Mr. Fox

Yes. That is one very heavy thermal pad. I think some people would complain about a notebook weighing as much, LOL. Even before GPUs weighed as much as a newborn child, it was very foolish to not support one with a brace when the installation is conventional and gravity is putting stress on the PCIe connector. It is also very bad for the motherboard, not only the GPU. Even using the expanding foam bags inside of a chassis when shipping a pre-built is risky. Better off shipping the GPU in a separate box. But, that would cause some people a great deal of stress because they don't even own a screwdriver and couldn't find their head if it were not permanently attached to their neck. I think it is also kind of risky to have a GPU installed in a manner where it is suspended by the I/O bracket unless it is properly braced with a bracket attached to the chassis. The PCB is not designed to be under lateral stress. Cracking is almost inevitable if there is an upset of the chassis. Horizontal motherboard trays and vertical GPU mounts in a conventional vertical motherboard installation solve most of these problems.

A warranty is only as good as the company looking for lame excuses to shirk their ethical duties. The only one that had anything that resembled ethics and cared about customer experience no longer makes or sells GPUs and motherboards. "The law" is never enough to make bad people or bad companies good, because they are fundamentally bad, dishonest and lawless.

Gigabyte 'quality' with an ASUS price tag. Nice. *sarcasm* Pay more, get less. Gee, thanks ASUS. Interesting comments at 21:50 regarding chiplet design and the associated engineering flaws. Same underlying evil intentions as BGA dung.

Welcome, brother! Glad you joined us. We really missed you, bud. Looking forward to seeing you here often.

Can't do much for $1,000 USD or CAD. But, I guess it depends on what you are wanting to accomplish. Better than a turdbook, for sure. Funny what he said about getting trash RAM from Amazon and NewEgg that mirrors my experience. I have RMA'd waaayyy too many garbage RAM kits. His observations about naked stick being better than crap RAM heating blankets is 100% aligned with my experience. The factory thermal solutions are trash that ruin stability.

Yes, I have a 4K 144Hz monitor. It is decent. The 4090 tears it up and barely breaks a sweat. The 6900 XT is not very good at 4K. It does an OK job with 1440p, but seems best suited for 1080p. It does not manage ray tracing very well at any resolution.

That is good advice about the iGPU testing. If the problem remains, mobo. If it fixes it, GPU. I don't game a ton, but when I do it is often a benchmarking venture to see what I can get away with. I played BF 2042 for a couple of hours today to test my system "game stability" with the CPU and memory overclock. Buttery smooth with maxed out settings at 4K and the 4090 stock. CPU set for P-Cores 60x8, E-Cores 48x16, Cache 50x and memory at 8000 CL34-48-48-48-2T.

The fact that you only see the unexpected shutdown in Event Viewer also points to the motherboard.

That could be motherboard or GPU. But, the odd behavioral issues you mentioned make me think the motherboard is more likely. Has it been doing weird stuff all along, or recently started? If it started more recently, have you tried reflashing the BIOS? Can you find anything in Windows Event Viewer that occurs at the time of the reboot that might give you some clues?

Nothing would surprise me in this regard, but it would be premature to assume the prices posted by this particular store exemplifies what normal prices will be. Scalping is the new normal and getting screwed with above MSRP pricing has become common because stupid people pay stupid prices to get what they want when they want it. That is as sad and pathetic as the scalping, and perpetuates the problem.

Same... 🤣

Not my best score, but not far behind it...

The end result is exactly what I expected it to be, so no surprises. But, the only way to know for sure is to confirm through actual use, or attempted use. I expect poor performance from all products. It's up to those selling them to prove themselves to not be liars and snake oil salesmen.

I really am looking forward to seeing how Battlemage works out. If I were buying a GPU today and wanted the best performance, 4090 is the only logical option. The price is idiotic, even for the cheapest one, but still "worth it" in the general sense that it is better to overpay for something good than to overpay for something not so good. If I could not purchase a 4090, the next option would be 4080 if I needed one today. It is a poor value and I would try very hard to come up with the extra $400-$500 to purchase a 4090 instead. But, I would not even consider the other options new and I would settle for something used from last generation rather than settle for an AMD GPU or something castrated like a 4070 Ti scam product. Well, Kryosheet is crap. Doesn't work worth a damn, unless you think normal high end thermal pastes are good. In that case it is probably awesome. It just can't handle an overclocked 13900KS at all. It performs on par with popular thermal pastes, which is unacceptable for an overclocked CPU. I view it as a totally unusable product for that. I saved it with zero damage and may try it on my laptop someday when I run out of things to do. @Papusanyou were curious. How 'bout no, LOL. Brother @Talonsent me a tube of Honeywell PTM7958. Thank you so much! It performs about the same as KPX or other popular thermal pastes. So, yeah... not good enough for an overclocked 13900KS. It performed almost exactly the same as the Kryosheet. So, back to the liquid metal. No other good option available. This stuff was not fun to spread. It is like clay, softened wax or softened kneaded eraser, and it takes a lot of pressure to even get it out of the syringe. It is not very sticky. It is much firmer than the thermal putty EVGA used on the 3090 KPE VRMs. I did spread it and got excellent coverage. It will be amazing for a laptop or a GPU that doesn't pull as many watts. There is no question in my mind that it will be durable, and the perfect solution for sloppy-fitting turdbook heat sinks. This is perfect for that. It is easily removed using a thermal paste spatula. It comes off like soft wax. When I need to repaste the 4090 I will probably use the PTM7958 paste. The pad equivalent worked amazing on the 6900 XT and the 4090 doesn't get nearly as hot as the 6900 XT. Removing my water block, it pulled the CPU (that was taped down for bare die) out of the socket. It suck well enough that the tape could not hold it down. I got it more than hot enough to melt, and it absolutely melted and got phenomenal coverage. I let my system cool overnight to normalize with ambient temperature and tried it again this morning and the temps were as unacceptable as they were last night. I did not save a screenshot. I must have forgotten. But, there's nothing to see. Look at the Kryosheet temps (above) and shuffle the core order and that's what it was. Same thing basically.

I can't imagine them passing up an opportunity to screw their most loyal early-adopters with the deepest pockets. That's how they roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnUCYHvorrk&t=1409s I cannot imagine you being satisfied with one and I would hate to see you waste $1,000 on something you're probably going to hate. Their best option isn't the best option, it is just a couple hundred cheaper option for an inferior product. 7900XTX runs neck-and-neck with 4080 until you try to play games with ray tracing, at which point the 7900XTX falls on its face. https://www.techspot.com/review/2746-amd-radeon-7900-xtx-vs-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080/ You can get a Galax 4090 SG on Amazon for under $1700 and that utterly destroys 7900XTX and 4080. If you are wanting a good 4K gaming experience you will need a 4090 to do it right, and if you look at the latest reviews of the "free" FSR3 it is a hot mess. Hardware Unboxed has a new video showing it is not that great. The title is clickbait, as the review leads to an opposite conclusion. Caveat emptor.

Aside from that, even if you are a benching fanatic, the cost of things is so far out of scope with the value of the products and the benefits of owning the product that the idea of upgrading to something newer is becoming a very foolish and a frivolous endeavor. Computers, and the parts used to build them, have never been an "investment" but they've not been this grossly overpriced unless you go back like 35 years ago, to a time when personal computers were an uncommon novelty item. I can't identify anything other than SSDs that represent good value from a cost/benefit perspective. It is even worse if you live in a country like @Papusan with a government that seeks to financially harm its citizens with Satanic taxation practices.

That's pretty sweet. I am going to have to look into doing that. Great idea. I might go for 5 gallons due to my limited space, but I think even 5 gallons would be a huge benefit. I am seriously considering the idea of putting a 5 gallon tank inside of a mini-fridge since I don't run the chiller except when benching. I will just use my 20mm hole saw and a passthrough fitting for the lines to plumb it permanently if I go that route. If it works well enough I will sell both of my 360mm radiators and route both computers through the same loop routed through the chiller and mini-fridge, LOL. Edit: Another idea... Maybe skip the tank and mini-fridge and get one of these, fill it with automotive antifreeze and use it as the tank. Could even use a submersible aquarium/yard pond pump inside of it. Might not even need the chiller, LOL. If it works this would be A LOT less expensive than a chiller. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Chest-Freezer-3-5-Cu-ft-Deep-Freezer-Top-Open-Door-Removable-Storage-Basket-7-Gears-Temperature-Control-Energy-Saving-Ideal-Office-Dorm-Apartment-Whi/1463248241 @Papusan @Rage Set@johnksss

Thank you for the picture that makes more sense now. I don't understand why they have that foam border on top of the cooler. I've never seen anything like that and it doesn't make any sense to me. I can see it maybe if the bottom of the laptop was supposed to seal against it so that air got forced into the bottom vents with no way to leak around the outside of it. But with a laptop smaller than the foam border it seems like it would just get in the way. I can see how your paper trick helped fix that.

This is looking pretty good. P:60x / E: 48x / C: 50x / M: 8600

I am trying to get a mental picture of what you are descibing and I am drawing a blank, especially the reference to foam. Can you please post a photo showing what you did? Nice job, brother. That is a significant improvement.

So, that's good. I guess. It means 71.64% of Windows users can be assumed to be smarter than the minority. It's unfortunate that the Redmond Reprobates can't figure out that their "features" and "improvements" are not useful or appreciated, and some are viewed as loathesome.

Thanks for asking, brother. Actually, the problem is resolved now. Supercool is sending me the missing parts and I was thinking you could tell if he was talking about the new memory cooling kit design. So, all good now. I received a new item directly from the manufacturer in China for product review. It arrived in a wooden crate yesterday, LOL. 🤣 Needless to say, it arrived in perfect condition. The only "damage" was scratches to the cardboard box inside of the wooden box from the screws attaching the hinges.

Even when it doesn't produce better benchmark results, it is still pretty crazy and amazing to be able to run system memory at 8000 and higher. It seems like only yesterday that 4000 was considered exceptional. At a certain point it reaches a place where going faster doesn't produce meaningful results in day-to-day performance. Kind of like how it is very difficult to tell the difference between a fast SATA SSD and NVMe in your normal daily use. Easy to spot in a benchmark, but otherwise not very noticeable. Maybe one of these days I will look into adding an insulated tank. It's a good idea. Too many projects right now, but worth doing. Not enough hours in the day to do anything extra right now. I also want to explore the idea of adding both desktops into a single chilled water loop. I think that is doable. I think the ambient temperature warm the water as much as the computers do. Removing radiators from the chilled loop dramatically lowers the temperatures. The radiators help warm the water to ambient and actually hinder the chiller, so I could eliminate the need for radiators completely for both systems. That might be an example of where having the tank submerged in ice inside of an insulated cooler to supplement the chiller would be good. You wouldn't need to fill it with ice for daily use, just for benching. I think the chiller would cool both of them enough for normal daily use with an insulated tank. I also thought about buying a used mini-fridge at a yard sale and putting the tank inside of the mini-fridge to further cool the water and supplement the abilities of the chiller. I could just tuck the mini-fridge in a corner under one of my desks. Or, I could put it in a corner with the chiller sitting on top of it.