Mr. Fox

I think all off-the-shelf GPUs that are not a K|NGP|N or Galax HOF are going to suck and fall short of their potential to some degree. The Astral we can all buy will never be all it can be with the firmware that it comes with, just as a K|NGP|N or HOF fall short with stock firmware. They are all gimped and only the Chosen Ones get special firmware for publicity stunts. The rest of us are never gifted with an opportunity to compete with the Chosen Ones because it's all rigged, planned and designed for publicity stunts. The rest of us get to practice soldering skills and are forced to rely on warranty-voiding hardware mods to try to make up for crappy firmware that comes from the factory on the overpriced lipstick on a pig products we buy in hopes of getting our money's worth.

Yes, I am sure he does know. He has to know he is our buddy and we think very highly of him. But even so, sometimes a guy feels like an underdog if everyone has a different opinion. The important thing is that a person doesn't change his opinion based only on what others think in order to have their approval or feel accepted in the echo chamber, but it is OK to change it because you have changed your mind as an exercise of your own volition.

I'm glad you don't care what other people think. That is how it should be. It only matters if it affects them and this doesn't. The fact that you like it is all that matters. There are some people that make their decisions based on what their friends think is best or coolest, (without anything else to base it on,) which is really dumb.

Yeah, I think I am going to return this kit for a refund. It performs quite well but I cannot stop it from erroring out. So far every Intel XMP 48GB kit I have tested on the AORUS B850 Elite, X870E Master, X670E Gene and X870E Apex has not been capable of being stablized and every EXPO kit has. I think I am going to stop wasting my time with XMP. Something is off with the XMP profiles that isn't good for Ryzen. What is weird is if I have stable setting with an EXPO kit and replace it with an equivalent XMP kit the stablity is gone even with the same manual memory tuned setting. I can't really explain that. There is something different. The 48GB EXPO kits are also harder to tune than 32GB EXPO kits.

@jaybee83 this just booted and ran fine with the Intel XMP-8400 profile. The only adjustment I made was maxing out tREFI and turned off GDM/PMU manual to 0. I didn't touch voltage or anything else on the memory. Even the latency is good for no tweaking and sloppy default XMP settings. Now I am going to see what Gigabyte AI Snatch does. I just discovered that. Let's see if it is a gimmick.

What do you think about the black tubing @Papusan versus clear? (I already know your answer.) I think this turned out quite nice. Very industrial and pseudo steampunk looking with the black and chrome with white LED. I am testing this kit on the AORUS Master since they claim DDR5-8600 support. I suspect these will easily support that if the motherboard and CPU are capable. Bonus: No rainbow puke and no bloatware needed to kill it.

Everything would be so much better if NVIDIA would just admit 8-pin legacy PCIe power connections are better and recommend their AIB partners go back to it. But, they'll never do that. It is hard to respect people or companies that cannot admit that sometimes change is not good and demonstrate unwillingness to correct their own mistakes. Pretending to be right when it is obvious to everyone they are wrong makes them unworthy of respect.

Looks like NVIDIA moderators removed the post. What did it say?

Give Argus Monitor a try. It works for RGB and fan controls on all of the ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards I have used it on. I disable all of the drive and temperature monitoring, system tray temperature icons and other things I do not care about (I have HWiNFO64 for that). The UI looks a little bit dated, but the important thing is that it works well for me for controlling the fans and RGB headers. It also does not need to stay running once the settings are applied.

In spite of my high ambient temps, (30°C/86°F water) this BarrowCH RAM cooler does a nice job, especially considering it is not a direct touch block. After 30 minutes of TM5 the temps were the same at about 3 minutes of TM5 with the stock garbage heating blankets, and I couldn't run more than about 5 minutes until TM5 would start spitting out errors and the modules were close to 62°C. I just couldn't see spending over $100 for another IceMan direct-touch RAM block. The 4-DIMM version has to weigh a ton as the 2-DIMM version is insanely heavy. The water temperature gauge on the RAM block also matches exactly my Thermaltake meter.

Only item remaining is the 14900KF (SP104). Everything else has sold. @YoungChris at oc.net is interested but having to scrape up the cash. It's not being held for him. First-come, first-serve. I've got a WireView and WireView Pro that I am not able to use any longer. I sold the Gigabyte 4090 that one was used on and the other one will not fit my 4090 Suprim with the new Alphacool Core waterblock. (It did fit with the Byksi block.) I will probably list both of them and the MSI 4090 Byski block. If anyone is interested before I list them drop me a PM to let me know.

^^^ This ^^^ AND, Hyperthreading. Super-retarded that they did away with that. In fact, this is the primary reason I went with an AM5 build. Had Core Ultra 285K not been missing hyperthreading I am 99% certain I would have bought A Z890 Apex and 285K instead of 9950X. They screwed themselves extra hard on that one, and customers have spoken loudly with their wallets. Overall, I still think Intel has a better platform than AMD and I am sad they've screwed it up by making stupid choices. (Why does it seem like I am saying this frequently about all brands now? Because they are all idiots. None of them deserve our support at this point, only our wrath.) Only item remaining is the 14900KF (SP104). Everything else has sold. @YoungChris at oc.net is interested but having to scrape up the cash. It's not being held for him. First-come, first-serve. I've got a WireView and WireView Pro that I am not able to use any longer. I sold the Gigabyte 4090 that one was used on and the other one will not fit my 4090 Suprim with the new Alphacool Core waterblock. (It did fit with the Byksi block.) I will probably list both of them and the MSI 4090 Byski block. If anyone is interested before I list them drop me a PM to let me know.

It seems like all of the hardware manufacturers are full of bad ideas. They are the proverbial "insane clown posse" by most measurement. Stupid is the new normal in their line of business. Maybe we should form our own posse, saddle up and go take them out. Right now we are surrounded and outnumbered by stupid, but we can use WMDs to level the playing field. Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta... the list of dishonest, crooked, stupid idiots that are only capable of stupidity is a long one. Even when they do something right it gets tainted by their abject stupidity and immorality.

Everyone that purchased parts on overclock.net has been thrilled with their purchases. Especially the guy that bought the Gene parts combo. He made out like a bandit, LOL. Nice to see good parts getting put to use instead of collecting dust on my spare parts shelf. I still have the Strix combo with the excellent bin 13900KS and G.SKILL 7200 kit and the SP104 14900KF for sale. If the Strix combo doesn't sell by the time I do the second AORUS Master build I will probably sell it locally on Facepoot Marketplace as a working system minus GPU or with the old Titan Black GPU. That would probably be better anyhow because I would have to figure out how to get rid of the Antec C8. While I am waiting for Central Computer to send a replacement for the AORUS Master that was damaged from the NVMe heatsink slamming around inside of the unopened motherboard box, the XL EVO and distro block to arrive I decided to go ahead and integrate the RAM water cooling on the existing beast. I used the EK manifold for this as I usually do, but mounted it to a new place. This will also make it easy to connect the chiller and bypass the radiators. The QDC fitting for cold water leaving the chiller is on the dual D5 pump housing (same place as before) and the "hot" water going back to the chiller will use the QDC fitting on the EK manifold. It still purging the air from the loop, but working well otherwise. So, the internal loop routes like this: D5 pump/res > RAM block in RAM block out > EK manifold EK Manifold > CPU in CPU out > EK manifold EK manifold > Top radiator Top radiator > Rear X-Flow radiator Rear X-Flow radiator > Bottom radiator Bottom radiator > IceMan Dual D5 block Dual D5 block > GPU in GPU out > D5 pump/res Using the chiller the routing will be: Chiller out > IceMan Dual D5 block Dual D5 block > GPU in GPU out > D5 pump/res D5 pump/res > RAM block in RAM block out > EK manifold EK Manifold > CPU in CPU out > EK manifold EK manifold > Chiller in

I was watching a Moore's Law is Dead video and apparently it is based on some leaked benchmarks. As long as the temps are not 100°C I would gladly buy a 4090-level AMD card for the price of a 5080 or less. So, I hope it is true, but we shall see. AMD really doesn't cater to performance enthusiasts. Their niche is more geared toward mainstream on everything.

If I had to wager I would bet that it's true because NVIDIA is who they are... control freaks. If they can find a way to screw the people that buy their products that is exactly what they will do. That's how they roll and who they are, and that is how they have been for a long time. Also one of the numerous reasons I dislike FE video cards. And, on a happier note, I ordered my second Lian Li O11D XL EVO to house the second AORUS Master. Also ordered a D5 distro block from Radikult Customs and about 12 feet of Alphacool EDPM tubing. Now I hear rumors of a 9080 XT with 32GB of GDDR7. I am so glad I didn't blow $3000+ on a 5090 already. Now it is no longer even tempting. Not caring actually feels really good.

12VHPWR or whatever popular thing they are calling today, or whatever they decide to rename it tomorrow, is truly a POS connector that never should have seen the light of day. It is a sketchty, ill-conceived, fragile, unreliable and dangerous piece of crap. Nothing they can do to it--ever--will make it a good and reliable power cable. The group at NVIDIA responsible for bringing this abortion to market need to be stripped naked and caned in public until dead, then resuscitated, their employment terminated, citizenship revoked and then deported to a far away horrible place where life is miserable.

As long as the seller is not keeping track of serial numbers in a kit you can do that. If they are they might refuse your return/refund if you keep the two best modules out of more than one memory kit. Physically there is nothing preventing that and it makes sense from a binning perspective.

Only if you think one of them is bad, or if you are concerned about one of the motherboard DIMM slots having a problem. Otherwise, I am not sure what you would accomplish. If you are not planning to use it with one stick of RAM then probably no point in finding how far it can go with one stick installed.

This is not tuned, just settings I suspected would boot and run. I haven't tried 8600 yet, but it looks like 8200 and 8400 aren't too hard, even with GDM disabled. Can probably do more enabled. I suspect 8600 will work as well. But, the performance doesn't move a lot because the CPU architecture is the bottleneck. Still impressive for a 4-DIMM board.

Well, the AORUS Master arrived damaged, so I had to reach out to Central about expediting a replacement. I just discovered it when I opened the box less than an hour ago to install it. The big NVMe heat sink below the GPU slot was loose and banging around in transit and breaking things. It is after hours for them, so probably will hear from them sometime tomorrow. On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. Ironically, October 14 is also International E-waste Day. You just can't make this stuff up.

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. Ironically, October 14 is also International E-waste Day. You just can't make this stuff up.

Depending on how hot my office is, between 90-95°C with the same BIOS settings. So, roughly 15-20°C core max reduction. Very clear and unmistakable improvement. Basically mirrored the improvement seen on the first 9950X delid/bare die upgrade. This is using the Thermal Grizzly Mycro Pro direct die block.

So, I delidded the second 9950X and, yes, nice temperature drop. 74.9°C core max in Cinebench R23.

Only items #1 and #3 remain. All other items sold.