Mr. Fox

Congratulations. I have been signed up for 4090 Suprim for 6 months and signed up for 4080S Suprim stock alerts on launch day and have never received one. I am no longer looking for one, but I have not cancelled them. I just checked my email and nothing.

Yeah, there is not much logic or common sense left with things related to video cards today. It's crazy how many normally smart people suddenly become so stupid.

Maybe after the Chinese New Year has passed and people go back to work over there stock will become available. https://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/nvidia/rtx4080super/ Bear in mind, the Strix GPUs are almost always grossly overpriced and they add insult to injury with the fact that things are hit or miss in terms of core and memory bin quality. Plus, ALL of the ASUS GPUs have an oddball proprietary 12VHPWR cable that is made upside-down compared to all other brands. You'll have to use the ugly 8-pin adapter or have an ATX 3.0 PSU cable that supports the stupid ASUS orientation. A different brand is a better option here for multiple reasons. ASUS is near the bottom of the list for me when it comes to GPUs. If I were going to compromise on the 12VHPWR cable, the TUF is the only one that is not grossly overpriced, and it usually overclocks as well as a Strix.

Some people will always find a reason to complain. Maybe they would prefer a melted GPU power socket. Even if I never had a problem it would suck having to worry about it. Not needing to think about it would be better.

I submitted my refund request for the recall. It felt strange breaking it and taking a photo, but that is easier and better than having to mail it back to them.

Thank you. Yeah, that really sucks. We can have or do anything we want as long as it is what our icky dick taters want for us.

Thank you. I agree. It does look fantastic, and it runs very cool with that massive heatsink. IMC is really solid, but I haven't taken time to tune the memory further. My MCSP is higher than the 13900KS in the white Apex, so I suspect I can. Yes, the GPU and RAM have smaller tubing diameter on this system. The RAM is deliberate and that way on both systems as I want more water flow to other things like CPU and GPU. The GPU is that way only because I ran out of larger tubing and haven't purchased any more. The Alphacool Eisenblock is super nice. Nicer than the Bykski GPU blocks, and heavier. It was super easy to assemble. Now it is time for bed. It's 2:47 AM, LOL. But, the work is done. CPU delidded and GPU blocked.

Thanks. Yes, 1.390V for 60x all P-core synced and Cinebench R23 stable is very good on ambient water. My ambient temperature is 74°F right now and I have a 1.5°C delta between the ambient temperatuer and the water temperature. The BIOS is showing I can raise the E-cores to 50x all core synced before the current voltage value is too low. I don't know if they will be stable at 50x synced, but I will try that when I get around to hooking it up to the chiller.

OK, did some more tuning. This is very good for a system with no chiller. With this SP117 I am able to run this with no thermal throttling. Delid and bare die helped tremendously. The SP117 did not behave as well as I had hoped before going bare die. After I get the Gigabyte 4090 blocked I will move the chiller over to this system and see how it does. Maybe can do 6.2GHz P-core and 4.9 or 5.0GHz on E-core with chilled water. I like the IceMan CPU and direct touch memory block a lot. Very well made products.

Cool (pun intended) this arrived early. It wasn't supposed to be here until Monday. So, I guess I know what I am going to be doing either later tonight or tomorrow.

I haven't changed any BIOS settings, just delidded and put the IceMan bare die block on. Running Cinebench R23 before with these settings was 102°C. So, now I can apply my profiles from before and tune from there for the better E-Core SP rating. (P-Cores are essentially the same.) Now the temps are... Thank you. The system with the chiller runs cooler even without the chiller running because it holds over five gallons and the other system holds less than one gallon. Yes, I use the same automotive antifreeze premix in both systems. I suspect the flow rates are similar in spite of having three more pumps on the chiller setup because it has about four times as much tubing, more fittings, including more than twice as many QDC fittings. All of those things make the pumps work harder and reduce flow rate. But, the flow rate doesn't need to be any higher at around 295-300 L/H. I think the system without the chiller having only two pumps and pushing 280 L/H is really good flow rate for only two pumps. So, are you saying I am an idiot for buying a Gigabyte GPU, but I just got lucky getting a GPU with the revised PCB? 😉 Congratulations. That sounds really nice. I hope your family is blessed with many years of love and happiness in your new home. I don't know why, but I have three now. I'm using the mean little dwarf for my work PC and have two to play with. Maybe I am just remembering the good old days with a home filled with PCs and sons that loved having frag matches with daddy on the home network. Maybe now that I have three I can convince a couple of them to come over and play sometime.

I decided to check while I was delidding the SP117 13900KS. Yes, it does have the improved PCB design.

Thank you for the compliment. No, those are just lines on the bottom of the case that lead to my external cooling system. The pumps, reservoir and 1080 (360x3) radiator are outside of the case. I have passthrough fittings in the empty bottom PCIe slot in the case. Both of my large desktops have the loop designed the same way. The one with the water chiller has a 5 gallon tank reservoir and five D5 pumps. The one in the photo has two D5 pumps. Strangely enough the flow rate is almost the same on both systems. You can buy it direct from EKWB and usually less than from Titan Rig or Performance-PCS unless you can grab one on sale or a good used one on eBay. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-pro-manifold-2cpu-4gpu-acet There is a smaller version with fewer ports, but I prefer the larger one. Even though I do not use all of them, they are available and it allows me to space the fittings further apart (an empty plugged port between each fitting). On the other system I have it mounted to the floor of the case. I did not know there was an improved version. Thanks for the link. I will check the design when I take it out to install the waterblock. I have no idea which one it has. Either way I am not too worried because I never allow any GPU to hang without support. I'm kind of anal about that because I think it is harmful no matter how the PCB is designed.

Yes it is. I have one on each of my custom loop desktops. It makes things so much easier and neater without having components in a loop routed in series. I can disconnect just one component with QDC fittings without disturbing any other components or the loop itself. I can't imagine functioning without them any more. They seem like they are a bit on the spendy side, but when you consider it is a buy it once and use it forever purchase it's actually not very expensive.

I played COD Modern Warfare (2023) for just over 2 hours this evening with the GPU overclocked +100 core, +1400 memory, +100mV and pulling over 380W yet temps were perfect. Not even close to getting hot. Max temps were core 54.2°C, memory 58°C and hot spot 62.6°C. That's fantastic for an air cooled GPU with an overclock. Now I just have to pop the lid off of this SP117 CPU and run it bare die so I can clock it higher that 5.7GHz without it getting too hot under a severe load like Cinebench. Looks like with the maxed out settings and ray tracing candy cranked the GPU was using almost 15GB of vRAM.

I bet there are people that own an electric car that would go off the rails complaining about the 4090 price being too expensive, not knowing that replacing the battery pack in their EV turdmobile will cost them as much as you just spent on your house, or the equivalent of about seven 4090 GPUs and 1,000 times more harmful to the environment, even though going "green" may have been part of their irrational justification for wasting gobs of money on an unreliable mode of transportation.

I really do not care for the looks of the Expert. It looks a bit like an FE in some ways and I really do not care for the FE GPUs either. My water block should be here on Monday. This GPU runs freakishly cool for being air cooled, but it should. It is ridiculously huge and takes up way too much space (4 slots) and renders the x4 PCIe slot that I was using unusable. It looks pretty intimidating, too. To be honest I kind of like that, but I don't want to give up using two NVMe drives for the meaningless virtue of it being awesome-looking.

Well, you have to do what makes the most sense for your family and the house it the first priority. You could let the pendulum swing the other way and get an Arc A770, enjoy what a truly fantastic inexpensive GPU it is. You sold your 3090 already and need a GPU right? I can tell you I am as pleased as punch with my A770. When you spend so little and get respectable results it is not hard to lower your expectations. Where that becomes a problem for me is when I spend a lot. It's easier (for me) to be disappointed with the outcome when it wasn't a low-cost option, and easy to feel satisfied when I spent very little on something that just works really well.

I was going to text you and suggest exactly that, but then I just decided to mind my own business and let you do you. I am glad you are thinking that way. We have a similar mindset. I was going to grab a 4080S, then got to thinking about that and changed my mind and bought a second 4090 instead. Do I think the 4090 is a better value? No. In fact, I think the 4080S is a better value. Do I think I would be happy spending less on a second-fiddle GPU? No, I don't. Now, sure... I think buying an Intel CPU for 75% less that performs on par with a 3060 Ti makes perfect sense. That's a no-brainer. But, the 4090 performs substantially better than a 4080S or 7900 XTX. The 4090 will last substantially longer due to the +20% higher performance, creams everything when ray tracing is involved, and it has more vRAM if a person wants to use a GPU for gaming for many years without an upgrade. And, the 4090 will have a much better resale value if an upgrade to 50-series is likely. The way I look at it, the 4080S, and even a 7900 XTX, is similar sitting on the edge of the swimming pool with your legs and feet in the water, scooping up water in your hands and splashing it onto yourself and getting your hair wet, etc... but never actually getting into the pool and swimming. Put a different way... close, but no cigar. Almost is for people playing horse shoes or throwing darts. Nothing wrong with that if it is what floats their boat. But, almost is not my thing. If I am going to save money, it needs to be more than a little bit. I like saving money, but only when it is enough to be meaningful. If it's just a little bit then it feels like a silly compromise instead of a sound decision. I love my Arc A770. It's amazing. And, I love how little I paid for it. I am looking forward to finding out what Battlemage looks like and how much sense it will make financially. The $1500~ decrease in cost is more than meaningful and makes compromising such an easy decision if it gets the job done.

Big-box retailers might be more inclined to fall in line with MSRP recommendations, but I do not believe "marketplace" sellers on Amazon, NewEgg and fleaBay will ever conduct business in an honorable fashion and they will always have a place in the scalper hall of shame until stupid people stop opening their wallets and helping them thrive. If people will stop being stupid, the scalpers won't be successful and will have no option other than finding another shady way of making a buck. Right now we are probably seeing some degree of "monkey-see, monkey-do" shenanigans playing out at the retailer level. If dummies are willing to pay scalper ransoms, the retailers (at least some of them) are going to juice their prices a little bit, just because they can, while not resembling the absurd scalper pricing. The only common retailers that are consistently above-board and respectable with pricing are Micro Center, NewEgg (sold and shipped by NewEgg, non-marketplace), B&H and Best Buy. As a result, they are often sold out on popular products. Micro Center is arguably the best of the best, but they're of zero value to anyone that doesn't live within driving distance of a store. They don't allow online purchases and do not ship products most of us are interested in buying. The most unfortunate thing with Best Buy is they almost never sell enthusiast-level computer components like mobos and GPUs. They cater to mainstream mid- and low-range hardware buyers and their selection of products in the mid- and low-range is also limited. Once in a while Amazon has something on offer (sold and shipped by Amazon, non-marketplace) at the correct price, but they sell out quickly, leaving only the marketplace scalpers with stock available for purchase. Sometimes it is difficult to even find the correctly-priced items on Amazon because they often do not appear in search results and they are eclipsed by the plethora of scummy scalpers.

Yes, it is interesting. GPU prices aside, I would love to see AI development fail hard and cause losses for those that sank their money into it. People that play with fire need to get burned.

Whether or not they are deserving of our respect will be determined by their response. I look forward to finding out how they handle this for you. I am optimistic they will give you a replacement, but that is based on an assumption about their integrity at this point. Adapter flaws aside, Cablemod set the bar on how a company needs to take ownership of their failures. It shouldn't cost the consumer/victim a dime. Yeah, I don't blame you for not wanting to use the pigtail adapter. It is inconvenient having to change out the cables on top of being a butt-ugly contraption. The person(s) responsible for designing such an abortion should find a new line of work. They're obviously not very good at their current job(s).

I found an Alphacool block on sale at Titan Rig and ordered that instead of the Bykski block. It's about $25 less. I've not owned an Alphacool GPU block before, so I am hoping it works as well or better. GPU runs very cool for being on air, but it should because of having a massive heatsink, 7 heat pipes and vapor chamber. Maybe they will send you a replacement cable. Hopefully they will not give you the run-around. How they address this issue will show us if be quiet! is actually worthy of the reputation they have developed. Can you use the insanely ugly stock 12VHPWR adapter with 8-pin connections in the meanwhile? I don't think there is any good way for this connector to be made. It's simply too small and too fragile to ever be good no matter what brand one buys. It has always been an idiotic idea, but we expect nothing less from idiots, so I digress.

No 4090s anywhere. Then the newer and cheaper/better 4080S shows up, scalper prices mostly, in limited stock and then unavailable/sold out within 24 hours of launch. Now, suddenly, 4090s become available again (at least a few days ago) at near MSRP prices. Meanwhile, either nobody wants something less than a 4080 or they have overproduced the inferior budget cards like 4070 Ti Super and below because there is no shortage of them, and never has been. This smells like a scalping scam and market manipulation to me.