Mr. Fox

All is does is reduce fluctuation of BCLK. Most modern desktop motherboards have a search feature where you can search for key word and it will show all settings with the resulting matches. If you search for "spread" it will show it to you and if you click on the item at the bottom of the screen it will tell you the path. In this case, you will find it in your ASUS BIOS on the Extreme Tweaker page under Tweaker's Paradise. There are three Spread Spectrums and they all do basically the same thing (reduce fluctuation in frequency to make it more static). You want BCLK Spread Spectrum. There is also a VRM and PCIe/DMI Spread Spectrum. Having them enabled is intended to reduce electromagnetic interference. I think the worst thing that might happen is you could encounter for very minor audio artifacts on your speakers, but even that is not very likely. @Premaoften sets it to disabled or 0% in his Clevo BIOS mods. Some of the modern turdbooks do not allow modifying it, even with a professional firmware mod.

Look in your BIOS and find the BCLK Spread Spectrum setting and disable it. That will mostly eliminate it and setting it for like 100.05 will take care of the 0.05 MHz variance below your multiplier. If you can't locate it, let me know and I can tell you what screen it is on. That is also kind of dangerous. If it was bloating the tank like that you run the risk of one of the hoses getting pushed out of the compression fitting. That's too much pressure and the pressure is not beneficial for cooling. I've actually had that happen before and it made a huge mess. Luckily it did not short any of my parts or cause any damage to anything other than my laminate flooring that got drenched in water. You can actually purchase a pressure vent for a custom loop system to keep that from happening.

I misunderstood that you were getting air in the lines and not additional air accumulating in the tank. In that case it is probably sucking air in at some location. I once had some tubing that was getting pulled out of the compression fitting and it was making bubbles sucking air in and not leaking water out. It was strange. I did not notice the tubing until I started looking for the source of the bubbles. If that is happening it is most likely at the inlet side of one of the pumps. If it were on the outlet side you would be dripping water. The reason it would not leak water is likely because the tank fill port is open and no pressure is building. If you were to plug the fill port you would likely start to see a water leak at the point it is taking on air because it would pressurize the system with with the fill port being closed. If you can find it and stop it, you are better off without the loop being pressurized. It is less likely to encounter any coolant leaks if the system is not pressurized.

Air can be pulled in if there is a leak on the suction side if your pumps are arranged in a manner that creates a high side and low side like an HVAC system. The only way you can continue taking on air is if the water is leaking out somewhere. The only explanation I can think of is that the air ended up in the tank from other places in the loop. If you keep adding more water there will be no space for the air once all of the water displaces all of the air. That being said, water in the tank or reservoir is of no consequence and that is where you would want it to end up. The only place the air is a problem is inside of a waterblock. If the tank is the highest point in the loop, it would be totally normal for the air to end up in the tank. It should stay there. Whenever I drain one of my loops it takes topping it off several times until no more air appears in the reservoirs. I can fill them to the brim and within a day there is an inch or so of air, and I have to repeat that 2 or 3 times or the course of as many days before no more air appears in the reservoirs. Yes, that is exactly right. The best cooling system in the world is limited by the ability of the water block to capture and remove the heat from the processor (CPU or GPU). Increasing flow rate won't help if the water block is already pulling the most it is capable of pulling. Same thing with air cooling. Cranking the fan up to highest possible speeds and moving more air over the radiator fins won't do anything but create extra noise if the cold plate and heat pipes have reached their peak efficiency and ability to wick the heat from the processor and radiate that heat through the fins. In either case you reach a plateau where nothing changes and the only additional steps are using different TIM and using colder air or colder coolant.

My tank, insulation, additional tubing and associated parts will arrive on Monday. The 13900KS I bought from the guy in Germany should be here on Monday as well. It was supposed to be delivered today, but it just sat in New Jersey at US Customs with USPS for four days with no movement. Still no response from Supercool on when/if the missing parts shipped, so I have no idea if they have. Initial response was quick, but I made two requests for a tracking number and got nothing.

And, that was with screen capture. Here is how it looks without the overhead at 4K.

Many things affect flow rate. I have 9 QDC fittings and multiple elbows. This reduces flow rate. So does the amount of tubing in a loop. Likewise, the number of components the coolant has to pass through affects flow rate. Using a manifold or distribution block can help because the flow of coolant occurs in parallel to each component. In this scenario the flow rate of coolant through one component will have little or no affect on the other component(s) because the flow to each is handled independently. The flow rate of one component is not hindered by other components in the series because the coolant doesn't have to pass through one part to reach the next. There could be some impact from turbulence, but it would have to be enough turbulence to impede flow rate to the point of becoming detrimental. Flow rate is important, but so is having a system that is convenient to tinker with. I would prefer to add more pumps to keep flow rate up with the extra QDC fittings than to have to frequently drain and refill my system every time I wish to make a simple change to something in my configuration. You will also reach a point that it doesn't matter any more. In general, if the flow rate is around 175-200 L/H it will perform the same as if the flow rate is 300 L/H. As long as the coolant is moving fast enough to carry the water out of the block before it can heat up and the water in the block is swiftly displaced by the cooler incoming water there is no longer a benefit to higher flow rate. Coolant temperature at that point become more important than flow rate. Coolant volume becomes more important because it takes longer to warm the higher volume of coolant present in the loop. It also takes longer for a higher volume to cool down once it has been fully warmed. You could look at it in much the same way as having a fan blowing on a component to keep it cool. At a certain point making the fan runs faster and push air more accomplishes nothing in terms of cooling the component. At the point of maximum benefit, the only way temperatures can improve is if the air the fan is blowing is colder than ambient temperature. This is the point where moving more air at a higher velocity provides no benefit in terms of the component getting cooler. If the component has reached a normalized temperature it will not go lower than the normalized temperature as it relates to ambient temperature. That is why using chilled air is more effective than pushing more air. It is the same reason that using chilled water works when using more water is no longer beneficial.

I have one of these on each desktop and really like them. Half the cost of what you were looking at. https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Construction-Monitoring-Temperature-CL-W275-CU00SW/dp/B08B3S7L3Q/

Yes. That is one very heavy thermal pad. I think some people would complain about a notebook weighing as much, LOL. Even before GPUs weighed as much as a newborn child, it was very foolish to not support one with a brace when the installation is conventional and gravity is putting stress on the PCIe connector. It is also very bad for the motherboard, not only the GPU. Even using the expanding foam bags inside of a chassis when shipping a pre-built is risky. Better off shipping the GPU in a separate box. But, that would cause some people a great deal of stress because they don't even own a screwdriver and couldn't find their head if it were not permanently attached to their neck. I think it is also kind of risky to have a GPU installed in a manner where it is suspended by the I/O bracket unless it is properly braced with a bracket attached to the chassis. The PCB is not designed to be under lateral stress. Cracking is almost inevitable if there is an upset of the chassis. Horizontal motherboard trays and vertical GPU mounts in a conventional vertical motherboard installation solve most of these problems.

A warranty is only as good as the company looking for lame excuses to shirk their ethical duties. The only one that had anything that resembled ethics and cared about customer experience no longer makes or sells GPUs and motherboards. "The law" is never enough to make bad people or bad companies good, because they are fundamentally bad, dishonest and lawless.

Gigabyte 'quality' with an ASUS price tag. Nice. *sarcasm* Pay more, get less. Gee, thanks ASUS. Interesting comments at 21:50 regarding chiplet design and the associated engineering flaws. Same underlying evil intentions as BGA dung.

Welcome, brother! Glad you joined us. We really missed you, bud. Looking forward to seeing you here often.

Can't do much for $1,000 USD or CAD. But, I guess it depends on what you are wanting to accomplish. Better than a turdbook, for sure. Funny what he said about getting trash RAM from Amazon and NewEgg that mirrors my experience. I have RMA'd waaayyy too many garbage RAM kits. His observations about naked stick being better than crap RAM heating blankets is 100% aligned with my experience. The factory thermal solutions are trash that ruin stability.

Yes, I have a 4K 144Hz monitor. It is decent. The 4090 tears it up and barely breaks a sweat. The 6900 XT is not very good at 4K. It does an OK job with 1440p, but seems best suited for 1080p. It does not manage ray tracing very well at any resolution.

That is good advice about the iGPU testing. If the problem remains, mobo. If it fixes it, GPU. I don't game a ton, but when I do it is often a benchmarking venture to see what I can get away with. I played BF 2042 for a couple of hours today to test my system "game stability" with the CPU and memory overclock. Buttery smooth with maxed out settings at 4K and the 4090 stock. CPU set for P-Cores 60x8, E-Cores 48x16, Cache 50x and memory at 8000 CL34-48-48-48-2T.

The fact that you only see the unexpected shutdown in Event Viewer also points to the motherboard.

That could be motherboard or GPU. But, the odd behavioral issues you mentioned make me think the motherboard is more likely. Has it been doing weird stuff all along, or recently started? If it started more recently, have you tried reflashing the BIOS? Can you find anything in Windows Event Viewer that occurs at the time of the reboot that might give you some clues?

Nothing would surprise me in this regard, but it would be premature to assume the prices posted by this particular store exemplifies what normal prices will be. Scalping is the new normal and getting screwed with above MSRP pricing has become common because stupid people pay stupid prices to get what they want when they want it. That is as sad and pathetic as the scalping, and perpetuates the problem.

Same... 🤣

Not my best score, but not far behind it...

The end result is exactly what I expected it to be, so no surprises. But, the only way to know for sure is to confirm through actual use, or attempted use. I expect poor performance from all products. It's up to those selling them to prove themselves to not be liars and snake oil salesmen.

I really am looking forward to seeing how Battlemage works out. If I were buying a GPU today and wanted the best performance, 4090 is the only logical option. The price is idiotic, even for the cheapest one, but still "worth it" in the general sense that it is better to overpay for something good than to overpay for something not so good. If I could not purchase a 4090, the next option would be 4080 if I needed one today. It is a poor value and I would try very hard to come up with the extra $400-$500 to purchase a 4090 instead. But, I would not even consider the other options new and I would settle for something used from last generation rather than settle for an AMD GPU or something castrated like a 4070 Ti scam product. Well, Kryosheet is crap. Doesn't work worth a damn, unless you think normal high end thermal pastes are good. In that case it is probably awesome. It just can't handle an overclocked 13900KS at all. It performs on par with popular thermal pastes, which is unacceptable for an overclocked CPU. I view it as a totally unusable product for that. I saved it with zero damage and may try it on my laptop someday when I run out of things to do. @Papusanyou were curious. How 'bout no, LOL. Brother @Talonsent me a tube of Honeywell PTM7958. Thank you so much! It performs about the same as KPX or other popular thermal pastes. So, yeah... not good enough for an overclocked 13900KS. It performed almost exactly the same as the Kryosheet. So, back to the liquid metal. No other good option available. This stuff was not fun to spread. It is like clay, softened wax or softened kneaded eraser, and it takes a lot of pressure to even get it out of the syringe. It is not very sticky. It is much firmer than the thermal putty EVGA used on the 3090 KPE VRMs. I did spread it and got excellent coverage. It will be amazing for a laptop or a GPU that doesn't pull as many watts. There is no question in my mind that it will be durable, and the perfect solution for sloppy-fitting turdbook heat sinks. This is perfect for that. It is easily removed using a thermal paste spatula. It comes off like soft wax. When I need to repaste the 4090 I will probably use the PTM7958 paste. The pad equivalent worked amazing on the 6900 XT and the 4090 doesn't get nearly as hot as the 6900 XT. Removing my water block, it pulled the CPU (that was taped down for bare die) out of the socket. It suck well enough that the tape could not hold it down. I got it more than hot enough to melt, and it absolutely melted and got phenomenal coverage. I let my system cool overnight to normalize with ambient temperature and tried it again this morning and the temps were as unacceptable as they were last night. I did not save a screenshot. I must have forgotten. But, there's nothing to see. Look at the Kryosheet temps (above) and shuffle the core order and that's what it was. Same thing basically.

I can't imagine them passing up an opportunity to screw their most loyal early-adopters with the deepest pockets. That's how they roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnUCYHvorrk&t=1409s I cannot imagine you being satisfied with one and I would hate to see you waste $1,000 on something you're probably going to hate. Their best option isn't the best option, it is just a couple hundred cheaper option for an inferior product. 7900XTX runs neck-and-neck with 4080 until you try to play games with ray tracing, at which point the 7900XTX falls on its face. https://www.techspot.com/review/2746-amd-radeon-7900-xtx-vs-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080/ You can get a Galax 4090 SG on Amazon for under $1700 and that utterly destroys 7900XTX and 4080. If you are wanting a good 4K gaming experience you will need a 4090 to do it right, and if you look at the latest reviews of the "free" FSR3 it is a hot mess. Hardware Unboxed has a new video showing it is not that great. The title is clickbait, as the review leads to an opposite conclusion. Caveat emptor.