Mr. Fox

Yes, I agree with that. The Dark mobos have a triple BIOS. There should be a minimum of two. I will have to check that out when I get home from my business trip.

I am happy to find that RGB adjustments seem to be permanently saved to the GPU. It arrived with green LEDs turned on. I installed Gigabutt Control Center on my trash OS to change to white and it has survived multiple reboots and BIOS changes. It stays white no matter what OS is loaded. This should be a legal requirement for all products with RGB lighting. It is totally sinful and unacceptable that stupid expensive motherboards like the Apex, Encore and all the others from ASUS lack this important feature.

Speaking of two 8-pins, which there is nothing wrong with whatsoever. Or, three, or four of them. It arrived. Here is a quick stock run before I leave town for 4 days, LOL. See you guys when I get back. https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/16150989 Everything working as expected. No issues.

New video (not a new song) from Disturbed.

That's why I like the chair I have so much. It is very big and roomy, and comfortable. I sit in it about 10 to 12 hours a day without feeling it. In the other kind of office chairs, including the gaming chairs, I would feel like somebody had beat me up. It is like sitting in a car seat, not an office chair. The only problem with this is that it's so comfortable it is too easy to fall asleep.

I know @Rage Setsaid no "gaming/racer" chairs so I did not respond to that. But, after thinking about it, if they have not discontinued them DXRacer has a very large and super comfortable office chair that is not like the gamer chairs. I have one that I purchased in 2015 or 2016. It is built like a tank and has held up well. It is designed to support weight up to 300 pounds. I was only getting a year or less use from office chairs before I bought this one. The offerings at places like OfficeMax and Costco are generally garbage. Looking at their web site, the exact model I own is no longer made. Looks like this is their new "biggest and best" chair. https://www.dxracer.com/products/gaming-chairs/craft?sku=GC/XLCF23LTA/N

I'm in the Braxman camp. "Security" software is a gimmick. If you behave yourself you're in no more or less danger. Stupidity is what kills. While accidents can happen, if you stay on the right side of the railroad tracks, chances are great everyting will be fine. If you go to the wrong side of the railroad tracks, the expectation of safety is naive, at best.

They probably extorted the kickback (hush money) they were looking for, maybe arranged a sizable anonymous campaign donation, so maybe NVIDIA can do whatever they feel like now. Even if it is not legal, they won't be bothered with compliance.

Yes if you mean the generic 16GB A-die. Sold with the CPU and mobo package.

Hey, you're in our thoughts and prayers, Brother @ryan

LOL... so stupid, but actually worked better than I expected with the water in the can. As cool as a gaming turdbook TBH.

6800 with the Unify-X, but that was early in the life of DDR5 using M-die. I'm sure it could do better with better quality memory available now. A-die did not even exist back then (mid-2022) and everything has changed for the better in terms of firmware and memory IC quality. It's getting closer! I'm looking forward to seeing how the Arc B980 works out.

I think grabbing a 4080 Super for $999 (if you can actually buy one for that) is a really good purchase. It does not surprise me that the 3090 Kingpin is still kicking. Probably the most bulletproof card one could have purchased. It is getting to the point of being so stupid that I think even people that love rainbow puke are starting to get a gut full on the idiocy. I agree with your comments. The default should be OFF. If they can't do that, then it should be white LED. And, having the ability to save the settings and have them persist without RGB software running (even after uninstalling) should be mandatory. The settings should be saved to the DEVICE, not system NVRAM.

It's not enough for them to castrate turdbooks with cancer firmware and EC herpes, they have to go the extra mile with collateral damage by removing their "frank and beans" with Windoze power profiles. His opening comments were very accurate... "If you ever want to see a system get unstable fast, start installing RGB software."

More often than not, Intel does the right thing. Working in an industry where the exact opposite is true, that says something. I think this is a Windows/software issue. Fixing it should be a burden for the Redmond Reprobates to carry. If their cancer OS wasn't such a piece of crap it would not need optimizations.

If you are referring to seeing Jacob in action, totally agree.

Just for giggles, try setting that power profile with the e-cores disabled and see if you regain stability even with that power profile enabled. I would be curious to know if the errors are only with e-cores enabled when using that power profile. Here is something else I discovered. If you are getting TM5 errors on a memory overclock that is normally stable, switch to a different CFG file, then launch it and switch back to the one you prefer to use. Something happens (not sure what) where it seems like a corruption of some sort causes the errors and loading the config file fresh makes the problem go away. Where I have seen this happening MemTest won't have any errors and TM5 does and after a clean reload of the CFG file TM5 errors vanish. I can't explain why, only what fixes it. Maybe there are temp files that get corrupted and flipping the CFG profiles causes them to get deleted and created fresh. Linux is really the only respectable operating system. It has limitations and isn't perfect, but it's not as screwed up as the other options. If Linux could run all of the software I want to use, I wouldn't even waste any drive space on a Windoze installation.

I just snagged a good deal on an Aorus RTX 2080 TI Xtreme Waterforce GPU for Windows 7 benching. It looks almost new, includes original box, etc. It was the slave GPU in an SLI setup, so being watercooled and not used much (slave GPU) it should be a nice piece with a lot of life left in it. I did not realize these had 3 HDMI, 3 DP plus the USB Type-C. Crazy that you could run 5 displays on this.

Apex Encore BIOS 0080 is 11F and so is the Apex 0071. What MC is the Encore 0071 you are using now? I switched back to 0080 on the Encore because I don't feel like taking time to tune away the memory errors for the 8600 profile. I may switch over to the BIOS chip with 0071 in a couple of weeks when I have more time to mess with it. The CPU block mounted screen is idiotic, to put it bluntly. But, nothing is too tacky for gamers. Tacky and garish trash seems to be something they thrive on. But, screen aside, I like the fact that the waterblock is actually a waterblock, and the pump is mounted to the radiator. That is much better design for AIOs and a long overdue step in the right direction. The crappy pumps mounted on the CPU block is one of the design elements I dislike most about AIOs. It's antiquated and not a very smart design. The pumps are weak and noisy. Having wires running to the CPU block to run the pump and lighting crap on it also kind of sucks. If they made a version of this in black with no screen it might be something worth jumping on.

Got it flashed and my 8600 memory overclock is not 100% stable with 0071. I will have to play with the settings to find out why. It boots and benching fines, but has errors in TM5 I was not having with 0080.

Thank you. Testing 0071 for the Encore now. If it is older microcode and older Intel ME it should be better.

Where did you find 0071 for the Encore? I did not see it at HWBOT, only 0071 for Apex and 0080 for Encore.

Working very well. Well enough that I don't think I am going to try anything else.