Mr. Fox

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.

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).