Mr. Fox

When I first switched to EVGA from ASUS the BIOS was the difficult thing to get used to, but I really miss it now. ASUS and MSI BIOS has more silly crap on the menus, but the simplicity, functionality and results from EVGA Dark mobo firmware really leaves everything else in the dust. As long as everything is maxed out the way it should be, who give a rat's butt if you can see it on a menu. I know I don't. One less stupid thing that I need to fart around with disabling or maxing out to get the results I want. I also appreciate the fact that their software hasn't been farmed out to the whoredom of the Micro$lop Store like the deplorable filth from MSI and ASUS. Some people need to lose their jobs and a few limbs at MSI and ASUS for allowing that kind of idiotic crap to occur. Comparing their frequent demonstrations of abject incompetent nonsense with the better product quality and much better service and support, EVGA really is a no-brainer for me. I won't pass judgment on MSI until we see how this plays out, but I can't imagine them being any more sucky than ASUS. I certainly hope not. I love the Unify-X mobo. When it works right it is fantastic.

Remember that even guys doing extreme overclocking on LN2 usually don't use anything more than a 120mm fan blowing on VRMs, so that 160-175W should be fine with what you are planning. Even 200W isn't all that much power to need to deal with if done right. I would be surprised if what you are planning doesn't turn out to be more than enough. Hard to say if the heatpipe with no radiator on the cold end would be adequate, but it might be if there is ample air circulation around the heat pipe.

I can see already that the dipsticks at MicroStar are going to give the retarded clowns running the ASUS dumpster fire a run for their money on sucky service. Open a ticket on the web and wait for them to care enough to act. Bastards. I am just not in the mood for one of their clusters right now. I should have done this in the first place, but definitely not very intelligent at the original ludicrous MSRP of $830. Now that the price is $330 less it's worth the extra $50-75~ over the cost of the product I purchased from one of their inferior competitors. It kind of sucks that I am going to lose a couple of M.2 NVMe slots, but I will replace them with SATA SSD (spare parts) with no regrets. Had this been an EVGA failure it would be totally resolved by Monday or Tuesday and I bet I don't even hear from these numbnuts before then. I should be able to sell the free backpack for enough to at least offset the sales tax. If and when MicroStar makes it right then I will have to decide whether to sell the Z690 Strix D4 or Unify-X.

It will probably work fine. VRMs are not as difficult to keep cool as a CPU or GPU, so any way you give the heat a path off the VRM is going to bring improvement. Just a fan blowing on them is enough in some cases.

Here's the latest from 5FDP.

Nice! I need an unlocked vBIOS for my Quadro P5000 16GB GPU that would make it functionally the same as a 1080 (same chip, but not clock and TGP crippled like the Quadro).

I have a P5000 16GB GPU in my Precision 17. Do you know if there is an unlocked vBIOS available for that?

Thanks for the suggestion. I just checked it out. All of the pins look good using a powerful magnifying glass. Also everything really clean. No fuzz, dust or thermal paste on anything. I put everything back together, not overly tight on the CPU frame or water block and still have the same issue... code 55 and the RAM LED stays lit until I remove the DIMM from slot #2. It was certainly worth investigating. I can tell MSI that I already checked that if they ask. Considering the totally random odd behavior I have experienced with this board, this may have been the root cause of it, including the memory getting the SPD corrupted during the firmware flash. What triggered the misbehavior was removing and replacing RAM modules, so that is probably not a coincidence if something is wrong with that slot. A few weeks ago I had this code 55 problem for a few minutes without making any changes, but the system automatically reset and cleared NVRAM all by itself, then it automatically started working again.

I will try that and see if anything changes. I had not disturbed anything with the CPU, but that might not mean anything necessarily.

Well, I guess I am in for some fun now with MSI. DIMM #2 slot seems to have crapped out on my Unify-X. It can't boot with RAM in that slot, only DIMM #1 slot works. I have a gut feeling that this also somehow relates to the SPD corruption that happened when I flashed BIOS A60 over a month ago. MSI just blew me off and said that can't happen and told me to RMA the memory. I hope they don't give me a bunch of crap like they did Brother @johnkssswhen he had his MSI RMA fiasco. I have carefully examined the slot in bright light with a 10x magnifying glass and can't see anything physically wrong with it. There is no debris, nothing broken and no contact pins out of place. I went ahead and cleaned the slot with a lint-free alcohol prep pad and I tested other memory modules. It definitely seems to be a fault with the DIMM #2 slot as far as I can tell. This just started this evening. Corsair sent me some DDR5 for a product review. I ran some tests on it... quite a few actually. I then tweaked some BIOS settings for the RAM, rebooted and it instantly stopped working with Q-code 55 (memory not installed) with that slot occupied. I swapped out the memory for my original sticks and same thing. Any of the 4 memory modules will boot in DIMM #1 slot, but as soon as I populate DIMM #2 slot the code 55 returns.

Brother @Papusan

Maybe his viewers got fed up with his irrational nonsense and gave him a bunch of crap for being an idiot. I didn't get to see it, but requested as save on the Wayback Machine. It might take a few days before it is available, but here is the URL for when it becomes viewable. https://web.archive.org/web/20220818114407/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFY54yUvh_g

Congrats. You will be the owner of a piece of history. The last true example of effort to demonstrate something that resembles excellence in an industry that now offers exclusively garbage for purchase in a mobile computing option.

Yes, it is pretty sad how limited laptops are. Wraith has 9 SSDs (5 NVMe, 1 M.2 SATA, 3 SATA SSD) and one 4TB HDD. - Windows 7, Windows 10 LTSC 2019, Windows 10 LTSC 2021, Windows 11 each on a dedicated NVMe, Linux on a SATA SSD and a 2TB NVMe for games installs. Banshee has 7 SSDs (4 NVMe, 1 M.2 SATA, 2 SATA SSD) and one 2TB HDD. - Windows 7, Windows 10 LTSC 2019, LTSC 2021, Windows 11 each on a dedicated NVMe, Linux on a SATA SSD Half-Breed has 2 1TB NVMe and a 2TB SATA SSD. - Windows 10 Pro 21H2 and Windows 10 LTSC 2019 on one NVme (512GB each OS), Windows 11 and Linux on the other NVMe (512GB each OS) and 2TB SATA SSD for data and game installs.

The 10th Gen is still available. The 11th Gen die frame sold yesterday on eBay.

There are random good deals to be had on eBay, but a lot of it is overpriced merchandise. Not just tech items, but many things on eBay are overpriced. The things that are listed at extremely good prices (too good to be true prices) are often scams. An indicator is someone with little or no tenure in their eBay membership and little or no feedback. That said, with respect to the PC tech stuff, I suspect some people are just trying to mitigate their financial loss as best they can.

I use 512GB SSDs for my OSes and 1TB or 2TB SSDs for everything else (data, games, etc.). All of my Steam, Origin, GOG, and Epic clients and games are installed on drives that are separate from the OS drive.

Yeah, you can get 2.5 inch SATA 2TB SSDs from Silicon Power, TeamGroup and Leven for less than $120 USD now, which is more that adequate for data and game drives as long as you have drive bays for it. Heck, unless I run a drive benchmark, I literally cannot tell any difference between SATA SSD and NVMe. I prefer M.2 form factor (SATA or PCIe) just because of how little space it occupies and doesn't require data or power cables in most applications. Convenience aside, I don't really care one way or the other.

I'd love to have a couple (or more) as soon as the price is equal-to or less-than four 1TB SSDs. It's nice to finally see 1TB PCIe and SATA M.2 drives in the $65~$70 USD price range. That's about where the price should be, but it certainly took a while. The price per terabyte should actually decrease as the total drive capacity increases, but right now it seems to be working in reverse on the SSDs larger than 1TB capacity.

New Linux install on my Precision 17 7720.

Definitely improved performance and thermals doing that stupid Plundervolt exploit protection removal. That never should have really been treated like a priority since it requires direct physical access to the hardware. But, I digress, since the tech industry as a whole is run by a self-anointed group of elite retards. Here is a before/after snapshot of the improvement. https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/28218183/fs/28223388# Before After

Really is kind of an abortion. It is a space hog and looks stupid. It definitely reminded me of a colostomy bag and it still does. That, or a fibroid neck tumor. And, it is totally counter-intuitive to tether a notebook to a desktop and use weird contraptions to make it slightly better when you can just put a desktop on a desktop and have everything turn out exactly as you want it. Compromise always sucks at some level, and the more you can avoid it the better off things are.

Thank you. Sorry I never responded before. I somehow totally missed your post. With Cinnamon DE the GUI works basically the same as Linux Mint with Cinnamon. I haven't noticed any differences there. Overally, I really like ZorinOS. It has a very polished feel to it. Some things about it strike me as slightly less tweakable, which is another reason I switched to Cinnamon DE. The default ZorinOS DE has limited configuration options for the panel (taskbar) and "Start" menu.

If it drops to $300-$350 then I might buy one even though it is made by AMD. At that price, it would be compelling enough to gamble.