Mr. Fox

Yes, I saw that "sold and shipped by Amazon" and almost snagged one as a knee jerk reaction because of that. Then I remembered I had already ordered the block and don't know that I could effortlessly return the Solid OC to NewEgg for a full and fast refund (probably could, usually can, but no guarantee). It would have been nice to put another $400 back in my pocket. Otherwise there would have been nothing gained by the purchase. When it comes to certain high demand items like GPUs, I think Amazon frequently pulls a fast one and sells a tiny number at the right price under their own name and then allow their scummy scalper marketplace reseller trash to gobble them up en masse so they can turn around and drill Amazon customers in the butt. Really messed up. They should not allow their marketplace resellers to purchase anything. If they are going to run a shady operation and allow a small group of special privileged garbage human beings to buy up stock to resell at inflated prices, they should at least force them to have the product shipped to them and make them move their scalping scam operations to eBay. They should also not allow resellers to call their storefront things like the "ASUS Store" or "MSI Store" or "ASRock Store" etc. when they are not an authorized reseller of the brand whose name they are using. You can often tell they are not authorized distributors when you visit their "store" and see the other trash they have for sale. That is very dishonest. When I bought my first 4090 Suprim Liquid X it was a "sold and shipped by" GPU and when I snagged it quickly it was the only one, and no resellers had any. Then within a matter of 30-45 minutes of me buying it, Amazon had none and somehow magically multiple resellers had new inventory they did not have an hour earlier at a gigantic markup over the Amazon offering. They obviously didn't have them shipped to them for resale. They merely changed ownership internally at the warehouse. That should not be allowed by Amazon and I would even go as far to say it should against the law. It is an immoral way of doing business. It is conceptually the same as buying up all of the generators and bottled water after a natural disaster and then selling everything at a massive markup over what was paid for the product. The impact is different, but it still falls into the category of taking advantage of consumers and acting in a predatory and unscrupulous manner. I know NewEgg does that to some degree, but I do not see as many blatant examples of this sort of treachery and customer abuse as I do on Amazon.

You know when A$$zeus lowers prices to reasonable levels that sales must be totally in the toilet. I bet the overpriced 5090 GPU sales have become worse than stagnant, and rightfully so with how completely absurd prices have been. I hope they all learn a lesson from this and stop making screwing their customers a primary business objective. Brother @electrosoft needs one of these.

Looks like my timing was bad on buying a 5090. Should have waited a little longer for prices to fall even further. That's the first "good" price I have seen for an AIB partner 5090. If I was confident I could quickly sell my 4090 for enough to cover the cost of that GPU and a block for it I would grab it. I really like the TUF component aesthetics. The industrial looks is a lot nicer than the ROG gamer stuff. But, the firmware is frequently inferior on TUF components. I never noticed it until just now, but that's an odd vacant space between the backplate and heatsink radiator above the fan on the end. It looks strange. I have seen in some reviews that the TUF seems to run hotter and has a less effective cooler. I wonder if that is why? They should have filled up the space with pipes and fins.

Well, both of the US sources that I normally buy from had this waterblock but they are sold out already within 2 days. I went ahead and ordered the Alphacool Core from Aquatuning in Germany before they're all gone everywhere. I learned my lesson with the 9070 XT. The block for it was in production more than a month and they sold more orders than what they produced, so I ended up in the second round of waiting for production to catch up to demand. Strike while the iron is hot, or potentially end up with nothing. Even with their totally ludicrous shipping costs it was about $10 less than total cost from either of the two US sources where I was planning to buy it. I could have saved a little bit on a Byski block but I have seen people posting online that one variation of the Bykski block that is supposed to fit this model does not because of the RGB header. One variation has a notch for it and the other one does not. Ain't nobody got time for that kind of nonsense. Plus, the 4090 Suprim Core waterblock is excellent so I know what to expect.

Happy birthday brother @Papusan!!! May today be the first day of the best year of your life, filled with blessings and happiness

Here is something I thought worth sharing. As most of us do, I absolutely despise having to install RGB software. After so many years of running external radiators I really hate having to use the motherboard headers for fan control and having to create custom fan curves in the BIOS. Monumental waste of time and energy. I grew very fond of using manual (hardware) fan speed controls. Controlling the RGB with an external device and remote is nothing new and I've been managing lighting with a hub for a long time. However, there are not a lot of options for manual fan controls. I found a hub that includes fan speed control using the same remote as the RGB. I bought a couple of these $11.99 hubs today and love them. Very simple and extremely effective. The fan speed options are low, medium and high. Not infinite speed control, but I don't give a rat's tail about that. This does exactly what I want with no fuss. Neither my RGB nor my fans are connected to the motherboard headers. Permanent static white with the press of a single button and no need for bloatware is always awesome. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DS2273B8?th=1

I have not ordered one yet. I'm waiting until the 9070 XT is delivered and I know that the buyer is happy before I spend any extra money. It is scheduled for delivery by USPS on Wednesday. I generally do that when I sell something in a forum marketplace to make sure I take care of the fellow community member as well as not have my own reputation harmed by some kind of unforeseen problem. If I have to make a claim with the shipper I want to be able to immediately refund the buyer instead of making them wait for me to get the money back from a claim against the shipper.

I don't remember the exact number JayzTwoCents was pushing through his Astral using the EVC but I think is was something like 1.300V or 1.400V and 1600W+ before his Astra 12VHPWR socket started melting. That was on LN2 though. My core max is about 3325-3350. I cannot get the clocks to stay that high with air cooling + cold AC because it doesn't stay cold enough to hold the clocks that high. You can see that here in this run. That is a max temp of 45°C which drops the core clock to 3165 MHz due to temperature. That is with 1.070-1.075V so I think the silicon sample is very good to go that high with such low voltage without crashing.

Thank you. I will report back if it has any effect on voltage or performance. If nothing else the +4% power limit should help. Many of the vBIOS do not go past 100% TGP. The Gigabyte vBIOS I am using and the stock Zotac are 100%. It does not seem to have done anything with the voltage for me. With the MSI vBIOS max is 0.005V less for some reason. I matched offsets (not clocks) and the Gigabyte AORUS Master produces the best overall results with the highest power draw. It also has the highest default boost limit maximum without any offset. That is interesting because the AORUS Master power limit shows 600W and max is 100%, but it seems to pull substantially (110.5%) more power in spite of the 100%/600W max the firmware reports in GPU-Z. The stock vBIOS and Master vBIOS do not have any positive power limit offset... 600W at 100% or less. MSI must have done something different at a hardware level to uncap the voltage at a higher maximum because the vBIOS itself does not seem to alter the core max voltage. If a shunt mod doesn't bump it up I may have to do more soldering when the time comes. That is assuming I decide that it is worth the hassle. First things first though. Waterblock must come before power and voltage mods. https://imgur.com/a/SV7jyFv

Interesting. Could you please dump your vBIOS with NVFLASH and share it to see if that will allow me to get similar voltage if I flash it?

Here is Steve's investigative movie... I haven't finished watching the entire thing, but the smuggling is different than some may have thought. They actually have some criminals buying them legally in the US through ordinary channels, both new and used, then they secretly ship them into China. Much more difficult to control that scenario and also harder to identify the bad actors.

Did I miss something? What's up with the yellow dongle scare? Is it something other than the color that is inherently wrong or defective about the connectors that are yellow? Or is it MSI producing garbage and their yellow dongles are just coincidental to poor product quality based on brand incompetence?

Funny stuff. The face blurred at 00:21 (woman driving a car) in the first American Eagle Jeans video is the ultra-woke witch, Rachel Zegler. She complained about an AI-generated likeness of her being used in the video so the authored blurred her face. If you freeze the video just before the blur you can see it. Then compare that frame to the Sound of Music remake parody at 1:44. 🤣 Also hilarious that they made the lunatic Greta Thunberg cross-eyed.

Another symptom of what I said here. It's harder than ever to find anything nice to say. Almost everything sucks.

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water... introducing Windung 12. Get ready for the next round of digital diarrhea from the Redmond Reprobates. It is always a blessing in disguise whenever extra-bad people kill themselves.

I think for your intended use the $40 premium would be $40 flushed down the toilet. The only logic one might apply is the ease of second-hand resale of the $40 "better" GPU might be worth the extra $40 but even that would be a big stretch. It is probably a mistake to even think along those lines in the current culture. As I just saw from the sale of my 9070 XT Elite, the average gamer isn't going to care about which one is better. The only thing most of them care about is getting it cheap. Even if the quality and performance is better, it doesn't matter. They might pay more only on the basis that it is tacky and garish looking with lots of rainbow puke and anime crap plastered on it. (Like the Yeston Sakura 9070 XT for sale in the thread next to the one where I sold the Elite. The one with the scented module to make your gaming session more fragrant, LOL.) So, I would say if the GPU that costs $40 less is doing everything well and making you happy just save the $40 and don't try to overthink it. But, if you want it, then spend the $40. That's not even enough to pay for a nice dinner for you and the wife. Don't expect anything more from it. The Astral is a huge waste and a joke that isn't worthy of mention for any normal intent or purpose. The only benefit most Astral owners will ever realize is looking like a fool with money and the misguided belief they are special because they paid a ludicrous amount more for an overbuilt GPU that will yield them nothing tangible in their world of gaming. It might make sense for someone that plans to strip it down and run LN2 with a 1.6kW vBIOS and voltage mods. Beyond that it is an ego-soothing nothing burger. With just one woefully inadequate 12VHPWR socket. Or, if you prefer, one woefully inadequate "12V-2x6" placebo socket.

Sold

They will always be A$$zeus, the god of a$$ 😆 and the wearers of golden a$$hat$ I am to the point of not liking any of the options in the tech space... everything blows now... Intel walked away from a position of untouchable dominance and has lost their way AMD still sucks but is now the lesser of two evils and the shinier object on account of the above NVIDIA is the king of tech slime that will miss no opportunity to screw those that made them famous Overclocking is a dying sport because the crap they are all producing is grossly overpriced, misrepresented, crippled and poorly engineered trash with inconsistent/non-existent QC Micro$lop hasn't done anything right since Windows 7 and modern Windoze OSes are merely digital bait... they don't care about piracy and they promote the theft of their OS because it helps them steal our infinitely more valuable personal data to use as they see fit... as prophesied in their unread EULA docs crApple has always been trash... frequently loved by elitist sheeple with low tech IQ and no awareness that their own poop smells bad... their OSes steal data as well, but they expect their users to pay for the data theft conduit rather than facilitating the taking of it for free like Micro$lop Google is the king of surveillance and the world's foremost resource for the proliferation of disinformation and agenda-driven propaganda, battling Meta for the same crown All of them manage personal information and data they steal in a haphazard manner placing us all at risk All of them are control freaks with no concept of what stewardship, honesty, truth or goodness looks like They all seek to be wealthy, worshiped and revered as gods of AI perched upon haughty thrones of filth It's kind of sad that we should all be hoping and praying for the collapse and destruction of an industry that has been an object of intense enthusiasm and passion for decades for some of us. Still undecided whether the 5090 is worth keeping from a value and intelligence perspective, but the clock is ticking. The comparatively mediocre 9070 XT makes way more sense despite its unmistakable inferiority. Looks like there is a good chance I may have a buyer on OC.net for the 9070 XT. If that is the case, then the 5090 has made its home in my system whether I like it or not, LOL. (I do like it, just don't like what it cost. Fantastic overpriced piece of kit.) Edit: Sold...

Hilarious movie trailer parody...

A Canadian that knows the truth and is not afraid to speak/sing it. Awesome.

An idiot from Facepoot messaged me a few days ago about my 9070 XT ad with "$650" and said nothing else. I replied back "today only, come get it while you can" and he never replied. He messaged me around midnight tonight. Further proof he is a dumbass. "$600" this time, so I replied "$675" and said nothing more. If he replies with $625 then I will reply $725. (Listing is $700.)

Happy birthday to her. But the birthday present is for you?

Unless single-player campaign functions with Secure Poot and TPM disabled I will never know because I won't enable them or spend my money on any game or software that requires it. Even if Windoze 11 was a good operating system (which it is not) I would refuse to use it if bypassing those requirements was made impossible. These are decisions that should be left to the personal discretion of the end user. Now that I have been using Linux as my primary operating systems for about 6 weeks or so and it is starting to "feel like home" to me, I am finding myself to feel that even Windows 10 LTSC is an annoying product that I would prefer to avoid. One of the reasons is the increased degree of power and autonomy to make my own decisions. I tried Bazzite and CachyOS and, while I liked them and thought they provided an aesthetically pleasing GUI, I found them both to be too restrictive and eliminated both of them. When it comes to owning my computers, I insist on actually owning them and acting as a god that will be obeyed unconditionally. My commands will be followed immediately and without question. Even if that means self-destruction. 🤣

😆🤣 Her jeans and her genes are both great. The face blurred at 00:21 (woman driving a car) is the ultra-woke witch, Rachel Zegler. She complained about an AI-generated likeness of her being used in the video so the authored blurred her face. If you freeze the video just before the blur you can see it. Then compare that frame to the video below (Sound of Music remake parody) at 1:44.