Mr. Fox

It is definitely worth looking into. It would not be the first time we have seen driver witchcraft from the Green Goblin. And, it seems like the new world order way of doing things. "What, you're not letting us steal your data? Well, take a hit on your gaming performance as a token of our appreciation for the unjust and self-centered denial of our right to collect your data, you icky person, you!" I will look into it when I have time to fiddle with some games. Since I love Quake 2 RTX I will start there since that is where you noticed it. I finally got around to delidding the SP112 13900KS I bought from the guy in Germany. Now I have to put my first 13900KS in the other system running the 13900K. Today I gave in and ordered Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL EVO. It has enough changes to it that I felt it was worth buying. It is larger and I felt the original XL was too small. The way the mobo tray is adjustable, up and down, and removable, along with the plates I can use to mount passthrough fittings for my external cooling setup was enough to get me to bite. You can actually take out the mobo and rear I/O panel as a complete unit and use it as an open bench, or install it inverted like the Dark Base Pro 901 (which I also love). I like all of the fancy and unique mechanical features that GamersNexus has ribbed them about. (Even Steve likes them, LOL.) I am going to put the Apex in that. I ordered black since that is my favorite. I thought about how nice the Apex would look in a white case, and put one in and out of my cart probably three times trying to make up my mind. The Apex is the first, and possibly the last, white PC component I will ever own and I think I would end up regretting a short-sighted decision based on how one motherboard might look inside of a case I plan to use for many years. I have no plans to deliberately purchase a white PC component and given a choice I will always choose black. The Galax HOF 4090 is the only part I would want in spite of its white color, but I would be putting a Bykski block on it anyhow.

That is my play PC. I also have my work computer that is wicked enough in its own rights. And, my Dell Precision turdbook. So, I was not without a PC, but I was so engrossed in what I was doing I didn't have time to use the other systems. Below is my work computer (Banshee in signature) in the opposite corner of this tiny room. Excuse the mess. I still haven't 100% finished cleaning up from the project.

Congrats @electrosoftthat is a sweet deal on the memory kit Brother @Raidermanblessed you with. So, I spent the ENTIRE weekend (literally) rebuilding my loop and integrating the 5 gallon tank and chiller. Got the tank re-insulated. I totally dismantled the MO-RA 360 and cleaned the fans (4 years of grime build-up... was a chore) meticulously with Clorox wipes and Q-tips, added two new 10-port fan hubs on each side. I was going to delid the 13900KS I got from Germany, but I am too spent, LOL. As of now, about 20 hours in total and 30 feet of clear tubing later. Even with the chilled water circulating through the radiator, my idle temps are between 9° and 15°C now as long as the fans are turned off. It took a LONG time to get 5 gallons of water chilled versus 15 to 20 minutes with the volume of the loop without the 5 gallon tank. I added a 200mm fan to the back of the chiller as a booster to its internal condenser fan and it made a notable difference in the amount of hot air getting pushed out of it. I could barely feel anything coming out with the internal fan and now hot air just pours out of this sucker. Now I need to snip the wires to those crazy ugly blue LEDs. When I redid the cooling lines this time I gave myself an extra 5 feet of length so I can roll the chiller out from under the desk (it is on a dolly) when I want to vacuum or sweep the floor.

Unfortunately, doing the right thing seems to be a completely foreign concept, especially in Chinese business culture. They don't care because they are not required to care. They are not held accountable and need to be punished, but they are not. If they were good companies run by good people, none of that would be necessary. They would do what is right because it is the right thing to do. But, they are fundamentally dishonest and untrustworthy. Yes. All of the above. It depends on what the glitch or bug is that causes the malfunction. Anecdotally, it seems like troubleshooting things is more difficult with newer releases of Windows 10 and Windows 11 because the information and bug details are suppressed by the OS. And, it could be the OS, the driver, or something else causing it. Overclocking instability in games, especially unstable memory overclocks, often seem to manifest for me by the game just crashing at launch or randomly closing with no visible error, or closing with an error that contains no useful information.

I agree with you 100%. I also do not believe any of the brands offer "great" warranty support. Nobody seems to be interested in providing the level of service that EVGA did. None of them seem to care enough or are honest enough to be bothered by customer experience. That doesn't seem to be on the list of priorities for any of them. To clarify my agreement, please note that I was careful with my wording when I said...

Is that a bug in ASROCK Timing Configurator showing your DDR5 in single channel mode instead of quad channel? I think Zotac is OK, especially if you are getting the flagship GPU. The AIRO is actually top notch in terms of build quality. But, I do agree with you and MSI and Galax are the only GPU brands that I believe can be taken seriously at this point. MSI could easily become the new EVGA/Kingpin masters of the universe if they put their minds to it. They would need to shed their nonsensical focus on gaming garbage for that product line to be successful. The Unify-X was a great example of the degree of excellence they are capable of when they focus on what matters most to overclockers.

It was that way with DDR4 as well, but not magnified to the same extent as DDR5. That may be partly due to architecture chages, and partly due to the simple fact the DDR5 is running MUCH, MUCH IGHER clock speeds than DDR4 could ever do. With DDR5 all it takes is changing one timing value by the least amount possible to go from stable to unstable, or even unbootable. Running DDR5 6000 is like child's play for mainstream baby-girl gamerkidz now, and that would have been an extremely rare and freakish anomaly to run DDR4 at that clock speed.

Yes, that is exactly how it makes me feel now. It doesn't matter anymore. You're going to end up owning a piece of trash, or best case scenario, you'll end up having a miserable and/or slow experience if you need warranty service. ASUS's extreme overclocking focused motherboards are very good (almost always have been) in terms of performance, but unreliable in terms of QC and failure rates, and their warranty service truly sucks. They are not a customer-centric company and their manner of doing business is fundamentally dishonest. (JayzTwoCents and GamersNexus have called them out recently for their suckiness, but it gets ignored by most of the TechTube shills.) EVGA often defied the wishes of NVIDIA with their FTW3 and Kingpin (formerly Classified) GPU designs and firmware unlocks. AMD also tried going Nazi control freak on them, so their first AMD motherboard was their last. One of their tech support people confided in me that AMD was worse than NVIDIA to work with, especially in terms of firmware and overclocking support. Evidently, they do not want the owners of their products to have freedom and autonomy to make their own decisions and EVGA presented a threat to their command and control ecosystem. I haven't heard if they struck a deal or that anything is officient yet, but some recent social media posts by Vince (Kingpin) suggest he may become part of MSI's overclocking efforts.

Indeed. I will never be as happy with my overclocking hobby as I used to be. Truly a devastating loss for the entire industry. They never represented a threat to other brands because they served mostly a niche market of overclocking enthusiasts, and they charged accordingly. But, the things they did went a long way toward keeping other players in the industry honest.

Since they no longer employ a firmware team, there is nobody on staff available to correct whatever is wrong with the Zotac vBIOS not playing nice with the EVGA firmware. Probably a very simple solution, but nobody available to fix it. This has happened with other motherboard brands and it required firmware tweaks. The issue is a black screen in the BIOS and something Zotac does differently in their vBIOS. In most cases it was caught early and fixed before it affected numerous owners of Zotac 4090 GPUs. The issue surfaced with 40-series Ada GPUs, which was coincidentally when EVGA decided they were tired of the political games and NVIDIA dictatorship. They only made 2 motherboards. Dark and Classified. Both received the same level of service and support. Top notch. The Classified motherboard were gears toward mainstream enthusiasts, no solely devoted to overclocking. 4-DIMM limitation, which are a common and universally undesirable Achilles Heel to all that care about memory overclocking. Both were expensive, but each for a differnt type of customer. Correct. And, as noted above, no expectation for further firmware support for Raptor Lake refresh or changes in the DDR5 evolution. I believe their exit from the GPU market is what ultimately destroyed their motherboard business and also leading to the dumbing down of the PSU business. GPUs were their initial claim to fame. Not everyone was willing to pay the price for an EVGA motherboard.

Yes and no. Yes only the Dark, never the Classified. Excluding HEDT platforms that go beyond quad channel memory, no to any 4-DIMM motherboard, regardless of brand, to be more precise. Yes to the FTW3 and Kingpin GPUs. But, all of it gone now. Yes to the best build quality, overclocking capabilities and best firmware. Head and shoulders above anything else. Kingpin, Luumi and CENS all contributed to making the Dark motherboard the best of the best, and untouchable. The Kingpin GPUs required no explanation. Yes to the avoidance of frumpy gamer garbage and extremely bloated UWP software filth being required for full functionality. Nothing for the kiddos, everything is secondary to overclocking. Yes to the best warranty and customer service available anywhere. They have been without a legitimate rival and no other brand has come close to matching them. Cross-shipped RMAs, no-questions-asked and hassle-free service. BIOS mods as simple as an email request, along with inclusion in the next public firmware release if you could show them why it was beneficial. I wish I could crossflash the EVGA BIOS to the Apex. Obviously can't do that, but I would if I could. Stupid features that don't matter are tucked away so they are not a distraction that nobody cares about that buys them. Anything that should be maxed out for maximum performance or disabled is maxed out and disabled by default, then hidden because there is no reason to care about it. They give you the option to downgrade or completely disable Intel ME (which is utterly worthless garbage and should not even exist). Downgrading or disabling Intel ME is not allowed by other brands. They have a built-in CPU stress test, tons of built-in high MHz memory overclocking profiles that work flawlessly for me and proven by the overclocking names mentioned above. Multiple versions (way more than ASUS) that are designed for 24/7 daily driver extreme memory OC stablity, LN2 options, etc. They have offered better CSM functionality for legacy OS support. And, a feature that I have used for years and severely miss not having besides the control over Intel ME cancer is the option to always show the boot priority menu at boot. Because I boot so many versions of Windows and Linux this feature is precious to me. No to the fact EVGA no longer manufactures and sells motherboards and GPUs. They're done where it mattered most now. For that reason, and with a heavy heart, I cannot recommend it to anyone. I honestly feel this is the harbinger of a very bleak future for overclocking enthusiasts. I think we are entering the last days of an era of freedom to do what you want to do with your PC because of the Nazi control freak mentality among the OEMs that remain. The god of overclocking motherboards and GPUs is dead now. So, sadly, no. 💔

As an owner of the Z790 Apex (non-Encore) I am curious if you are going to find a reason that it was worth spending another ~$700 and, if so, what the reason(s) might be. Please add more photos when you have a few minutes to spare. It is unfortunate that not every enthusiast mobo manufacturer provides a firmware environment as overclocking and user-friendly as the EVGA motherboards. Lots more options in the ASUS firmware that provide no usable value or purpose in terms of overclocking, but missing a few useful features that are found in the EVGA firmware.

I hope you can figure it out without too much rigmarole. I am not getting any air into my system. That is a lot of D5 pumps. I am not sure that there is a benefit to having that many, but the idea of it is awesome even if it doesn't provide a benefit. Get some of the insulation I used for the tank. It's pretty awesome stuff. I got the kind that is black on one side and silver on the other and put it on black-side out. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BQZ5R8TC I think I am going to wrap a layer of it around the tank inside of the chiller as well.

Amen! 💯

That is unfortunately true for many, and as soon as that becomes true for me I will stop caring about having a powerful, expensive computer. This is the reason I like them and if/when that is gone there is no longer any reason for me to care. The focus will shift to spending as close to zero as possible. And, I am not a technology enthusiast in general terms. My interest is limited to overclocking and high-end PCs only. In fact, there are many things that fall into the technology bucket that I either dislike or abhor. Smartphones, tablets and handheld devices, in particular, I despise.

As long as I can get my overclocking fetish satisfied, then I will tolerate it. If not, then I will choose something else as a hobby. I am not OK with the normalization of performance and "everyone gets the same trophy for participating" approach. Things are getting so dumbed down that it's fast becoming not very enjoyable. Nothing for an overclocking enthusiast to be enthusiastic about. I do want MOAR performance, but it needs to be substantially more than the 99% get that don't know how to overclock. If I can't do that because the product doesn't support it, or because it sucks at that, then I don't want the product. Owning it becomes pointless. I know Intel has that on their roadmap and I am not pleased by it. I'd much rather have a massive CPU with a huge slab of silicon in a monolithic die. It's easier to cool, performs better and less likely to have issues and performance impediments than something cobbled together simply to increase core count. I'd much prefer that they just keep making the CPU larger to accommodate the added cores. That being said, I think Intel is capable of executing on the idea more effectively and producing a better outcome, so I will see how it turns out before I toss the baby out with the bath water.

LOL... 🤣 Maybe they thought if they borrowed names from some of the most amazing CPUs in the history of computers that would drive sales for the extremely severe overpriced new TR processors. That is true. It did drive higher core count in mainstream computing, so we all win... both red and blue teams. But, monolithic is better. The need for infinity fabric and the imbalance of weak versus strong CCX on the same package are both less than ideal.

LOL. The X570 joke was probably the straw that broken the camel's back for me. I'm not going to forgive that abortion for a very long time. Maybe never. The CCX thing sucks more than the baby core trash from Intel.

No thanks. Not interested.

You're starting to identify what I have been complaining about for several years; before DDR5 was even a thing. There is a huge silicon lottery with memory modules and I have purchased and RMA'd a ludicrous number of memory kits because they were trash. Having a high-rated kit, or the most expensive one available, doesn't mean it is a good one. It only means it passed some kind of screening process that allows them to feel justified in screwing the buyer of it harder. The lower binned modules are just the garbage nobody wants that they are hoping to unload on someone whose bar is set lower and has less of an appetite for overpriced computer parts. They are made the same and cost the same to make whether they are 8600 or 6800. The numbers printed on the label (and the price tag) are not a guarantee of quality or performance, but they should be.

How 'bout no. Huh-uh. Nope. No workee. And, even if it did, I dont know that it is actually an improvement over Armory Crepes because it requires the installation of MyASUS digi-dung. MyASUS has hooks into the BIOS, and it is still UWP filth, not a win32 application, and when I used Revo to get rid of it, Revo found about as much bloated feces on the drive from MyASUS as Armory Crap, (over 3,300 files) many hundreds of registry keys and more than a dozen services

I also just posted another comment/question on his YouTube video asking about the missing parts. I wonder if that will work for ASUS desktop motherboards as well? Armory Crate is not any less crappy on a desktop as it is on a laptop. It is so horrible that it should be against the law.

Yup. Pretty much sums it up. The world is basically run by stupid people, so we can expect stupid things to come from it. Those that aren't stupid are evil. It's unfortunate that we allow it to happen. We shouldn't put up with it.

I just sent my third inquiry on their web site and directly to their gmail. I will give it one more week and if I don't have the parts or an email reply with definitive information I will dispute the charges with PayPal and get my money back. I have no time for nonsense with people that do not manage a business in a businesslike manner. I doubt I will ever buy anything from them again.

We already know AI is being, and will continue to be, abused by people and companies that we should be able to trust and can't. It will be abused even more by our enemies and those that are untrustworthy and should be viewed as enemies. So, it is good that export of products used for AI will be restricted to countries that are socialist, communist, Marxist, have ties with terrorists, or have demonstrated anti-American and anti-American-ally behavior. We should be looking out for #1 first and our allies second, and do everything within our power to prevent our enemies from being successful at anything. We should expand this to include a ban of all forms of trade and exports of anything and everything to those nations and groups... excommunicado. That is a nice setup. Looks great. Still nothing from Supercool about my missing RAM block parts. The initial response was an apology and promise to send the pieces immediately, but two inquiries asking for a tracking number have been met with silence and nothing has shown up yet. At this point I wish I had just purchased the Bykski parts like I am already using on the Z690 Dark memory. Would have cost me half as much and I would already be setup. They got my money over a month ago.