F curve values (not necessarily the SP rating) to your CPU to see if the voltage needs are close to the same. ZenTimings shows all of the values that matter. Leave the ODTs on Auto. ASUS does a good job of setting correct resistance based on the detected memory modules. Should not need to mess with ODTs unless they are modules ASUS hasn't optimized for in their BIOS tweaks.

You should be getting more than 44K in CBR23 at those clock speeds. Like 46.5 or 47K. This is with dynamic oc switching (MSI version of it) with my 4585PX. Here is with the Apex with DOS enabled.

I am glad you are enjoying it. If you are using PBO it won't get too hot because the voltage stays low and it clocks down to around 5.1 GHz all core in Cinebench and other all-core stress tests. If you use Dynamic OC Switcher or set a manual OC and manual voltage (necessary for fixed core clocks) it will run much hotter. If you set 55x on your preferred CCD and 54x on the lesser CCD with enough voltage to hold those clocks in Cinebench, your temps will go way up and you will have about a 48K or 49K score in Cinebench R23. PBO works great for gaming and light workloads. SP118 is about average (probably the most common SP rating) and a totally decent silicon sample that is worth keeping if it will run 2200 FCLK stable. As I mentioned before, the SP rating changes based on the CPU temperature at the time the BIOS is flashed. If you were running chilled water and flashed the BIOS and it hold SP118 that is good. If you got the CPU toasty (like a Cinebench 10 minute stress test) and immediately flashed the BIOS it might show 119 or even 120. The per core voltage shown on the same screen as the individual core SP ratings is the more reliable measurement on AMD because of the fluctuating SP ratings that vary based on temperature at the time of flashing.

Yeah that was kind of miserable day. I was in DC and Richmond all week. I had direct flights from Phoenix into Dulles and back. I had to return the rental car at noon to avoid adding an extra day. I already had to wait until 5:00 PM (expected) for my flight home, but the added 3-hour delay due to a mechanical issue made it that much worse. Had they not been direct non-stop 5 hour flights I might have ended up spending the night at the airport and being put on a standby due to missed connections. So, it could have turned out a lot worse than it did. Yes it'll be something new and fun to play with while we wait and see what happens with Nova and Zen 6. I expect the overall performance to be remarkably similar to my AMD builds. From all I have seen as an observer they trades blows and come out close to the same in most benchmarks, one randomly beating the other depending on the benchmark or game being run.

Finally landed in Phoenix so I should be home in about an hour. LONG day. I arrived at Dulles at 12 noon EST.