Mr. Fox

I can't help but think something went terribly wrong and somebody(s) are in deep doo-doo right about now. There is no way this was routine maintenance given the absurd amount of time that has passed since their forum went dark. And, I am wondering if they didn't have any backups and now there is nothing left to rebuild. That could be really tragic for lots of people.

It will be interesting to see what the generic A-die sticks from AliExpress do. They should be here the second week of January, LOL. (Proverbial slow boat from China.) This is my generic SK Hynix green M-die with Dark BIOS v2.05. http://valid.x86.fr/bq845g

It is kind of crazy how some people assume that just because they are paying a lot for a certain brand or part number they are guaranteed to have a good outcome. That is less true today than it ever has been in the past. The opposite *should* be true with QC, but the sad truth is most of the hardware OEMs just don't give a damn about what they sell or the people that buy their stuff as long as the cash keeps flowing.

Yup, 100%. We're in agreement here... totes.

I was also not aware of that being common AMD RDNA GPU behavior. But, neither I, nor Jay, have been interested in AMD GPUs or overclocking them. Kind of hard to be aware of something like that if you don't ever use it. Knowing that it is typical, I am less likely than before to buy one. At least not a reference card. From the sounds of it, seems that performance still doesn't scale well with overclocking the "enthusiast" Radeon cards even when the clocks do not drop. I have to keep forcing myself not to buy one and remind myself that I don't need it and that the performance is essentially the same as my 3060 Ti that is less than 90 days old. I really want one. I came really close to buying the Acer Predator version with an extra 200 MHz core boost clock and higher TDP this weekend. If they release a higher performance model than A770 I probably will not resist the temptation. I want them to be successful and I already have a fairly decent degree of confidence that they will be. Intel generally plays with the intent of winning, and they generally do not like it when they are not in first place. I hope that "character flaw" becomes evident and they stay in the game with the intent of dethroning the Green Goblin on both the performance crown and value crown.

I have seen people criticize and even go as far as calling it stupid for 3060/3060 Ti to be cooled by waterblocks as well, but I can tell you it makes a massive improvement in both temperatures and performance. I played 6 hours of God of War on my work computer this weekend and my GPU never went higher than an average of around 65°C and it stayed nailed to the max boost clock, voltage and power limit the entire time I was playing it. I don't believe a 75W GPU would get hot enough to need it with a proper air cooling solution, but it certainly wouldn't hurt anything to have it. That said, I could see some people putting a 75W GPU in a hot-box SFF case with poor ventilation and nothing would help that poor little critter stay cool enough to avoid pain and suffering. But, it probably wouldn't be liquid cooled in that scenario, so it's not relevant to that conversation, LOL. Edit: Anyone heard of CapFrameX? I had never heard of it before, but it is a fantastic benchmarking tool. I enjoyed fiddling with it, which is what got me started play God of War, LOL. With maxed out graphics and Ultra applied to everything, 3060 Ti stays above 100 FPS.

For what it's worth, it looks like it has, in fact, been redesigned. It sucks that the one they sold me was lousy. The cold plate looks totally different now. http://www.supercoolcomputer.com/en/product/44/direct-die-intel-gen13 Here is the current design: Here is what they sold me that sucked: Hopefully the new design does a better job of cooling. My temps were basically the same as using the copper IHS with the old design. There was no measurable improvement and it wasn't worth the added inconvenience created by the design. If you have to take it apart for any reason it is more than a little bit inconvenient. Here is how I did it without making a mess. (The inconvenience would have been an acceptable flaw had it worked as well as expected.)

I had one and sold it because I was unhappy with how poorly it cooled my 12900K. I sold it on overclock.net shortly after I got it. Maybe it has been redesigned, but the one I received (which was one of the first) was no better than running with the IHS. I was really disappointed because the one I had for 10900K did a wonderful job.

That would be quite a blessing and definitely an unprecedent demonstration of generosity. After seeing the suggestion for the $700+ AmScope I was almost too embarrassed to say what I use. If I did it for a living, I could probably justify the better product. Maybe a couple of times a year tops is about how often I use it. I don't do enough SMD soldering to justify spending any more that this. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081F64YLB

There is going to be a separate file for each GPU/HWID that has been installed in your system, and if you flash a different vBIOS from a GPU with a different HWID that will also create a new file that has to be modded. If you save your settings to one of the profiles, that will also create a new file for each saved profile. The one that applies to your current GPU has its HWID in the file name. As many video cards as you have played with I am shocked there are not more than three files unless this is a clean Windoze installation.

...speechless... but, if I stare at it for a bit... ...disgusting.

They are really nice-looking and seem like a quality product on the surface. In fact, I was thinking I might keep them for the Strix system, but the instability I encountered on the Dark when I tried to tighten up sloppy timings was mirrored on the ASUS mobo. Then I discovered my M-die ran better than the A-die. I did not reset the memory settings before swapping out the modules and lo-and-behold, the Dark booted right up with the G.SKILL A-die settings that were throwing errors and ran them without errors. I was like, WUUUUTTT??? Then, the RGB puke not staying turned off on top of that, and I am like... *sigh* That stuff is beyond ugly... it's fugly *shivers*

What is a kingdom without any peasants to lord over? Maybe they'll find out. When everyone is gone their world records achieved with free cherry-picked hardware won't mean too much. They'll be legends in their own minds, with nobody telling their story or singing songs of praise and adoration to them.

I've decided to send the G.SKILL A-die back for a refund. The more I have played with it, I am discovering it is inferior to the generic green M-die sticks I already own. It's less stable, more prone to errors and runs hotter. Plus, the RGB rainbow puke keeps returning and my white color choice doesn't get saved. If I set the sticks to white and shut down the rainbox puke returns unless I boot into the same OS and allow RGB control software to override the default puke. If I boot into any other OS, the rainbow puke is what I get to look at. I've tested it on the Strix and the Dark motherboards and it's buggy on both platforms. On the Dark with the latest 2.05 BIOS I can run the G.SKILL XMP 7200 profile on my M-die without complications. The read/write/copy and latency are all better using the M-die at the same clock speed. Without lowering clock speed, I can run tighter timings that are stable on the M-die, but they're not even bootable with the A-die. The G.SKILL A-die appears to be a low quality silicon variant like the Corsair Vengeance A-die that I returned. The JEDEC default speed is 4800 on both of them, rather than 5600, and they both seem like compromised garbage products. I have ordered a pair of generic green Hynix A-die with a default 5600 clock from China on Aliexpress for $100 less than the defective RGB puke options. This appears to be exactly the same product Splave sells on HWBOT.

Yeah, very much so. We (collectively) have brought this on ourselves in many ways; not the least of which is the ludicrous idea that most people and businesses and governments are essentially good and trying to do what is best for everyone. The exact opposite is true. The only way out of it is for everyone to start paying more attention and begin to deliberately engage in acts of defiance, circumvention and diversion. It won't be easy and I think most people are too enamored with the nonsensical garbage they like and will be unwilling to live without the rubbish packing a hidden payload of filth.

Bottomless pit of evil... Microsoft Pluton... they're coming, guys... remember all my warnings about UEFI in years past? Satanic plans are falling into place, just like a bucket of Legos dipped in feces. Smell my finger, LOL. Equally diabolical partners in crime... People that say this is "tin foil hat" simply aren't paying attention and don't really care about facts. Double-dog dare you to watch both videos from start to finish, LOL. The most nefarious elements of it all are exposed at 12:40 and continues through 17:25, but the added context leading up to it is useful. Wake up people... before you fall into a digitally-induced comatose state of inprisonment. https://www.startallback.com/ (won't fix any of the serious problems, but takes care of the aesthetic atrocities)

It is not quite as full featured, but it will certainly let you test drive and decide if you want the full OS. Or, you can just use the lite/free version and install and alternative DE like KDE, Cinnamon or whatever you like.

Yes. I always elect to opt-out of that kind of thing. Not only with Zorin, but any/all software or OS. I think it should be illegal to have to make a choice to opt-out of anything. You should have to go to extra effort and deliberately opt-in, not deliberately opt-out. Opt-out should be automatic for everything.

Probably no more than I am with a 3060 Ti or would be with a 6950 XT. Same performance for less money, LOL.

Wow, what the hell is wrong with these people? If I wasn't part of a team that has benefitted from my participation I would just go delete my HWBOT profile and tell them to kiss my butt. I'm about fed up with the tail wagging the dog. Did they give you an excuse for blocking your SLI submissions, other than they love having the power to go Nazi on the people that threaten the reign of the elite Chosen Ones? The more I see of this stupid stuff, the more likely it is that there will be an Arc A770 (or the next step up from that) in the near future.

Zorin is a really good distro. It works well for me, and 6.2 is the best one yet. The only thing I do not care for with their default DE is the menu is not configurable. I usually install Cinnamon along side the Zorin DE so I can tweak the aesthetics more to my preferences. I do really like the Zorin OS dark theme. I think it looks and feels great. Yes, System 76 is a great company with innovative products, not the least of which is Pop_OS! Another excellent distro with working NVIDIA support out of the box. I wish there were more companies like them that gave preference to Linux and furthered the development of Linux as a complete and outright replacement for Winduhz. I think you will love Zorin OS. I am impressed enough that I went the next step and purchased the "Pro" version of 5.9, 6.1 and 6.2. The chances of Linux getting better improve when we support those efforts. I find I am using Linux less (temporarily) because of poor NVIDIA driver support on kernel 6.X and some of the more recent 5.X kernels. I have reliability issues relating to NVIDIA drivers with the newer 5.X kernels and above, and my two Z690 systems do not have full and proper CPU functionality on 5.X kernels. Clocks are not read correctly, etc. So, I have temporarily paused my zealous pursuit for replacing Winduhz with Linux until that gets sorted.

Incredible how utterly insane people are. Never ceases to amaze me. "A fool and his money are soon parted."

Sorry to hear you have been sick. Might have been the flu "vaccine" that caused it. Almost everyone I know that jumped through the hoops with the experimental COVID shots have been less healthy than those that haven't played the guinea pig game.

@Talon

Yeah, totally agree with that. They're not a non-profit charity and if there is no money being made it would make sense that they would get rid of it as a business product. I would not blame them in that respect, and I would not think differently in their shoes either. But, the behavior of killing what people value and appreciate, and implementing change purely for the sake of change fits the pattern we see without reference to the financial aspects. So, pretty much par for the course. Seems like that is the case for almost all brands. Pay more, get less.