Mr. Fox

I wish memory was not so retarded expensive. It could easily be your IMC is weak, and it could also be you memory kit isn't playing nice with ASUS firmware. It's too expensive to experiment at this point. Even if it is your memory, getting the right SKU for best results will be ridiculously and unjustifiably expensive, and sometimes very difficult to find at any price. If you lived nearby I would drop my G.SKILL 6000 CL26 EXPO kit into your Hero so you could see how it does. ASUS has some kind of goofy love affair going with G.SKILL and all of their AMD firmware development seems to be focused on making two G.SKILL memory kits sing. It's really annoying. My MSI and Gigabyte AMD motherboards have all performed well with other brands of memory and were less finicky because they haven't invested all of their time and energy in making one or two part numbers work best. I have G.SKILL 8000 CL38 XMP memory that worked fantastic in the Z790 Apex/Apex Encore and it doesn't even like to boot correctly. It was very difficult to get it tuned to run stable at any speed (including 6000). I had to jack around with all kinds of ODT and voltage resistance settings that can normally be left on Auto. That is when I gave up and bought the magic G.SKILL 6000 CL26 sticks before RAM prices turned to crap.

There is a penalty for the CCDs just as there is for Intel with P/E cores and now their chiplet nonsense. Monolithic processor design is MUCH better. I'm not sure what gave you the impression that you are needing to give it "too much" VDD/VDDQ. Literally everyone that I know one is using VDD and VDDQ of 1.600V or higher if they are pushing high clocks. AMD will not function correctly with low VDDQ like 13th and 14th Gen Intel did. You'll need to have VDD and VDDQ either the same or VDDQ almost the same. You might get away with 50mV less for VDDQ but MSI and Gigabyte AMD motherboards set them equal by default. You have to literally manually make them different values. When you set VDD they automatically sync them. You also need to be using at least 1.475V for VDDIO (MC voltage). You can match all three without any harm. Many AMD overclockers are using 1.550V-1.600 for VDDIO as well. If I leave mine on "Auto" it goes to 1.475V and works fine. If I try to dial back the VDDIO I have instant issues. You should be able to run LOW VSOC, like 1.175V. This is the equivalent of Intel System Agent. I am running 1.600V VDD and 1.550V VDDQ at 8000 and 1.650V VDD and 1.600V VDDQ at 8200 and 1.175V SOC for both of my AMD platforms. Running less makes them unstable. Increasing VSOC does nothing. The hardest part of the adjustment to AMD for me was having to deliberately set aside my knowledge from Intel overclocking because it was really messing things up and making it impossible for me to get any overclock stable. What works for one seldom works for the other. AMD is also funny on CPU core voltage. If you are stingy with it you might not see BSOD and the normal tell-tale signs you do with Intel, it will seem stable but performance will drop like a rock. Cinebench scores will go down. If you go too far you will see the same behavior as Intel with crashing, but AMD is weird and I suspect a lot of people are living with lackluster Ryzen performance from trying to undervolt the CPU too much.

I have heard several people with 9950X3D2 complaining about memory overclocking being limited by a weak IMC. Whether that is relevant I can't say, just mentioning it as a potential common complaint. Your CPU might not be below average for a 9950X3D2.

Had to make a place for the Z890 Apex. X870E Apex is now installed in the O11D Mini V2 with the 4585PX and 5080. Getting it to fit was a HUGE pain in the butt. Never buy a distro block with the pump facing the inside of the chassis. Big mistake. I have the Alphacool reservior shoved tight against the roof of the case and the 5080 still touches it. With the reservoir against the floor the GPU will not fit. Always choose one with the pump that is in the closed in area behind the mobo tray. (That will also allow you to run the system laying on its back. You can't do that if the pump is pointed up toward the ceiling.) Now that it fits, it looks great. I love this case for mATX/ITX. For ATX it's not ideal unless you love having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to make things fit. (I don't enjoy that. I also hate puzzles.) The Z890 Apex is in the O11D XL EVO with the 5090. It was super easy because all of the connects and mobo layout on the Z890 Apex is the same as the X870E Apex. I only had to modify the two lines going to the CPU block because the orientation of the ports on the block was different than the Thermal Grizzy Mycro direct die block. Speaking of waterblock, I was going to use one of my Optimus Foundation blocks. The silver looks perfect with the white and silver on the mobo. I could not use it. CPU would overheat SEVERELY for some reason (109°C doing CPU-Z stress test). I disassembled it and found it spotless on the inside. Not sure why. Had to run to Microcenter this moring and grab an Alphacool Core 1 block. Now it works amazing. Almost don't need to delid now, but still will. Because I can, and it will be much better. Not because it is unavoidable due to stupid temps. It runs as cool as the bare die Ryzen 9 processors. The B850MPOWER is now on the open bench with the 9950X and 3070.

https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/cinebench_-_r23_multi_core_with_benchmate/submissions/6041469

BINGO! 25H2 Cancer Edition... 100%. Installed LTSC IoT 24H2 and viola... all is well with the score. Fully modded and debloated. But, I still do not know why my effective clocks are lower than the core ratio set. Looking at similar submissions on HWBOT the core ratio and effective clocks were the same on other submissions. But, no throttling or temperature issues. Now I can delete the cancer Macrium image. Side note @electrosoft - no driver issues with 24H2. Smooth sailing. Not too shabby for a chintzy Lian Li 360MM AIO and soldered IHS... Nearly identical Cinebench R23 performance as bare die 9950X (only cooler than a delidded 9950X) with only 22 threads (16 baby girl Atom cores) versus 32 threads on the Ryzen 9. Now I need to order a Thermal Grizzly delid tool and heater and bare die block and get it on a custom loop and chiller to do things right. https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/cinebench_-_r23_multi_core_with_benchmate/submissions/6041409

ASUS did a much better job of PCIe lane allocation on the Z890 Apex than they did with the X870E Apex. It has two usable PCIe 4X slots (instead of just one) and neither one affects the GPU in terms of dropping it down to 8X instead of it running at 16X as it should. Only the bottom 16X slot steals GPU bandwidth. The two Klevv drives are running Gen3 because they are installed in a Gen3 PCIe NVMe card. It sucks that the only slot that does not affect the GPU on the X870E Apex is the one situated above the GPU. I have room for 4 more NVMe but have run out of 1TB and 2TB spares to install in it. Right now it is on a test bench with a spare 3070. Have to decide which chassis to move it to.

I am very happy that you are on the mend. We are not doctors, but I do not have a great deal of confidence in medical science and I think sometimes we are better off figuring things out on our own rather than taking a doctor's advice. If we did everything our doctor's wanted, some of us would be dead. And, because some of us have followed the direction of medical professionals we are worse off (some maybe even dead). When it involves pharmaceuticals and surgery, it is driven my the same motivating factors as AI. The wealth generation matters far more than the lives of people it is supposedly going to benefit. AI does suck, but it can be useful. It sucks because of what it has done to the world, but I do not believe it will end well. It has hurt more than PC hardware enthusiasts, and it is because of rampant greed of the companies developing it. I hope that it ends up ruining all of them with catastrophic and unrecoverable financial losses that puts most of them out of business. I use it for self-help/medical questions as you did, and I use it at work frequently. A fair amount of my new job involves using it and identifying new uses for it. It is dangerous for all of us in terms of personal security. AI should not know who we are. Because it does it will be used by bad actors to do bad things that would never be possible without the assistance of AI. Fake everything is coming our way. I suspect it will redefine what "fake news" means and take it to the next level. We will see and hear video and audio clips of thing that were never said and never happened. People will go to jail for doing things they never did, marriages will be destroyed because of things that never happened, etc. I asked who is Mr. Fox? and it knows all of us. It knows who we hang out with... past and present... from before AI was invented.

I flashed the latest BIOS without flashing the newer ME (using the flash recovery and renamed file) and it made little difference. I notice my "max effective clocks" are less even though I see no evidence of throttling. That makes me wonder if there is a BIOS setting I am missing somewhere. The max core frequency and max effective clock should be the same unless something is set wrong. Here is what Google Gemini AI told me. Nice try, robo-tech. Already did all that.

*** Here is a praise post to offset the many (often justifiable) complaints we see posted in social media. *** I have been a NewEgg customer for about 25 years. In spite of some of the horror stories, I have never once, that I can recall, had a bad experience with them in spite of hundreds of purchases. My Z890 Apex was $549.99 with a $269.99 Crucial E100 2TB NVMe included as a "free gift" not a combo sale. It shows that way on the invoice. They are priced separately and the $269.99 deducted as a "discount" on the invoice. I received my order on Tuesday of this week. The Z890 Apex is now available for $399.99. The customer service AI bot told me it was not eligible for price match because it was a combo. I spoke to a rep after the bot said no. The rep saw the issue and issued me a $150 refund in the form of a NewEgg gift card. No begging or arguing. He said it was not a combo, it was a free gift (agreed with me) and is eligible for the price match because it was within the 7-day time window.

No rush. It is working fine otherwise. I tested 9931 and it is the same as 9901. I'm surprised if they were not able to downgrade using the flash recovery method. That always worked before (and does on AMD) even when ASUS says you cannot go back. I may test that on one BIOS position to find out if it is really true or not. I may just take a Macrium image of my current OS and install an older version of Windoze with no debloating mods to rule that out as a possible cause.

Yes, everything is maxed out on power and current limits. This is 57x all P and 50x all E. Same score. 1.385-1.400V and all return the same score, give or take about 50 points. Weird. And, only 76 processes running in Windoze 11. Temps are fine. No thermal throttling. What BIOS version and ME are you using @Talon?

That did not see to have any effect. Same score (roughly) and no real change I can see. I wonder why the score is low? Maybe need to downgrade to W10 or W11 24H2? At those clocks it would be 47-48K with my Ryzen CPU as well.

Thank you. I will try that. I have them set on Auto. Set it for P and E at 1.400V input?

So, I am not sure how this stacks up in the grand scheme of things, but my gut feeling is this is actually quite respectable and above average for a non-delidded 20K Plus with nothing but a mickey mouse (AIO) cooling solution.

Probably the Chinese rootkits and key loggers bundled with the A$$zeus drivers.

Right now I'm kind of fumbling around trying to figure out what works best. Some voltage values seem lower than expected others seem much higher than I would have thought. I don't know what to do with the NPU stuff at this point. But I'm sure I'll figure it out. The hardest part of setting it up and finding drivers that actually worked. There were a lot of things that were code 43 in the Device Manager using the drivers provided by Asus and I ended up getting a lot of what I needed from Intel and the Microsoft Catalog as .cab files based on hardware ID. That was one of the more cumbersome Windows set up experiences that I've had for a while.

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.