Mr. Fox

iCUE seems like a lightweight portable app compared to the extreme over-the-top and utterly absurd level of bloatware garbage called Armory Crate. Filth on that order of magnitude should be illegal. The fact that it is UWP feces distributed through the Micro$lop Store makes it even more diabolical. I have the Armory Crate digital dumpster installed on my work OS on Banshee. It has no less than 22 processes running in the background and it squanders gobs of memory and CPU cycles to support a butt-load of silly crap.

Dang, that is pretty skanky looking. Hard to imagine that level of neglect occurring, but it is not the first time I have seen it. Although, it is not usually something I would expect to see where it involves components one would find in a gamer's or overclocking enthusiast's system. I have only seen it really bad like that on systems owned by people that don't know anything technical about computers. Once upon a time, that was an enthusiast-level GPU.

Thank you for asking. Mrs. Fox is on the mend, going to physical therapy three days per week as the fractures in her shoulder continue to heal.

I've been unpredictable at times, and I seldom say never because I don't like the flavor of crow meat. The awesome-looking Cinebench scores are certainly tempting. But, I can't see myself spending ~$2000 for an upgrade anytime soon though. I've already blown enough money on PC garbage in the past 6 months to last me a couple of years and right now the thought of spending more and ending up regretful all over again for having done it makes me feel nauseous. The smartest purchase I made was buying the golden 10900K from Brother @Talon and we know how that ended. They say lightning never strikes twice in the same spot, but I think I should wait for the dark clouds to burn off before I go back outside again.

👍 Yes, I have to admit that my Strix Z490-H is actually pretty decent as well. As long as I don't push the CPU crazy high on the clocks/voltage and overload the VRMs it does a wonderful job. I run it at 5.3GHz on all cores with the RAM at 4400 CL16 all day for work and it never misses a beat.

I used up my quota of rep for the day already, so 👍. It wouldn't be so bad if the price was roughly the same and you didn't have to pay a lot more for essentially the same performance. But having to pay a whole lot more when you don't actually benefit from it kind of sucks. I guess in a way it kind of makes sense because if they made high-end enthusiast motherboards that used DDR4 they would probably have a really hard time getting DDR5 adoption off the launch pad. Nobody would be willing to pay extra for it to only get the new CPU and motherboard if they were not forced into it. But it still feels kind of shady since you're spending a lot not getting much.

I turns out they did do such a video. I agree that the "Settings" app is better. But, that is the only improvement IMHO. Certainly not enough in light of all of the drawbacks to make downgrading to Windows 11 something I would consider worth doing. The disadvantages eclipse the one or two benefits. Yeah, I hear you, bro. I made the decision that any games that I want to play that require a version of Windows I am not interested in are games that I will skip over. I am not willing to compromise what I want in an OS for the sake of playing a game. But, that's me. I do not expect everyone to feel the same way about it.

Interesting... It's too bad they don't sell any enthusiast-grade Z690 boards that use DDR4. That would make upgrading more attractive at this point. It kind of begs the question at this point "what are they really selling" and whether or not DDR5 is the computer equivalent of snake oil. It looks like the memory clocks need to be a whole lot higher than they currently are before it will represent anything meaningful in terms of performance progress.

Has anyone see what benchmark scores look like for Z690 / 12900K with a mobo that accepts DDR4 memory? I am curious to what degree DDR5 is actually moving the needle on performance at this early point in its development. It is hard to get used to looking at such high memory timings and think of them as being good or normal.

That is getting very close to X299 quad channel memory performance. Nice! What sticks are those?

Yes, that is great news. I have been running the 50/50 automotive antifreeze for a while and it seems to be good for me, too. I have noticed on this and several other forums that uploading an image to the forum servers causes it to be downsized and will not zoom to the original image size. So, when being able to view details is important I upload them to imgur and use the tags img and /img enclosed in brackets with a direct link to the full sized image so that it will zoom to the original size.

I can't really tell from the image because it doesn't blow up to full zoom. Is there any damage you are showing? Are you using 50/50 automotive antifreeze? That is what I am using in my loop.

Brother @Papusan is such a lucky guy. Maybe we should have him buy our CPUs for us in Norway and ship them to us. The Viking gods smile down on him from Valhalla. 🙂

Certainly. My pleasure. It's not hard to want to hang out with people you have enjoyed being around for more than a decade... some have been friends for about 15 years.

Thanks. I can't give you a rep for the prompt reply for the reason I asked the question, LOL. But, it's the thought that counts. I would have if I could have. 👍

Oh, yeah... it is way lots worse on Home and Pro version. Bloat City. Unacceptable. Hey Brother @Reciever can we do away with this limitation? It is pretty annoying to not be able to give a reaction after using up a daily quota.

This is the second time you have had a Hydro Copper KPE block to RMA if memory serves me correctly. Didn't one of the 2080 Ti KPE Hydro Copper blocks spring a leak on you as well? Sorry to hear that this happened, Brother John. Glad it didn't destroy anything else in the process. I took apart my own 3090 KPE Hydro Copper to clean the inside of it this weekend. It was a terrible pain in the butt; almost as horrible as the 2080 Ti FTW3 Hydro Copper was. It really feels like EVGA does this on purpose to keep people from taking them apart, which makes no sense at all. People need to be able to maintain the products they buy and taking apart a waterblock for cleaning is normal maintenance. When I needed to clean the 2080 Ti FTW3 Hydro Copper block a second time, I learned from EVGA that they did not sell replacement o-rings for Hydro Copper blocks, so I sold it and replaced it with an EKWB GPU block. Unfortunately, the Kingpin model has only two options available, both difficult to acquire because of limited availability and both overpriced. Getting the o-ring back in place was a complete nightmare. The plexi has a shallow groove for it and it tries to pop out of the groove. The groove would be better in the metal block rather than in the plexi. The o-ring is also very thin, which is why the groove is so shallow. The first time I reassembled it and leak-tested it had a leak because the o-ring slipped a tiny bit. Everything turned out fine in the end, but it was far more hassle than it should have been. This makes me angry, and causes me to think it would be best to avoid buying enthusiast grade video cards in the future and stick with less expensive generic reference PCB GPUs with multiple waterblock options and just shunt mod and voltage mod them for better overclocking. I canceled the order I had for the OptimusPC KPE block because I got tired of waiting after several months and no ETA being offered. I am considering ordering one again and waiting as long as it takes, but the leaking problem @fragility_V1 mentioned in EVGA forum about his OptimusPC KPE block is a bit concerning. Trying to decide now, because I don't want to have to take apart the Hydro Copper again. I am scared I will end up with nothing if the o-ring is damaged and EVGA won't sell me one. One thing I noticed when taking apart the 3090 KPE Hydro Copper is that none of the screws on the front of it were tight. I wonder if yours leaked because the screws are loose or because of a crack? The o-ring is so thin and the groove that holds it in place so shallow that loose screws could allow it to move out of place under pressure.

Have you checked to see if there is any kind of BIOS setting that can be disabled related to detecting a "non-genuine" AC adapter or battery.

For $20 or less, a USB micro-dongle would fix that for you in a jiffy. If you can disable the WiFi 6 hardware in the BIOS it will also free up some system resources that the inconspicuous USB solution doesn't require.

If you haven't rolled back already, using StartIsBack for Windows 11 will fix a few of the unforgivable aesthetic atrocities associated with the taskbar, Start Menu and context menu. Rolling back to Windows 10 is probably the better solution though. I use StartIsBack for Windows 10 as well, because I don't like the Windows 10 Start Menu.

Same here. I was quick to adopt it, and gave it plenty of time to show me it was the right choice. It wasn't, so I kicked it to the curb. I view it as trash, but it certainly wasn't for a lack of hope that it would not be.

If they did a video on what doesn't suck about Windows 11 it would be shorter than a YouTube commercial, LOL. For Windows 10 it would be maybe 10 seconds longer. They both suck, but Window 11 sucks more. Aesthetic atrocities aside, the people that like it are only looking on the surface. The payload of utter trash and worthless bloat these digital abortions carry is nothing short of phenomenal. Roughly half of the 120+ services running in the background by default are unnecessary. May of them are present to support the Redmond Retards' stupid sheeple gimmicks, data collection, spying and control freak fetishes. Debloating newer versions of Winduhz 10/11 helps to minimize the feces, but still isn't enough because the trash is too deeply embedded. Both of these are debloated and optimized, but look at the payload of filth that remains on the newer trash OS.

I have the Strix on Banshee and I have owned more Asus than EVGA. I probably will going forward as well. Find the setting in your bios to disable Intel Management Engine. Also find the BIOS setting to disable the download of Armory Crate. I also disable the second NIC, WiFi and BT in BIOS, as having them installed wastes CPU clock cycles. I use the drivers that come with the mobo and generally never update them. Choose one of your BIOS chips for testing firmware versions and leave the other position alone using the firmware that shipped from the factory with your motherboard. Firmware updates are generally unimportant and of no value, but with DDR5 being new you may need them. With dual or triple BIOS you don't have to worry about firmware screwing up your system. Although you should be leery and try to avoid IME firmware update filth. Better to just disable it in BIOS PCH options if you can. It provides absolutely nothing of value in terms of functionality and having it disabled seems to give a minor improvement in performance. If the menu to disable Intel ME is hidden in the stock ASUS BIOS a mod may be needed to expose it because ASUS is not trustworthy when it comes to kissing Micro$lop's butt. Intel ME does not serve any useful purpose for us.

Spamming F8 during POST before the handoff from BIOS to OS should bring up the boot options menu to select the bootable USB.

Looks good. I am looking forward to your overclocking results. The AIO pump/block looks like a very tight fit near the VRM heat sink.