Mr. Fox

That is strange. My WireView Pro 2 is showing my ASUS Prime 5080 idling at 15W. I wonder what it would do if you changed a different vBIOS on the Zotac? It might be the firmware. Unfortunately, a lot of Astral GPU owners that are focused on performance and overall results (including Astral 5090) are not impressed with their purchase. For the price they are charging for Astral 5090 it should be the equivalent of a Galax HOF, but it's far from it. It should have binned core and memory, but it doesn't. It is just fancy and expensive. Nothing more. Some have changed to something better that costs less and sold or returned their overprices Astral GPU. The black Astral 5090 also has goofy limitations on vBIOS cross flashing. The white Astral 5090 was made a little different and doesn't have the same issue. I think A$$zeus often overpromises, overcharges and under-delivers. They get away with it because the ROG fanboys often value form over function.

It is certainly a matter of personal taste, maybe to some degree generational. I do not care for how it looks for the exact reason people that like it do like it. The copper, blue and white colors are why I do not care for it. I would prefer that everything would be black and not have any of the hokey LCD stuff on it. Some people may like it just for the element of novelty in a partially retro aesthetic, but I think modern motherboards are more aesthetically pleasing in general, unless you go with a naked PCB eyesore that has all of the components exposed. Those are universally ugly regardless of when they were made. When you go back to pre-X299 and Z390 days they were not particularly attractive components IMHO and they get progressively uglier as you go further back in years. Why are you selling it as like-new used instead of just returning it for a refund? Did you buy it from a place that has a customer-hostile return policy? I'm sorry you had to find out for yourself why @electrosoft and I have recommended against it buying the more expensive models. There is little or no reason for anyone to buy a more expensive 5080 or 5090 in terms of performance. There are some differences in quality, but they are minor compared to the inflated price of the models with modest differences that yield nothing in terms of performance. If you are going to put a waterblock on one, there is even less of a logical reason to pay for a more expensive model. Ignoring the substantial leap in performance for 5090 over 4090, NVIDIA 50-series GPUs in holistic terms are a pretty horribly overpriced alternative to 40-series in some ways. This is especially true of the SKUs below flagship XX90 models. A 3070 actually performs better than a 5060. The 5060 offers nothing outside of newer software features that NVIDIA made artificially incompatible with past generation hardware. That's inexcusable. But, post-COVID NVIDIA has become a very dishonest, despicable anti-customer company. Feature RTX 3070 (2020) RTX 5060 (2025) Architecture Ampere (8nm) Blackwell (5nm/4nm) CUDA Cores 5,888 3,840 Memory 8GB GDDR6 (256-bit) 8GB GDDR7 (128-bit) TDP 220W 145W DLSS Support DLSS 3.5 DLSS 4 (Multi-Frame Gen)

Budget aside, Roman is probably too smart to waste any more than $200K on advertising. I know I am not alone in saying that I cannot identify many purchases based upon advertising. There are exceptions and fringe examples, but I generally view people that purchase items based on advertising as being "not very smart" people, and smart business owners know that. The best advertisements are (a) results and (b) word-of-mouth. Marketing is for muppets.

I wonder how much Roman paid in advertising costs to have the company name appear in the benchmark? Probably more of a business / marketing move than a sponsorship.

The only reason I am not selling my 5090 for $1500 more than I paid for it ($2000 more than it is worth) is because I'd not be able to replace it. The only option would be a downgrade because I would never pay the current market rate (new or used) for a 5090 at this point. They were not even worth what we paid for them before prices basically doubled.

We live in a dangerous world and scammers are becoming very common. Did you file a police report? That SOB (and all of the others like him) needs to go to jail and get brutally beaten by other inmates while awaiting for his arraignment. I'd also report the Marketplace post as a scam.

Turdbook garbage from the Green Goblin, in partnership with the identity theft trashmaster Nazis at Micro$lop.

Maybe the difficulty (or inability) and financial prohibition to insure all of the AI crap data centers will help put things back on a good path. I had not thought of it before I saw this article, but the AI clown posse is going to have to insure all of this stuff. This will limit where they can build and whether or not they can afford to buy insurance to cover it. Building a data center in an area prone to tornados, hurricanes, flooding or other natural disasters might make them uninsurable. Any insurance carrier with just a smidgen of common sense would be insane to underwite that kind of risk. I think it would be a real blessing and a hilarious outcome for the prohibitive cost and availability of insurance coverage to cause progress to come to a screeching halt for these clamoring morons. Imagine the tension explaining to the shareholders and board of directors that plans are being scrapped or scaled back because they cannot find a company willing to insure it or the cost is so astronomical that it decimates all earning projections. Way too funny... poetic justice. If the insurance carriers are smart, they will be scalping the AI companies on the cost of insurance and give them a nasty, bitter taste of what they have done to us on PC part prices. "So, you want to insure your $50B data center against equipment losses and operational losses caused by an insurable risk? OK, no problem. That will be $25B annually, but only as long as you have no loss experience." "Wait. What? You've started building this data center where? Are you stupid? Um, yeah, no thanks. Oh, sure, we get it... it's cheaper for you to build there due to lower property costs, lower wage market and tax advantages, but we're not interested in providing insurance for it at such a disaster-prone location. Have a nice day, and good luck." Data centers straining U.S. insurance capacity | Property Casualty 360 "For some of the largest projects, it’s impossible to insure at full value."

Maybe the difficulty (or inability) and financial prohibition to insure all of the AI crap data centers will help put things back on a good path. I had not thought of it before I saw this article, but the AI clown posse is going to have to insure all of this stuff. This will limit where they can build and whether or not they can afford to buy insurance to cover it. Building a data center in an area prone to tornados, hurricanes, flooding or other natural disasters might make them uninsurable. Any insurance carrier with just a smidgen of common sense would be insane to underwite that kind of risk. I think it would be a real blessing and a hilarious outcome for the prohibitive cost and availability of insurance coverage to cause progress to come to a screeching halt for these clamoring morons. Imagine the tension explaining to the shareholders and board of directors that plans are being scrapped or scaled back because they cannot find a company willing to insure it or the cost is so astronomical that it decimates all earning projections. Way too funny... poetic justice. If the insurance carriers are smart, they will be scalping the AI companies on the cost of insurance and give them a nasty, bitter taste of what they have done to us on PC part prices. "So, you want to insure your $50B data center against equipment losses and operational losses caused by an insurable risk? OK, no problem. That will be $25B annually, but only as long as you have no loss experience." "Wait. What? You've started building this data center where? Are you stupid? Um, yeah, no thanks. Oh, sure, we get it... it's cheaper for you to build there due to lower property costs, lower wage market and tax advantages, but we're not interested in providing insurance for it at such a disaster-prone location. Have a nice day, and good luck." Data centers straining U.S. insurance capacity | Property Casualty 360 "For some of the largest projects, it’s impossible to insure at full value." Why Liability and Insurance Won’t Save AI: Lessons From Cyber Insurance | LawFare "...the insurance industry has at various points asked the government to provide a backstop or some sort of federal reinsurance program for catastrophic cyber risk, to ensure that in the event of such an incident they would not go bankrupt. But this, too, has been complicated to figure out as it’s not immediately clear what types of cyber risks the government views as catastrophic or what it might ask of the insurance industry in exchange for such support. In the absence of clear government support, many cyber insurers have taken to excluding certain types of catastrophic risks (such as state-sponsored cyberattacks and attacks on critical infrastructure) from their coverage and strictly limiting how much cyber coverage they sell."

If the rumors are true, we will get a "remastered" 3060, LOL. Maybe instead of 6090 we will get a 4060 in 2027 for those that that want an updated downgrade. If the 3060 rumor is true it will be interesting to see how hard they screw everyone on the cost of a "remastered" 3060. Interesting concept that obsolete mid-range products might become the de facto standard, but likely at a much high cost of acquisition. So, we should probably be expecting around $750 for this, unless you get it on eBay, in which case it will be $1200. If it sounds like I am full of pi$$ and vinegar that is because that is exactly what we are being served, along with a side of feces.

I am sorry that happened, brother. Did they let you go for financial reasons? The company I worked at for 6.5 years let me and about 15 other people go due to a slump in business volume that lasted more than 6 months. It was unavoidable for the company, but still terrible for those it affected. It took me about 90 days, about 200 applications and many interviews to find another job. The only time in my 40+ year work history that I changed jobs where it wasn't a self-betterment decision and on my terms. God provided for us, but it was still a pretty demoralizing experience. I'd love to have an Alphacool block on my 5080. As much as I hate air cooling, I just can't get past the idea of paying $300 for a mass-production GPU block. Even the cheap ones (Barrow and Bykski) are similarly overpriced and not worth the asking price.

New BIOS from ASUS added new memory overclock settings (tCCD_L, tCCD_WR and tCCD_WR2) that basically seems do nothing whatsoever. BIOS 2304 seems OK for me. Changed "Auto" to the recommended 21-84-42 but found no change in performance noted using my daily driver settings. Haven't tested my max OC with the chiller, but I don't expect any change. I guess it must be better just because you can adjust new settings that do nothing. Kind of like a fidget toy for computer geeks.

They found it easier to make money screwing a quarter as many people four times worse per sale. As long as it looks fancy, or just plain goofy, and has RGB an idiot is going to buy it (likely using high interest credit) no matter how hard they are getting screwed. Form over function. Ice cream for all the kiddies.

Well, I am glad that it turned out OK on the Jeep from a legal perspective. The Astral is a joke by most measurements. They are just overpriced cards with a fancy cooler. They do not have binned core or memory and their stock firmware has nothing going for it. I'm glad you didn't waste money on an Astral. I am 99% certain you would have gained nothing for the extra cost.

Garbage. Also a creative scammy way to help their cartel brothers financially because the sheeple will also need a new PSU or a special new power cable for a new motherboard. The wickedness of the PC hardware bastards has no limits. Totally unnecessary changes that nobody asked for and nobody needs and no consumer benefits from that fabricates an unmerited necessity of an additional purchases.

How are things going Brother @Papusan? This song is for you, bro. Listen to and read the words.

That absolutely sucks. Unforgivable. The only end users they are treating right is RTX 6000 owners. Bastards. I wonder how long it will continue to be available from the Micro$lop Store Whores? This also sucks...

At this point it certainly seems that the quest is to identify the least undesirable option because none of them are good. The best plan might actually be to chose nothing and reject all of the options. What I would love to see is an aggressive wiper malware that specifically targets and destroys all AI source code in all platforms across the globe, and that it would spread like wildfire, uncontrollable and utterly destroy all of it and financially obliterate the companies backing it. Google Gemini, Chat GPT, Grok, Claude, LLaMA, CoreWeave, Baidu, Qwen, Tencent, ByteDance, AWS, Accenture... aIl of it FUBAR'd and unrecoverable, along with the money wasted on it... totally destroyed, permanently corrupted, unusable and nothing salvageable, and no resources available to rebuild with.