Mr. Fox

A couple of problems here, at least for me: - There are no current game releases that I care about. All of the AAA and Indie current releases look stupid to me. Even if that were not true, the idea that a free game would be a way of drawing me in is just laughable. - As I am not interested in AMD products, the 6900XT price would need to be around $500-600 before I would grab one. - The 6950XT is a joke from the NVIDIA playbook that smells like nothing more than the equivalent of a 3090 Ti scam from the red side of the aisle - While I do prefer NVIDIA the 3090 Ti would need to fall to about $700-800 before I would consider grabbing one. It would be a minor upgrade for my 3090 KPE (maybe) and primarily a path for replacement of my 2080 Ti. By itself, it is an annoying distraction, an unnecessary product from a deceptive company, not a compelling upgrade from 3090 KPE. So, there you go. My preferred brand is annoying and deceptive. The alternative is from a doubtful, unreliable and uninspiring brand that needs to sell me their flagship product at a price point that is at or near a loss before I would find it a potentially attractive option. Fun times... not really.

Yes the memory temperatures definitely affect stability. It did with DDR4 as well. I had aftermarket heat sinks on the DDR4 memory because once it went higher than about 40-45°C it started having memory errors. With DDR5 I start having memory errors as it reaches 48-50°C. I don't know how high I'd be willing to go with the DDR5 voltage. It's probably close to as high as I'd want to go right now... maybe 1.600V max. The stock memory heat sinks on the DDR4 and DDR5 that I have had are junk. They're just very thin sheet metal that did nothing to help the temperatures as far as I could tell. Temperatures were close to the same with no heat sink. They seemed to be there more for aesthetic purposes than anything else. Naked memory modules aren't particularly nice looking.

Well, the Byski RAM water block lowered my temps by 10°C under load at 6800 CL30. I love how easy that EK manifold makes it to add components to the loop. Literally zero fuss involved. When I receive the Supercool bare die block, I may test if the RAM load temps improve further using thermal paste instead of thermal pads on the memory ICs.

Yes I think you're right about both companies. The only thing that I find that seems somewhat contrary to that, and a bit confounding to understand why any company would subject themselves to such nonsense, is the fact that MC have a concentration of stores in the most business-unfriendly and predatory government states. That's contrary to good sense and hard to understand. It seems like a business run by people with good heads on their shoulders would do the opposite. It is anyone's guess what kind of special/secret arrangements might facilitate operations in an otherwise hostile business environment.

I so wish we could have a MicroCenter here. I don't really understand why there isn't one. There is no doubt in my mind it would be wildly successful, and Arizona is one of the most favorable venues for business due to the very conservative approach, low property taxes, super-low income tax, etc. That is why Intel, AMD, TSMC and Motorola all have huge facilities here. It is also a very tech-friendly enviornment. The state rewards businesses and business owners here rather than punish them... very similar to Texas. Now that Fry's is dead and gone they would have no competition whatsoever, unless you count Best Buy. I wouldn't count them because Best Buy generally only handles the mediocre middle-market consumer product models and components that I'd never consider buying. As a general rule, they do not stock or sell enthusiast-grade components. There are random exceptions, but few and far between. https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/8888/new-stores#latest

Hmm, that's very bad. I have been impressed with the Unify-X so far, but if this level of abject incompetence and service failure is what can be expected from MSI, I am not sure that I will ever consider their brand again going forward. What sucks is the reality that we are left with ASUS, and that doesn't seem better to me (due to truly horrible service and crappy QC). And, the one viable alternative is EVGA, offering excellent products, excellent service, but severely overpriced merchandise, limited stock availability and consistently late release of products. It really feel like everything relating to technology is circling the drain.

Vikings don't have igloos. They have ice castles.

Nothing in mobile computing is worth a damn now. The entire market is 100% saturated with worthless dung from the cheapest to the most expensive option. Even if money were no object, there is not one single option worthy of consideration. The most exotic "high performance" option money can buy is an emasculated, pathetic, ridiculous BGA piece of trash that nobody should waste their money on. Ditto on the cheapest. Throw-away filth... all of it.

Because 99 out of 100 people buying laptops are idiots, and 100 out of 100 companies selling them care about what those 99 idiots are going to spend their money on. It doesn't matter if it is a piece of crap as long as the sheeple buy it, and if they think it's cute and it meets the approval of their flock on Facepoot it will sell like smiley-faced pancakes with sprinkles on top

Well, it took 15 days (ordered 4/25) but I finally got shipment confirmation and tracking information from Supercool Computer on the 12th Gen direct die block. The Bykski RAM water block should be arriving from Aliexpress around Friday.

It is unfortunate to have to provide support for such pathetic turdbook feces, but excrement is all we are left with at this point in time. Being a pile of dung is a pre-requisite for mobile computing devices. That they are is simply taken for granted.

It looks like Brother @Prema is getting some much-deserved publicity on LTT. Mentioned about 14:25 in video.

No, I am not saying Winderpz 8.X is better. It's not. Winduhz 11 has more cancer because it is newer, so from a purely technical perspective Winduhz 11 is worse. It is slightly less ugly than Winderpz 8.X. Both are hideous, but 8.X is more like a tablet/smartphone OS aesthetically so that makes it uglier to me. But, both are unacceptable products, so six of one, half-dozen of the other. Both are reflections of incompetence and stupidity on the part of their creator.

I am sorry, I do not. I hated Windows 8.X almost as much as I loathe Windows 11 and Windows ME so I did not save any product keys, ISO files or drivers for it. Deleting those files gave me great pleasure. It was an ungodly pile of **** OS. Windows 11 is insanely ugly, and a close second place, but I have to say that Windows 8.X was take-my-breath-away, give-me-a-bucket and puke-o-rama level of ugly. An unfortunate reflection on the imbeciles that produce disgusting trash like this. It is probably ludicrous for us to expect anything better from a tech company whose President and CEO is a ~53 year old woman from China. Not exactly PC enthusiast material. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it is very unlikely. She would have to be an extremely rare individual, truly exceptional, (like us,) and I see nothing to suggest we should believe that based on how she runs a company, or how the products turn out that her company produces. To the contrary.

Well, it only makes sense that with so many clowns and monkeys in control that the tech landscape would become a circus. The Macro$lop Monkeys admire the failures of the Cupertino Clown Posse. Children love clowns and monkeys.

They can't won't even do something as simple as securing the border, so it would be foolish to think that they would be inclined to be bothered with the notion of worrying about how dangerous big tech has become. Doing the exact opposite of what makes sense is probably part of the strategy.

It is nice to see the prices going lower, but I cannot really muster any excitement about an AMD product. The risk of being disappointed with the outcome is too great IMHO. I already let my impressions of impressive-looking 5950X benchmarks cloud my better judgment and I haven't stopped regretting it. They were impressive benchmarks, but the overall ownership experience was lousy enough to spoil it. I don't have any basis to believe anything other than the same thing wouldn't happen with an AMD GPU.

So, to be clear, all new devices will ship with a new version of W11 that includes "Smart App Control" and they (the Remond Mafia) want existing W11 users to wipe and do a clean install of W11 that includes this Nazi filth so that Macro$lop can dictate what applications will be "allowed" to run on W11. You can disable it. Should not have to. Shouldn't exist in the first place. BUT, if you decide to turn it back on for some bizarre reason, you'll have to do another clean install. Yeah... I don't think so. Not only no, but hell no. Winduhz 10/11 Kool-Aid drinkers really need to watch this video, but I know most of them won't and some that do with rationalize that the things talked about are OK. Sad times, with even sadder days ahead. The stupid sheeple that surround us are a danger to themselves and to the rest of us.

They could make LTSC widely available to accomplish that, but then they would lose money because they would have less stolen data and personal information to sell or use for targeted marketing, business intelligence, etc. The bigger issue for me is the fact that I no longer view them as being an entity that is worthy of any trust. I have basically zero confidence that they have the best interests of those that use their products at the forefront of how they conduct themselves. And, that concern doesn't even speak to the issue of their lack of intelligence in product design and the low level of competence they demonstrate.

Macro$oft Winduhz 11 Stalin Edition

@johnksss also, this specific Realtek USB Audio driver that is bundled with the AMD drivers found in the first post at Win7/8.1 Drivers for USB 3.0/3.1 Controllers of new AMD Chipset Systems [win-raid] works fine as well and has all of the normal driver configuration options are present and accounted for. Maybe not on ASUS mobos, (not clear on that,) but working fine for other brands.

Stange that the temperatures are suddenly good for no explainable reason. Enjoy it while it lasts. 🙂

As expected, Windows 7 memory performance is better. No surprise here, since almost everything works better on Windows 7 as long as you can find a driver that works for it. Speaking of drivers... Brother @johnksss when you eventually get your mobo situation sorted with the numbskulls at MSI, I finally found a Realtek USB Audio ALC4080 driver that works for Windows 7. My surround sound works and everything now. I found a Dell Dock driver that is OS agnostic and used the "Have Disk" method to install it. Docks_Stands_Driver_08CKK_WN32_6.3.9600.2215_A15_03.EXE

I don't really have a lot of spare time because of work. I have access to the forum while I work and take breaks to do what I enjoy. I have been in the same industry for more than 35 years. I could end up having to work to age 75 because my retirement nest egg that I have pinched and scraped so hard to prepare for that has lost so much value the past few months, so that will likely end up looking more like 50 years. Find something you are good at and don't hate doing, then do it consistently to the best of your ability and that will take you far. It is difficult to find employees that consistently produce great work, care about their job, are reliable and trustworthy. If you are that way for yourself or a company, you will be successful. The hard part for good employees is finding a good company. They're sometimes as difficult to find just as good employees are. Some are good for a while, then put bad leaders in place and ruin a good thing. I think there is a lot of truth to the old cliche that "people don't leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses." What I've learned over the years is if you have a truly bad boss, wait a bit if they're not so horrible or abusive that you just can't tolerate them. If he/she is truly horrible, they probably won't be your boss for long unless you also work for a horrible company.