Mr. Fox

I read through all of the posts and I'm still not clear. Let me know if this is accurate. You have an NVMe M.2 that was pulled from a Dell laptop. You are attempting to use it on an Acer AC100 server and it is not recognized in the Acer's BIOS. The NMVe M.2 is installed in a PCIe expansion card designed to accommodate an M.2 PCIe (not M.2 SATA) SSD. Correct? Have you already tried using DIskpart to run a clean command on the NVMe? If you boot from a Windows installation USB media and run Diskpart from a command prompt (Shift+F10) and run the list disk command does Diskpart identify it? Sometimes running a clean command will make an NVMe that is not visible in the BIOS become visible. I'm not sure exactly why. If the drive is not visible using Diskpart then either the PCIe M.2 SSD, the PCIe card or the PCIe slot is having an issue. Do you have another PCIe M.2 you can test in the expansion card to see if it is visible in the BIOS? You cannot select a data drive in the BIOS as a boot drive or choose it from a boot priority menu until is has an OS boot sector or a bootable EFI partition installed on it because it is not a bootable drive (yet). But, if TrueNAS setup sees it and allows you to install to it, it should then become available to select as the boot drive at that point because it has become a bootable drive. If it is the only bootable drive installed, then the BIOS will most likely configure itself to boot from it without any need for manual configuration. Can you post a photo of the PCIe M.2 expansion card? Or, a link to the product listing from when you purchased it?

It is sad and scary how many people will fall for this scam and it is Micro$lop's fault for allowing this on their own web pages.

I look forward to seeing how it turns out. The delid of the 5950X that I had provided no benefit whatsoever. Temps were terrible with liquid metal due to poor contact (uneven CCD heights) and was basically identical to pre-delid using normal thermal paste. I hope it turns out nice with liquid metal and the TG IHS.

Try Waterfox. It is pretty decent. Chrome has been my favorite for many years but Google has never been trustworthy and the things that the Alphabet A-holes are doing now is worthy of death. The sad truth is all Windows and Mac OSes suck now and so does the vast majority of the software garbage that runs on them. Browsers almost universally suck. The limitations of Linux and Linux software are becoming more beneficial as the state of decline progresses.

This is what I have and it has served me well. https://www.performance-pcs.com/water-cooling/water-chillers/hailea-ultra-titan-hc-500a-110v-1-2hp-790watt-cooling-capacity-waterchiller.html

I do not have the container to verify, but it should be ethylene glycol. It is whatever I can buy for the least amount at Walmart that is not red or yellow. I usually look for the blue Asian car type. It is a premix and after I add the gallon the rest of what goes in the loop is distilled water, so it is diluted quite a bit.

So, you're talking about what shows in HWiNFO64 then, not the BIOS, correct?

Hey Brother... Unless you are referring to information visible somewhere else, the P-core and E-core VID on the AI Settings page does not change. I already have the E-cores set at 4.7GHz and that is what it shows and it never changes based on the actual settings applied because manual settings are not AI Optimized. None of the values under AI Optimized Settings has anything to do with the settings applied unless you elect to go with ASUS AI Optimized overclocking, and if you do that the settings shown here are what gets applied. Let me know if you are wanting me to look elsewhere.

My E-core SP97 chip is 1.264V at 5.6GHz. So, your SP95 E-core guess is probably very close. His $750 CPU is just a tiny bit better than my first 13900KS and the MCSP is the same (85). So, very decent but not a show stopper. Wouldn't be worth it for me, but for someone buying their first CPU or replacing a trashy sample, probably a good one to grab for $750. I wouldn't buy the other one for $1050. Too expensive in my opinion. Not a lot too expensive, but enough that I would pass. It is a better price than some of the insane greedy scalper prices we have seen.

Umm. Nope. I don't think so.

LoL... From the mouths of babes... Dana is spot-on...

Looking forward to your report on thermal enhancement, and particularly, how well the IHS that doubles as the CPU retainer works.

That mentality is what is wrong with tech in general. Game, software and hardware developers and manufacturers have the gall to believe they know what is best for the purchasers of their products and are foolish enough to think it is OK to tell us what we should think about and how we should use those products. The tail is wagging the dog here. The exact opposite is how things are supposed to be. But we let the lefty fake news zombies and our woke, worthless, corrupt and idiotic governmental regulators do the same thing. So, why not them, too? Maybe the majority of the members of the human race actually are just too darned stupid to function without being told how to function. I guess that's why they are referred to as sheeple. So, the rest of us get to enjoy the crap they are willing to put up with, and we are unreasonable, icky, mean and racist if we call them out or resist their filth.

I am usually not, but I've learned to avoid saying never to make accommodating exceptions easier. I am, and always will be, a metal head. But, I am developing a taste for lyric-free dark techno/cyberpunk. I think the John Wick movies got me hooked on the grind. I get flashbacks to all of the headshots during the most intense action scenes. This group (Aim to Head) has some of the most amazing cover art on their YouTube videos. You can spend hours just looking at some of it while listening to the music. Check out the thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/@AimToHeadOfficial/videos

I am at the point now that I am having a hard time identifying value in paying a lot of money for a GPU because: - Having a decent gaming experience doesn't require having a monster GPU unless you are a settings snob - Gaming is something I enjoy, but it's not something I spend a massive amount of time doing - Overclocking is my hobby and most (all) GPUs are so crippled now with cancer firmware the endeavor is futile Adjusting my expectations, exactly as I did for the 3060 Ti, the Arc A770 does everything I need it to do for gaming. Spending $1000-$2000 more for a 4080 or 4090 would be frivolous. Paying $350-$650 more for a 4070 Ti with castrated VRAM would also be kind of stupid. When gaming I cannot discern a quality difference between medium, high and ultra graphics settings. I mean, I could if I stopped and starting closely analyzing everything and being super critical instead of focusing on having fun playing the game. Doing that with an inexpensive GPU doesn't make any sense. You SHOULD be super critical if you paid a buttload of money for a flagship GPU, and you should expect it to be nearly flawless with everyting maxed out. But if I am enjoying a game, I am too busy with playing the game to notice minuscule changes in image clarity as long as it is not terrible looking and as long as the gameplay is smooth. I am totally fine toning down the settings or using frame generation to smooth the rough edges. At the Cyber Monday price of $199 it was an insane bargain and at the price today ($279 earlier today) it is an incredible value.

Yeah, I am not selling mine. It works too well and nothing comes close to matching the performance. The price was disgusting when I bought it, and more disgusting now, but the money was spent. If I had it to do over again I might not, but I did it and what's done is done.

And, it remains to be seen if the fancier and more expensive stuff works as well. The answer is quite often, no... more expensive and fancier stuff is often inferior because the maker loses focus on what made them successful.

You can't spend what the government confiscates, that's for sure. That applies even here in the US. Some states are more socialistic and abusive to their citizens than others. One solution to the problem is simple (leave and go somewhere else) but doing so can be disruptive to one's family, social life or career. The better solution would be to eliminate the corrupt government entities and replace them with entities that will repeal the destructive misappropriation of private wealth. California and New York are the worst and most extreme examples of the abject foolishness of Robinhood governance and it has done nothing to elevate lower class. It only punishes success and rewards failure. Yeah, you can't include federal, state or local taxes when comparing prices. Those are first-world problems that are not relevant when comparing costs between markets. They matter and suck to the person getting screwed by their government, and may affect their ability to purchase the item, but it is not a legitimate part of the price comparison.

Yeah, I bet I could put the air cooler back on it and get probably $2300 or more for it. I paid under $1800 for it. I don't really want to sell it, but the thought of buying another A770 and putting the left over $2000 into the bank while I wait for Battlemage to drop is tempting. And, I bet I could get $75-$100 for the waterblock on top of that.

I shoud buy one at this price ($100 less) and return the original one. I've had it 18 days. But, I won't do that because it would be a shady move. I will message them and ask them to give me in-store credit for the difference in price though. Part of me wants to buy it now for $199 and sell my 4090 for more than I paid for it because I know I could get more than enough to cover the A770 with money left over and still give the buyer a price better than what a 4090 Suprim is selling for now... IF you can even find one. I paid the correct price for my 4090. You would not regret it. Amazing value even at the not-on-sale price. For $199 it is a no-brainer. I played some Modern Warfare III (2023) on it yesterday and with a mixture of medium and high settings it was always over 100 FPS at 1440p. Smooth as silk.

They're only selling for laughable prices because desperate-to-play buyers are willing to pay a laughable price. If the most anyone was willing to pay for it is new retail (remembering it's no longer new) then things would be right. The seller would be unable to sell it to anyone if they want more than to be made whole (unless they were foolish and paid more than retail for an unbinned CPU) and the buyer would pay what the chip was worth before the box got opened. An even greater tragedy occurs when the lousy below-average samples get sold to a sucker for a little bit less than retail rather than being sent back to the retailer on an RMA. It is naive to assume that the undesirable samples a chip-binner is selling are special and it only stands to reason a significant number of them, perhaps even all of them, are something less than special. As the second owner you're double-screwed. You can't RMA it like the original buyer could have.

Clean Linux install with Arc A770. Totally hassle-free. Didn't have to do anything special. It just worked. OS: Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10 x86_64 Kernel: 6.5.0-13-generic DE: Cinnamon 5.8.4

Clean Linux install with Arc A770. Totally hassle-free. Didn't have to do anything special.

Give or take $150-$200 for a true "god bin" I don't believe in paying more than new retail for a used part. If someone is desperate enough to be a winner that they buy a butt-load of new CPUs to find the best one they need to take a loss on the chips they don't want to keep and when they're done with the cream of the crop sample they should take a loss on it, too. It's a used part. They don't deserve to make a profit on their hobby. Just my opinion, but I put these clowns about two crotch hairs above scalpers. They want to win so bad that they are willing screw everyone else in the process, so screw them. It should be their loss and theirs alone if being in the winner's circle is what they need to validate their own existence. It's not my fault their mama dropped them on their head as an infant and didn't love them anymore. You also have to ask yourself, "If it is for sale, how awesome is it, really?" If it was truly off the charts show-stopping awesome it probably wouldn't be up for sale. Selling it would defeat the purpose of their frantic quest to find the best one. So, what are they not telling you about the overpriced silicon they are offering to sell you for a horrible price? I'm not interested in helping them benefit by recovering more than their actual out-of-pocket loss. I'm willing to pay what they paid for it when they bought the batch. Offering them the chance to break even on the sale of a used part should be viewed as a gift.