Mr. Fox

I think we are always going to have one Intel or AMD CPU that shines in one area and stumbles in another depending on what the scenario is. The Core Ultra crap works really good for some things, but for most games that's not one of those things it excels at. Sadly, P-core overclocking is another thing Core Ultra sucks at, and it is the exact opposite of its predecessor. The X3D chips will be better at some things, but worse at others, etc. What the dual-CCD Ryzen chips need is for both CCDs to be equal bin quality (not one good CCD and one weaker trash bin CCD) and X3D CPUs need both CCDs usable for all things at all times. To be great, dual CCD Ryzen CPUs and the new Core Ultra CPUs need to function the same way a monolithic CPU functions. The hybrid nature of all of the new processors, including 12th, 13th and 14th Gen Intel and dual CCD Ryzen processors is their Achilles Heel. Both brands have too many areas where things have been compromised for one reason or another. Having one weak CCD is not remarkably different in practical application than having E-cores next to P-cores. The outcome is compromised in either scenario. Overall, I'm still favoring my LGA-1700 i9 processors for all-around use and general overclocking. But regardless of any of that, what I can say is that I am very pleased with the 9950X in general terms so far. It is a very solid, performant and dependable CPU that has none of unwelcomed misery-factor nonsense that only a fanboy could tolerate such as the case was with the 5950X abortion that ruined my day almost every day for months. Even if I don't end up liking the 9950X as much as 13900KS or 14900KF/KS I haven't encountered anything that would make me say bad things about it or recommend someone avoid buying it that is considering it. To be fair, I won't be able to render any verdict on which one I like best before the 9950X is delidded and bare die. To be transparent, I don't love any of my Intel CPUs that much until they have been subjected to the same kind of thermal remediation. Comparing a delidded and bare die 14900KF/KS to an unmodified 9950X is not a fair comparison and like comparing apples to oranges.

I just got a FedEx tracking number today from Thermal Grizzly, so I will likely do the delid within a week or so. It will be interesting to see what kind of difference it makes. Right now I have pushed it as far as I can on the 9950X overclock due to thermal issues. I left the window open all night with everything turned off in the office. It was 48°F in my office when I fired it up for that Cinebench run, so it could run a little bit higher turbo clock. What I don't know (yet) is whether 5.4GHz all-core is only thermally limited or if the CPU silicon quality is tapped out. The voltage under load isn't bad (like 1.225V) at 54x32 (equal on both CCDs) but the temps sure are. The 13900KS/14900KS/KF would be like 1.150V and 65-70°C at 54xP/45xE instead of 100°C. Ryzen is a very different critter. I am not sure why it runs as hot as it does at a comparatively low clock speed and voltage. Maybe it is because the CCDs and IHS are so small in comparison. I was surprised by how small the 9950X is comared to a 14900K. The thermal density is very compact, so the higher temperatures are possibly logical. Even idle temperatures seem higher. What is interesting, and very different, if the 9950X crashes in Cinebench R23 due to heat or voltage too low and I run it again it completes with like 50% of the normal score, but the clocks and voltage show the same. It doesn't throttle the clocks, but it is like there is an internal safety mechanism kicking in to throttle the performance to 50% of normal. Rebooting corrects it, but closing and reopening Cinebench does not. Not saying that is bad or good, just an interesting observation. Now @Reciever is the proud owner of that CPU.

I think they are the brand to watch now. I'd love to see them displace A$$zeus in the mobo, GPU and PSU space. They've come a very long way in the past 2 or 3 years. Winduhz 11 just cannot overtake Windoze 10. It's getting close, but it's not quite there. Nor shall it ever be.

Finally had a few minutes to get Linux up and running on the Ryzen build.

Gothic Metal 🤘 Ambient Something else

Gosh, what is going on with PC tech stuff? I guess they take turns being kings of failure. Clearly, this is user error, but there is a popular mentality of trying to making companies responsible for the stupidity, ignorance and incompetence of the people that buy their products. I ordered the TG heatspreader (I think @jaybee83 has one) to see how the temps using that compare with the Mycro Pro direct die block.

🤣

They are preparing their own autopsy report and signing their own death certificate. Turdbooks, sure, whatever, I literally don't care about anything mobile even a little bit. This is totally unacceptable on any Z or X series desktop motherboards. EXCELLENT example of why rushing to flash firmware just because an update exists exhibits the pinnacle of stupidity and the apex of ignorance. If enabling LN2 mode restores the feature without goofing up something else it will be OK overall. I always ran all of my Dark motherboards in LN2 mode 24/7 without issue. HOWEVER the idea of enabling LN2 mode freaks some people out enough that it could cause serious irreparable harm to Intel. The bottom line is if the new Core Ultra CPUs are so fragile this idiotic safeguard is necessary to avoid damaging them then they are not a good purchase decision. Having unlimited power limits should do absolutely nothing to the CPUs unless they have been designed to be fragile rather than resilient as Intel CPUs have always been famous for. They were always hard to kill, even if you were deliberately trying to.

What makes me the most sad is there are actually real-life, living, breathing human beings that care about that. Bless their hearts. 🤣

Got the latency down a little bit more.

I am looking forward to it. der8auer has a 9950X delid video and it does seem to. What I don't know yet, obviously, is how much the temperature reduction will give me the additional overclocking headroom. I hope it does.

This is informative for an Intel person trying to deal with the complexity of tuning a Ryzen platform. I found it useful. The levers and buttons might have different labels on them, but I expect some of this will be conceptually applicable to the non-monolithic contraptions we will see from Intel going forward. 😟😑 Bigger efforts with comparatively smaller rewards than what we have grown accustom to. I have a kit of the new G.SKILL 8000 Neo (Expo) heading my way. This will hopefully be well-suited for the Zen5 X870 platform and less effort needed for RAM overclocking. It seems that Ryzen does better with 16GB modules than it does with 24GB.

What is it and who is it going to? 27 pounds of awesomeness.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that I "transitioned over to AMD" at this point. That could happen still (as noted by @electrosoft in the post above yours) but not yet. The only reason(s) I considered this was because Core Ultra isn't an upgrade and I wanted to give AMD another chance to do something right in my eyes. I want both companies to be successful, but my preference among the platforms in my possession is still leaning in favor of Intel. But, only slightly. If the next generation of Core Ultra isn't better than what they gave us this time (in terms of P-core overclocking headroom and overall core/thread count) then that is going to make me think long and hard about what my future is for me with the Intel brand. What makes it dangerous for Intel is that overall I am satisfied with this "not Intel" setup so far and I am not a brand fanboy. I won't buy anything based on who manufactured it. That's dangerous for any company that doesn't produce products and services that I like or want because I don't care about any of them at a personal level, or their brand(s). I only care about what's in it for me. End of story. I do not "love" the way anything is going now. The 9950X and X870E seems very solid and performs really well, but it runs hot and doesn't have much overclocking headroom. At the end of the day I am in this only for overclocking and benching. If that goes the way of the dodo bird, then I am probably going to be done with considering myself a PC enthusiast. And, the Green Goblin, while producing the best flagship GPUs, are just dishonest pocket pirates and their GPUs kind of suck at overclocking now the same as Radeon GPUs do. Things could be better overall, and have been. Today's world is not a great place for those that love overclocking. There is far too much control over end user access, too much firmware castration, too many shenanigans and compromises going on with every brand now. I am eager to see if I can eek out a bit more from the 9950X after I have decapitated it and gone bare die. I am hoping I can get it to 57x or 58x all core. That's going to be a challenge, but it could happen. It probably needs more coldness than what a chiller can deliver to hit 60x all core. But, I could be wrong if the delid drops the temps as much as it does for Intel. I hope so. We shall see. My next build, if there even is one, will likely be something like your Dominus Xeon setup. That would be fun, and computers are just boring tools to me apart from this sport. Like hammers and screwdrivers.

That is a good plan. We both own the best already. Unless you're a gamer that wants to use opportunistic core boosting for single core 6.0GHz+ to degrade or kill your CPU and cook it with an air cooler or cheap AIO just because that is popular. In that case, maybe it's not the best option. Those kiddos should consider a console, i5 or entry-level X3D.

It's too early to say to what degree I like it. I can say that I don't "hate it" like I did the 5950X. I knew within 48 hours that the X570 Crosshair VIII Hero and 5950X purchase was a terrible choice with severe regrets. It's definitely not bad. Apart from higher Cinebench scores (where it clearly wins) I don't think it is as good overall as my LGA-1700 i9 CPUs are, but it's also not far behind. I can say that I am happier than I expected I would be. So far, so good. This would be the first AMD product that I can honestly say that I am pleased with, and I am very happy to be able to say that. It was very demoralizing to always be disappointed and feel like a sucker in the past. I have always desired for them to be successful and gave them chances to change my mind because it benefits everyone if both red and blue teams can be successful. I think they finally scored a win in my book without needing to be superior to the Apex and 14900KS. Close enough to be compelling for sure. As I grow more acquainted with things I will probably like it more than I do already, and I haven't identified anything terrible. It does have more functional limitations in terms of overclocking than my Intel systems have. I am being cautious about pushing it too far because I have no idea if Ryzen is resilient as Intel CPUs are and I don't want to kill it with my lack of experience with the platform. I suspect Core Ultra has even more functional limitations, so at this point I think it was a better decision than going with Core Ultra, but that could change with the next generation after Intel is done with the guinea pig phase. Am I going to delid it and run bare die? Hell yeah. Absolutely. It's way too hot to leave it how it is. Every bit as hot-running as 13900/14900K/KF/KS, and hotter at lower voltage and less watts. People complaining about overclocked Intel CPUs running hot haven't tried pushing their Ryzen 9 system to the edge yet, LOL. It runs very hot, just like the Intel CPUs do. It does run cooler stock, but that doesn't count because I don't give a rat's butt about that. I will probably order a der8auer Delid Die Mate and AMD Mycro direct die block in December or January, once I am done figuring out how things work. It's very different than what I am used to in terms of overclocking. I am not there yet. Hard to figure things out when there are so few AMD overclockers, and the few that there are don't share much in terms of technical knowledge. So far I haven't found any detailed overclocking tutorials like we are so used to seeing with Intel. Most of the threads with "overclocking" in the title are just people chewing the fat about gamer nonsense and very mediocre on the technical side of things. Everyone seems focused on playing games with very modest overclocking involved. I moved it from the test bench to the case where the Apex Encore was installed and I am preparing the Apex Encore and Velocita for their new owner(s). Someone we all know and love is getting a once in a lifetime sweet deal on some golden silicon. 🙂 I really like this Carbon motherboard and especially the new MSI BIOS design. It is very good. Here is a crummy smartphone photo. In spite of the poor image quality, the system looks really good. There are four things MSI could have done better on the mobo. First off, 4-DIMM DDR5 high end motherboards are stupid regardless of what platform or who makes them. So dumb. Second, the 8-pin PCIe auxillary power socket is in an idiotic place. I have a dual NVMe card in the bottom slot and I had to leave the heat sink off the NVMe closest to the motherboard because of interference. Second, the power and reset buttons at the bottom is less desirable than they would be at the top. On an open bench it does not matter. In a case it makes no sense having them there. The last thing was having two Gen5 M.2 slots. That was stupid. I have one Gen5 slot I can't use because I am not willing to cut the GPU down to x8 for the sake of having the slot filled. I still think it is a great motherboard and a good choice considering most of the alternatives are inferior or grossly overpriced (A$u$ pricing is as ludicrous as it gets.) A personal gripe is that it has WiFi 7, which is only a good thing if you plan to run Winduhz 11. There are no Windoze 10 drivers for WiFi 7, same as there are no Windows 7 drivers for WiFi 6. That sucks, but it's not an MSI issue. If I ever used WiFi (and I do not) I would be pulling the WiFi 7 module and replacing it with something older and more compatible with OSes I care about. Everything about you is special, and in a good way Brother @Rage Set. 🙂 Not the Dana Carvey "Church Lady" special, but awesome kind of special.

Well, I love my LGA-1700 i9 CPUs. They're the best. Literally. Guys like us do not need the newer-but-not-better "efficient" feces. This is a big brother power play. It's none of their business and they need to butt-out. But, we may not have to worry about the tree-hugger clown posse much longer because Sleepy Joe and Kamel Toe get booted soon. Their countless failures have been duly noted, measured and found wanting. You know that Big Tech is overrun with extreme left save the planet nutjobs, right? That's what is driving all of this irrational "efficiency" nonsense. They have to make electronics more efficient to offset the utterly ludicrous GOBS of electricity the electric cars they want to cram up all of our butts would leach off of the grid and drive everyone's electric bills into oblivion. As we know... can't fix stupid.

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. 🤣

Absolutely. 💯

To whatever degree it is helpful... this is TeamGroup Xtreme 8200.

Looks like the voltage readings are not accurate. 🤷‍♂️ https://hwbot.org/submission/5686971_ #2 https://hwbot.org/submission/5686976_ #4

Red, blue or purple... but no less dangerous.

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686810_

https://hwbot.org/submission/5686787_ https://hwbot.org/submission/5686781_