Mr. Fox

Brother @tps3443 is either living right or struck a deal with the devil on the 11900K and his 13900KF. Two lucky strikes in a row. Only he could tell us which one is more accurate. 😉

Not with the 12900KS. Haven't had time to experiment, and since it is my work computer less of a recreational priority for me. CENS has BIOS overclock profiles in the firmware on the Dark mobos. It's worth a lot more than market value based on the silicon grade. I would ask him what he has in mind for the price rather than give him a price based on what you think is fair. When you are selling something rare and in demand, the pricing should reflect that. Yeah, the DDR4-4400 overclock is totally stable. I let it run for TM5 2.5 hours last night with no error. It requires a fan blowing on it just like DDR5. A fan blowing on it keeps the temps 38-40°C. Without the fan it hits 50°C within a few minutes and starts throwing errors in massive quantity, eventually ending in a BSOD.

It hasn't even been installed 24 hours yet, but it seems stable so far. I generally do not tune my benching system for that though. I generally tune for highest possible benchmark scores and do not need it to be able to run Prime95 for hours. I still have a lot of learning and tuning to do. This is an accomplishment for the Strix D4 mobo. Rare to see an ADL DDR4 system capable of doing this.

Time for bed. More tuning in the days ahead.

Well, it is looking like the 12900KS is going to be a really nice upgrade for Banshee, my work PC. It's running nice and cool with the delid considering it is shut up in an enclosed case and the RAM run stable with this CPU at 4400 16-18-18-36 1T just as it did with the 13900K.

Hmm, my Windows 11 crashed real hard on the first attempt to boot with the new BIOS. It froze and then blue-sceened at the logon screen with the spinning circle and I could not power down. Had to turn off the PSU. Never worked right again after that. All of the USB ports were dead in Windows 11, but not in the BIOS or Windows 7 or 10.

Are you having a problem with Windows 10 or only Windows 11 with the USB issue? I don't know if you saw my post the other day, but when I flashed the updated bios for 13900K something went haywire with Windows 11. None of the USB ports worked anymore. I used a PS/2 mouse and keyboard to navigate and tried numerous things. I could not find the cause or fix the problem. It did not affect Windows 7 or Windows 10. Shutting down would hang. When I attempted an in-place upgrade/install as a possible solution, it repeatedly failed. Since I could not resolve it, I ended up having to clean install Windows 11. No idea why, but it is very weird.

DDR4 is absolutely a lot better than it was with 12900K and KS. It would not even POST at 4400 before.

Yes they look really good so far. Probably not going to worry too much about the overall SP rating as much as the P cores. If 13th Gen anything like 12th the E-cores are not going to overclock worth a damn anyway. Later tonight I will take it out of the Asus mobo see how it runs on the Dark. Before I take it out I'm going to see if the DDR4 memory overclock is any different on this generation or if it's still sucks the same. That would confirm that the issue is the motherboard is weak were memory overclocking is concerned.

Same here, SP99... but better P-cores and worse E-cores. Is that CPU Force 2 136 the same ASUS SP99 CPU?

I am working but will know something soon. I can't stop working to disassemble my work computer to find out, LOL. Soon means today. No, only reserving the right to return or exchange a crappy sample rather than live with it. I couldn't go through a full-fledged binning process even if I wanted to because I do not live within driving distance of a Micro Center, and I wouldn't ask a friend to be my gofer.

Indeed. I love it for the same reason. To add yet additional insight to previous comments, when I say reinstall the driver I mean run DDU and clean install. I thought that something was wrong with the Mech-15 not supporting an external monitor after cross-flashing with a Clevo vBIOS but apparently DDU removed registry components that caused conflicts and doing that fixed the conflicts. If I installed the driver on top of itself it didn't work correctly versus the clean installation.

If I had to guess it would be something gets changed in the Windows registry when the driver package is reinstalled. Just speculation on my part, but seems logical.

Yes, as a matter of fact I have to reinstall the driver and reboot between vBIOS flashes. If I do not the higher power limit is not detected even though the driver installs itself. If I only flash and reboot something causes the driver to not update the power limit, or something else ends up being off. This is something I started experiencing with Turing and it is that way for me with Ampere. Even when everything might seem to work right on the surface, the performance is often adversely affected if I do not reinstall the driver. On the Eluktronics Mech-15 I had to reinstall the drivers after cross-flashing or no external displays would function.

Have you tested with all of the display output ports. The behavior may change depending on which port your monitor is connected to. I have done a fair amount of cross-flashing of vBIOSes and the "address" (for lack of a more technically accurate term) can change from one brand to the next. Example here is the ASUS vBIOS I am using. ASUS uses 2xHDMI and 2xDP. EVGA uses 1xHMDI and 3xDP. So, to use all three of my monitors requires that one of them be connected to HDMI. I believe your Suprim X has three DP like EVGA so you might find success using a different port. If I leave all three monitors connected to DP one of them stops working because the ASUS firmware is designed to support two, not three, and by using one monitor on HDMI all three work. I still desire crazy things, maybe even more than I used to, and want to play the role of mad scientist when it comes to PC tech. But, the rash of bad luck and disappointing purchases that I have had in the past few years has taken some of the starch out of my collar because I am not wealthy and can't afford to replace the things that I break. To be honest, I really can't afford some of what I buy to begin with, but it is an unhealthy addicition of sorts. So, it is more like caution to avoid disaster because I don't have the financial resources needed to throw caution to the wind. I certainly would if I could though. Edit: Speaking of things I buy that I cannot afford...

Good enough for me. I'd much prefer to stick with a predictable product over one that is constantly changing, sometimes in ways that I do not appreciate. I can always change to another product if and when I have identified a need or an opportunity to use something better. Until then, don't mess with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I will probably be lazy again about the delid. If my temps without a delid are anything similar to what the 12900KS is after a delid I might not do it right away, or maybe not at all if the chiller gets the job done well enough. Of course, everything is contingent on it being a good sample and not an exchange candidate.

My eyes are peeled and I am waiting with baited breath. 😄

Thank you. Yes, please email that to me. It may be out of warranty since 3 years have passed. If memory serves me correctly the standard warranty is 3 years, but I would need to check. I could still register it and find out that way, too.

Block installed. Man, what a huge improvement.

Here is some interesting information about A-die versus M-die timings and the impact of performance. A-die is only better when it can handle good timings, but apparently sometimes it does not.

I suspect it is a new work in process with a lot of learning and data gathering that needs to happen before it can be viewed as accurate or reliable. It needs to be accurate or reliable before it can be related to ASUS SP ratings. Another example of where an industry standard would benefit both the seller and the buyer and improve the outcome for all involved. When we see things like this remain proprietary it really diminishes the value it can add. Building a reliance on ASUS SP ratings is also problematic. It can also be misleading because it is sometimes not meaningful compared to the user experience. It better to be disappointed finding out later that an SP rating is low on a CPU that runs like a top than it is to have a CPU with a good SP rating that is mediocre, and we have seen both of those things.

I flashed v2.03 on my Dark KPE last night and it is working fine with the 12900K. Something about it did not play nice with my Winduhz 11 OS. All USB function was lost. Windows 10 LTSC 2019 and 2021, and Windows 7 were fine, but I had to clean install Winduhz 11 for some reason. I spent several hours trying to fix it with no success. I finally gave up. CPU and memory seem to function flawlessly. Not sure what the heck was wrong with the cancer OS. That was super weird, but it is weird and crummy by any other measurement anyhow.

I delidded the first 12900K, the second 12900K and now the 12900KS. I heated the first one but not the next two. It did not seem to help anything other than making it more difficult to handle. Just a heads up, in all three cases the delid causes minor damage to the 12th gen IHS and will probably do the same to the 13th gen. The first one (that I heated) got the top surface slightly deformed the top contact surface and I had to lap it to make it flat. It works flawlessly. On the second 12900K and the 12900KS the little "wing" that the ILM presses on received minor scarring where the delid tool presses against it. In both cases I easily fixed it by sanding the bottom surface where the rubber seal makes contact. This also accomplished cleaning off all of the old rubber gasket at the same time as fixing the burr on the wing. I mention this so it does not come as a surprise. In all cases the delid tool screws were very tight, but it seems like the manufacturing is off a little bit on the tolerances. All previous gen Rockit delid tools popped the IHS off without a blemish. I had definitely grown complacent after doing about 20~ CPU delids and finding the process to always be quick, easy and painless. The 11900K disaster made me approach the process with much greater caution and care. The delay in delidding the 12900KS was more being pure lazy than worry about how it would turn out. Of course, having a chip with a high silicon quality is a good reason to be extraordinarily cautious. I used to delid all CPUs before installing them for the first time because I viewed it as a waste of time and thermal paste to install it before delidding. I have never seen a CPU that doesn't benefit from it, but I am more inclined to see what the temps are with the solder first and evaluate the potential benefit of a delid against the risk. Hi bro. We have missed you and I was planning to call you to make sure you were still happy and healthy. I suspect you have been busy with the new job, etc. I have not done anything yet on the 2080 Ti. It is not registered in my name, but I am assuming it might have a little bit of time left on the warranty. I was going to try to fix it, but it might make more sense to put the hybrid thing back together and RMA. Can you check the status for me and let me know how much (if any) time is remaining on the warranty and if we can arrange a cross-ship at my expense? I did not want to bother you with this since I suspect you have been very busy. Plus, I didn't want the warranty question to appear to be the only reason I would call to check on you.