Mr. Fox

If they made it redeemable for in-store credit on the next purchase over $1,000 within 12 months it might be more palatable from a customer perspective. I'd consider it to be an advance down-payment on a buying spree planned ahead of a desirable product launch. But, then they wouldn't get money for nothing. That might defeat the purpose of what they are trying to accomplish if their goal is to get money for nothing.

Sorry that happened to you. That really sucks, bro. I hope it gets sorted soon. You must have stood too close to me or something and got my bad luck cooties, LOL. In all seriousness though, we all have more to be thankful for than to be upset about, but sometimes I have to intentionally remind myself that my circumstances could certainly be worse. It is not pleasant when things get screwed up, but bad situations that are temporary are always better than those that are permanent.

Great for the Geek Squad. They get their $200 annual fee even if you don't get to buy what you wanted. Shizzle my nizzle... must be nice to be them, LOL.

Fortunately, I don't use smartphones for that many purposes and don't find much practical use in having a wide variety of apps. I don't really enjoy using them for anything. Even when texting, I use Google Messages to send and receive text/SMS on my phone using a computer as the primary interface as often as possible. The most common uses of my smartphone is 2FA, phone calls and a platform for routing of SMS that I access from my computer. I find using a smartphone for web browsing and email to be an inefficient and often less than pleasing experience due to the form factor limitations. The small screen and compromised visual capabilities of the tiny display run a close second to touch input on my scale of undesirableness.

Given a choice, I will always choose a hardware keyboard over a slimy touch display. I don't care for touch input on anything, but I tolerate it on smartphones only due to the lack of viable alternatives. I find it unacceptable--even going as far as calling it repulsive--on a computer. I don't even like using a touchpad on a computer for input and avoid it whenever possible. Keyboard and mouse FTW.

Wow, that is totally cray-cray. So, pay them an annual membership fee of $200 for the privilege of buying a GPU, if you need one. That's a creative way of scalping... I'll give them credit for creativity. Hey Geek Squad...

Looks like RockitCool has the 12th Gen delid kit now and temps are good. Sorry the author of the video has such an annoying personality and communication style.

@sk was his forum handle

Yes, I agree. I really do not like wireless networking and never use it if I can avoid it. But, wiring a house after it is built also isn't something fun to do. I can understand why you are using WiFi for that reason.

OnePlus 8T. Root access.

Man, that is a ton of drive/storage space.

Yep. In fact, there is even a special uninstall tool that is needed to remove it that often requires you to run it, reboot and run it again. Unfortunately, they also intertwined Aura software into it and you can no longer install Aura RGB as a standalone utility that you run only on-demand. It is one of the most unforgivable sins that ASUSTeK has committed in the past few years that shows how idiotic and out of touch they have become. It is worse than the control center garbage that is common on laptops. It is like a virus. They no longer support the standalone Aura utility and I have found that the most recent (now unsupported) version of Aura will not even function on newer versions of Windows 10. It will still work flawlessly on Windows 7 and LTSC 2019, but will not launch on 20H2 or newer. (I have not tried it on any W10 versions between 1809 and 20H2.) https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/14Utilities/Armoury_Crate_Uninstall_Tool.zip Here is a good comparison to illustrate. The previously shared screenshot is my work OS and the one below is my personal use OS on the same computer. "Newer is better" LOL. NOT! ¡Armory Crate es un montón de mierda!

Screensnip on the left is with all of the Armory Crate services stopped. The one on the right is with all of the bloat running in the background.

This is what happens when manufacturers confuse gamer kids with performance PC enthusiasts. They are as different as night and day. While it is possible to be both an avid gamer and a performance PC enthusiast, I think it is generally more common that the latter is both rather than the former. Gamers tend to focus on form more than function, and that shows in the mediocre specs found in the majority of the prebuilt "gaming desktops" and "gaming laptops" that many of us would view as pathetic novelty products that we would never waste money on.

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?