Mr. Fox

I have all of my desktops and network printer using wired LAN. I really do not care for using WiFi for computing and only use it when I have no other option. Otherwise, I only use WiFi for my cell phone and TV streaming. I seldom use my laptop.

I am not sure. I'm really not digging the idea of purchasing less than 32 thread CPUs with no hyperthreading, so I might not even participate in next gen. I'm going to take my usual wait and see approach. From that list I would choose Unify-X or Tachyon. I don't like most of the BIOSes. I liked EVGA BIOS best, ASUS next. MSI and Gigabyte BIOS are very "meh" and I cannot remember much detail about the BIOS in the one ASRock motherboard I owned. It was a Taichi Chai Tea and it was pretty crappy. I didn't keep it long at all because it sucked.

There should be NO SUCH THING as a 4-DIMM DDR5 enthusiast motherboard. That is an oxymoron. All brands should stop manufacturing them. They can make them for the content creators that think they need them, but it's trash for overclocking and gaming enthusiasts.

They've never been consistently good. Very hit or miss. It's no secret that I haven't liked the ASUS brand for a long time and they haven't changed my mind so far. It's not their products that suck as much as their process and approach to things, and poor QC. I am not planning any upgrades anytime soon, but when that day comes, if possible, my next purchase will be a different brand unless the different brand doesn't offer anything desirable. So, my next motherboard will most likely be from Gigabyte, ASRock or MSI. I can't say that I like any of them to be honest. They all have have issues to some degree. EVGA was the only brand that I can say that I actually liked and we see how that turned out. Being the best takes a back seat to popularity, and being popular doesn't require being good or great. Until 2-DIMM motherboards become the norm, the acceptable options that can be counted will be few and far between.

Man, that looks awesome. I wish it was black though. I am really not a fan of white computer parts, even though I own one. Otherwise, it looks like it might be THE Z890 motherboard to buy for anyone that plans to buy. It looks like something worthy of being purchased. So, I am thinking ASUS did nothing to the Encore. The paperwork says they reflashed the BIOS to fix the no display problem. I had already done that. And, whatever they flashed screwed things up. SP ratings were all jacked up and VF curve/VID tables were goofed up real bad (mostly zeros). I ended up flashing both BIOS chips again myself. They wasted a lot of my time and I wasted $60 on the cost to send it to them. At least I got it back undamaged and it's working, but not connected to the 4K display. I think the 4K 144Hz ASUS monitor might be the issue I was having. I use it every day, all day, but it doesn't play nice with my computers during POST. Once POST passes everything is normal. It's like the BIOS freaks out connected to it for some reason. MUCH WORSE on the Encore than the white Apex. Never happens with my dual 1440P Predator screens or on HDMI.

The Antec C8 is a nice case. I like that it is made of heavy steel instead of aluminum. It's a tad smaller than I would have liked, but otherwise no complaint. The size is between the O11 EVO and O11 EVO XL. The build quality is very good. Two of my fans are getting worn out and need to be replaced (behind the distribution manifold). On those two the LED also looks green instead of white. Just got it back together and getting the air worked out of the loop. Replacements should be here tomorrow. I went ahead and replaced the crappy stock PCH thermal pad and swapped out the G.SKILL for that second kit of TG Xtreem 8200 that I bought from @chibi on overclock.net.

I have been using it for years. Bitsum is one of those rare companies with ethics. They do not "rent" their software or expect their customers to repeatedly buy the same product over and over. Buy once, use it forever, with free updates for life. As it should be. I also use ParkControl (from the same company) and consider it essential because Windoze (especially Winduhz XI) has a very nasty fetish for parking cores to save power and prioritizing low power consumption over performance. The OS is a real piece of crap that is built to treat everything like a turdbook, tablet or smartphone.

A lot of it is conditioning and habitual in nature. I find I love Linux more as I care less about the things I enjoy doing on Winduhz. If I use Linux as a replacement, rather than a temporary substitute for Windoze, I like it more. If I try to use Linux for some things it wasn't intended for it can sometimes be frustrating. Gaming is surprisingly good, even on games that are supposedly not compatible with Linux. That means I either need to dual boot and use Windoes for the activities I haven't given up, or find something better to do with my time. But, no matter what Linux is better and Micro$lop sucks. I think everything they do now sucks, not just the OS. They're a sucky company, just like Apple. Not as bad, but still sucky. Only icky words come to mind when I think about them, so I try to avoid thinking about them.

I don't have anything, Brother @Vasudev. I am just using the junk provided by my ISP because it doesn't cost me anything and I have my wired devices connected to a TP-Link switch that has no GUI because... well... it's just a switch.

So, when the motherboard is returned I am going to rebuild in an Antec C8 case. I absolutely love the Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL EVO case and the Antec C8 is extremely close to the same design and size. It is like one inch shorter and the front I/O in a different position, but the basic design and size is like a knock-off in many respects. The C8 doesn't have as many features for configuration options, but the standard build configuration is remarkably similar. I almost ordered another Lian Li case, but the C8 was like $108 versus $235 for another black O11 XL EVO. The be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 is an amazing case by every measurement, but it takes up more space and I prefer the dual chamber design over the PSU basement design. Wider versus taller and all the crap hidden in back is just a better approach. I am sure I can sell the Dark Base Pro 901 locally for enough to cover the cost of the C8. Grabbing the O11 Dynamic XL EVO to flip it over and lay it on its back to work on it is easy, but the Dark Base Pro is so tall and heavy you need a lot of extra space to do that. It is like making a U-turn in a long wheelbase crew cab pickup versus a regular cab short bed. Part of me wants to go back to the Praxis Wetbench. I love the open bench the most, but it's such a dust magnet in comparison that I am always reluctant when I start remembering how hard it was to keep clean looking. Horizonal motherboard orientation is just way better than vertical. The dust here in the desert is actually very fine sand, so it is extremely abrasive and gritty and keeping as much of that off the motherboard and GPU as possible is preferred. It scratches finishes and gets into every crack and crevice. (You do not want a dark colored vehicle here for that reason. It ends up looking very haggard and dull due to fine sand scratches when it is still relatively new.) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CP3MZXVH?th=1 To save space I use two carts like this now. The white Apex with the chiller is on this cart. The other has the tower on the bottom and the radiator and pumps on top. However, the Dark Base Pro is so tall it almost touches the adjustable shelf on top where the radiator is sitting. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09SCYSFP9?th=1

Yeah, that's really sad. The focus has been gravitating toward single core performance for a while now and I truly don't care about that. It is just so dumbed down and pathetic. Oh wait... that's actually the goal now. When I see talk about it I am like yeah, whatever... you guys are stupid and that's not my problem. Show me software and games that I use every day all day that run well (if at all) and only use just one core and then maybe I will pay attention for more than 30 seconds. But, the sheeple love it I guess. Sucks to be them. Not sure what the delay is with ASUS. The shipping label for returning my motherboard was created after the repair was finished on 9/13 and they gave me the tracking number, but FedEx still doesn't have possession of it and there is no ETA, just "label created" for the status.

Funny how many overclocking enthusiasts started out as gamers and then became so engaged in overclocking that they didn't really care that much about gaming anymore. Vince is example of that along with me and probably a ton of other people. From the sounds of it, he prefers the same game genre that I do as well.

Here is a fun video...

As I have often stated about this and most of previous "crises" that make the technology news... most of the crises are overblown and exaggerated problems that the tech media rely on to make it seem like the tech media is important and serves a useful purpose. Most of the time they are shills of propaganda. Same applies to the mainstream media. Very limited value to the world in the grand scheme of things. In some ways their mere existence is more harmful than helpful because sheeple are eager to believe their lies and their presentation of "facts" and information is jaded by an agenda and rarely ever accurate on face value. Did Intel have some issues? Yes. Did they release a lot of lousy silicon samples? Yes. Have motherboard manufacturers made a small problem a lot worse by pushing crappy silicon samples too hard? Yes. Not a crisis and by no stretch of the imagination a catastrophe. It doesn't affect people that know how to tune their system to keep their CPU from committing hara kiri. The fact that the fabricated crisis hasn't had a huge effect on Intel CPU sales demonstrates that the people buying CPUs are not as stupid as the tech media spinsters had hoped they would be.

So another bald-faced lie that wasn't fact-checked by the Vice Liar in Chief. What a witch.

I should have the Encore back in a couple of business days. Now I am wondering if there was nothing wrong with it. It will be interesting to see what is on the paperwork. My white Apex started doing the same thing. On the Encore I swapped out RAM, CPU and tried 2080 Ti and 3090 Ti and it stayed hung at the yellow debug light with Q-code 99. Yesterday the Apex did the same thing and I could not get it to POST. I unplugged my ASUS 4K monitor (XG27UQR) and plugged in a portable 1080p HDMI screen and it booted normally. Very weird. The 4K monitor still works normally, but it seems to randomly prevent the PC from completing POST. After I got it to boot normally with the 1080p HDMI display, it boots normally connected to the 4K display. After I discovered that I found other posts in a variety of places with people having no boot and black screens when connected to a 4K display, and it seemed to be more prevalent if it was multi-monitor (which all of my systems are). And, so much for pointing the finger as Gigabutt. ASUS and MSI have joined the party. I think all of it is the noob that built the system and didn't properly support their crazy heavy GPU, or due to rough handling of the chassis with the GPU flopping around in the PCIe slot.

Maybe AMD was expecting more people to leave Intel? And, that is clearly not happening very much. I think the low sales show pretty clearly that existing AMD owners see no reason to spend money on something newer that isn't an upgrade, or such a small upgrade that spending money is basically pointless. Additionally, the path they have chosen to take with video cards seems to demonstrate that AMD is a company whose target market is the people who are content with adequacy and happy with "good enough" rather than overclockers and bleeding-edge performance enthusiasts that find it difficult to resist an upgrade that is small and not big leap from the prior generation. Any x86 8-core CPU that is 5+ years old is "good enough" for playing games with high framerates. This is bad because it means there remains no good option other than NVIDIA for 4K gaming with demanding graphics settings and/or ray tracing.

I am sure the data pirates love us. If I search for my name on the web nothing comes up. Not even my LinkedIn profile or a people search site. I don't use Instagram, Facepoot or X. I have accounts on them with totally bogus personal information to use if/when I see fit and never post anything associated with my true identity. I upload pictures of random people I have never met, and don't know their names, then I tag them with totally wrong made up names. This is to deliberately harm the accuracy of the data collection and AI. And the email addresses I use for registration, while valid, have very disparaging, vulgar and hateful user names and passwords directly related to the type of people stealing information that will be visible to anyone that buys or steals the information with the intent of using it for nefarious purposes, or for unsolicited marketing. Here is one such example: I get lots of spam at those emails addresses calling me by the fake names used in registration, so I know my efforts to eff things up for them are working. If I do a people search for the fake identities with fake addresses those have also been found to appear in the people searches, LOL. Garbage in, garbage out. We should all be doing malicious things like this to corrupt and cause harm to their data collection efforts. When I was still doing beta product testing for Dell, the person handling my registration for the Dell World Convention they invited me to had to email me to get a photo for my ID badge because he could not find a real photo of me anywhere. At that time my social media name on Facepoot was Weyland Yutani. They (Facepoot) eventually figured that out and deleted the account. So, I created a new one with different fake information.

So, apparently not just "rumors" as both were misrepresented to be...

Well, maybe this won't have an undesirable ending like all the others before.

Thank you, but I honestly do wish it were not true. It is tragic and I am concerned that will have a devastating ending no matter who prevails in the upcoming election. If Trump wins they will continue their efforts to kill him and if Elvira does they'll continue their fraudulent pursuit of him and turn on all of us that reject their dystopian vision for the future. They're like mentally insane American Nazis on steroids.

Man. This deep state mess is so horrible. If we cannot destroy this mess in short order before it can get its claws sunk deeper into our throats, the world we have enjoyed living in is doomed. The only thing worse than evil people is evil lunatics in positions of power that are so insane they cannot even identify the depth of their corruption or recognize the difference between right and wrong. There is nothing beneath them and nothing they won't do to have their way. Their contempt for everyone that holds a different view has turned them all into the vilest type of domestic terrorist and the most diabolical organized crime ring the modern world has ever seen. Masters of lies and deception that serve the Father of Lies and Prince of Darkness with an army of brain-dead zombies that are willing to stop at nothing.

I can't notice any difference in system performance using a SATA SSD versus NVMe in my day-to-day activities. Nothing about the experience seems different to me in normal use. I like the M.2 form factor a lot because it consumes minimal space and doesn't require power or data wiring. It's much neater and more convenient and the extra speed is kind of a nice but almost meaningless bonus. I am sure there are limited circumstances where I would notice the faster speed, but not in normal use. Maybe game loading or something like that, but I don't do that a whole lot.

I am hoping that all of the terrible publicity they have had lately about their dishonest warranty practices will result in them turning a new leaf and I have none of the shady nonsense I have experienced with them in the past. They did update the status this evening: Your product has been received and currently undergoing diagnosing by our technicians.

Well, ASSuS received my dead Apex Encore motherboard yesterday, but they haven't updated my RMA ticket to reflect receipt of it. I hope this doesn't go like my past experiences with these retarded monkeys have gone. If they don't take care of me I may replace it with a Tachyon. I refuse to purchase a 4-DIMM POS motherboard and it's really the only 2-DIMM alternative to the Apex/Apex Encore at this point unless I downsize to ITX. @electrosoft how is the Z90i Lightning? Any regrets? Compared to the Edge? From 5:48 in the Doofus comparison video...