Mr. Fox

I look forward to seeing how it turns out. The delid of the 5950X that I had provided no benefit whatsoever. Temps were terrible with liquid metal due to poor contact (uneven CCD heights) and was basically identical to pre-delid using normal thermal paste. I hope it turns out nice with liquid metal and the TG IHS.

Try Waterfox. It is pretty decent. Chrome has been my favorite for many years but Google has never been trustworthy and the things that the Alphabet A-holes are doing now is worthy of death. The sad truth is all Windows and Mac OSes suck now and so does the vast majority of the software garbage that runs on them. Browsers almost universally suck. The limitations of Linux and Linux software are becoming more beneficial as the state of decline progresses.

This is what I have and it has served me well. https://www.performance-pcs.com/water-cooling/water-chillers/hailea-ultra-titan-hc-500a-110v-1-2hp-790watt-cooling-capacity-waterchiller.html

I do not have the container to verify, but it should be ethylene glycol. It is whatever I can buy for the least amount at Walmart that is not red or yellow. I usually look for the blue Asian car type. It is a premix and after I add the gallon the rest of what goes in the loop is distilled water, so it is diluted quite a bit.

So, you're talking about what shows in HWiNFO64 then, not the BIOS, correct?

Hey Brother... Unless you are referring to information visible somewhere else, the P-core and E-core VID on the AI Settings page does not change. I already have the E-cores set at 4.7GHz and that is what it shows and it never changes based on the actual settings applied because manual settings are not AI Optimized. None of the values under AI Optimized Settings has anything to do with the settings applied unless you elect to go with ASUS AI Optimized overclocking, and if you do that the settings shown here are what gets applied. Let me know if you are wanting me to look elsewhere.

My E-core SP97 chip is 1.264V at 5.6GHz. So, your SP95 E-core guess is probably very close. His $750 CPU is just a tiny bit better than my first 13900KS and the MCSP is the same (85). So, very decent but not a show stopper. Wouldn't be worth it for me, but for someone buying their first CPU or replacing a trashy sample, probably a good one to grab for $750. I wouldn't buy the other one for $1050. Too expensive in my opinion. Not a lot too expensive, but enough that I would pass. It is a better price than some of the insane greedy scalper prices we have seen.

Umm. Nope. I don't think so.

LoL... From the mouths of babes... Dana is spot-on...

Looking forward to your report on thermal enhancement, and particularly, how well the IHS that doubles as the CPU retainer works.

That mentality is what is wrong with tech in general. Game, software and hardware developers and manufacturers have the gall to believe they know what is best for the purchasers of their products and are foolish enough to think it is OK to tell us what we should think about and how we should use those products. The tail is wagging the dog here. The exact opposite is how things are supposed to be. But we let the lefty fake news zombies and our woke, worthless, corrupt and idiotic governmental regulators do the same thing. So, why not them, too? Maybe the majority of the members of the human race actually are just too darned stupid to function without being told how to function. I guess that's why they are referred to as sheeple. So, the rest of us get to enjoy the crap they are willing to put up with, and we are unreasonable, icky, mean and racist if we call them out or resist their filth.

I am usually not, but I've learned to avoid saying never to make accommodating exceptions easier. I am, and always will be, a metal head. But, I am developing a taste for lyric-free dark techno/cyberpunk. I think the John Wick movies got me hooked on the grind. I get flashbacks to all of the headshots during the most intense action scenes. This group (Aim to Head) has some of the most amazing cover art on their YouTube videos. You can spend hours just looking at some of it while listening to the music. Check out the thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/@AimToHeadOfficial/videos

I am at the point now that I am having a hard time identifying value in paying a lot of money for a GPU because: - Having a decent gaming experience doesn't require having a monster GPU unless you are a settings snob - Gaming is something I enjoy, but it's not something I spend a massive amount of time doing - Overclocking is my hobby and most (all) GPUs are so crippled now with cancer firmware the endeavor is futile Adjusting my expectations, exactly as I did for the 3060 Ti, the Arc A770 does everything I need it to do for gaming. Spending $1000-$2000 more for a 4080 or 4090 would be frivolous. Paying $350-$650 more for a 4070 Ti with castrated VRAM would also be kind of stupid. When gaming I cannot discern a quality difference between medium, high and ultra graphics settings. I mean, I could if I stopped and starting closely analyzing everything and being super critical instead of focusing on having fun playing the game. Doing that with an inexpensive GPU doesn't make any sense. You SHOULD be super critical if you paid a buttload of money for a flagship GPU, and you should expect it to be nearly flawless with everyting maxed out. But if I am enjoying a game, I am too busy with playing the game to notice minuscule changes in image clarity as long as it is not terrible looking and as long as the gameplay is smooth. I am totally fine toning down the settings or using frame generation to smooth the rough edges. At the Cyber Monday price of $199 it was an insane bargain and at the price today ($279 earlier today) it is an incredible value.

Yeah, I am not selling mine. It works too well and nothing comes close to matching the performance. The price was disgusting when I bought it, and more disgusting now, but the money was spent. If I had it to do over again I might not, but I did it and what's done is done.

And, it remains to be seen if the fancier and more expensive stuff works as well. The answer is quite often, no... more expensive and fancier stuff is often inferior because the maker loses focus on what made them successful.

You can't spend what the government confiscates, that's for sure. That applies even here in the US. Some states are more socialistic and abusive to their citizens than others. One solution to the problem is simple (leave and go somewhere else) but doing so can be disruptive to one's family, social life or career. The better solution would be to eliminate the corrupt government entities and replace them with entities that will repeal the destructive misappropriation of private wealth. California and New York are the worst and most extreme examples of the abject foolishness of Robinhood governance and it has done nothing to elevate lower class. It only punishes success and rewards failure. Yeah, you can't include federal, state or local taxes when comparing prices. Those are first-world problems that are not relevant when comparing costs between markets. They matter and suck to the person getting screwed by their government, and may affect their ability to purchase the item, but it is not a legitimate part of the price comparison.

Yeah, I bet I could put the air cooler back on it and get probably $2300 or more for it. I paid under $1800 for it. I don't really want to sell it, but the thought of buying another A770 and putting the left over $2000 into the bank while I wait for Battlemage to drop is tempting. And, I bet I could get $75-$100 for the waterblock on top of that.

I shoud buy one at this price ($100 less) and return the original one. I've had it 18 days. But, I won't do that because it would be a shady move. I will message them and ask them to give me in-store credit for the difference in price though. Part of me wants to buy it now for $199 and sell my 4090 for more than I paid for it because I know I could get more than enough to cover the A770 with money left over and still give the buyer a price better than what a 4090 Suprim is selling for now... IF you can even find one. I paid the correct price for my 4090. You would not regret it. Amazing value even at the not-on-sale price. For $199 it is a no-brainer. I played some Modern Warfare III (2023) on it yesterday and with a mixture of medium and high settings it was always over 100 FPS at 1440p. Smooth as silk.

They're only selling for laughable prices because desperate-to-play buyers are willing to pay a laughable price. If the most anyone was willing to pay for it is new retail (remembering it's no longer new) then things would be right. The seller would be unable to sell it to anyone if they want more than to be made whole (unless they were foolish and paid more than retail for an unbinned CPU) and the buyer would pay what the chip was worth before the box got opened. An even greater tragedy occurs when the lousy below-average samples get sold to a sucker for a little bit less than retail rather than being sent back to the retailer on an RMA. It is naive to assume that the undesirable samples a chip-binner is selling are special and it only stands to reason a significant number of them, perhaps even all of them, are something less than special. As the second owner you're double-screwed. You can't RMA it like the original buyer could have.

Clean Linux install with Arc A770. Totally hassle-free. Didn't have to do anything special. It just worked. OS: Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10 x86_64 Kernel: 6.5.0-13-generic DE: Cinnamon 5.8.4

Clean Linux install with Arc A770. Totally hassle-free. Didn't have to do anything special.

Give or take $150-$200 for a true "god bin" I don't believe in paying more than new retail for a used part. If someone is desperate enough to be a winner that they buy a butt-load of new CPUs to find the best one they need to take a loss on the chips they don't want to keep and when they're done with the cream of the crop sample they should take a loss on it, too. It's a used part. They don't deserve to make a profit on their hobby. Just my opinion, but I put these clowns about two crotch hairs above scalpers. They want to win so bad that they are willing screw everyone else in the process, so screw them. It should be their loss and theirs alone if being in the winner's circle is what they need to validate their own existence. It's not my fault their mama dropped them on their head as an infant and didn't love them anymore. You also have to ask yourself, "If it is for sale, how awesome is it, really?" If it was truly off the charts show-stopping awesome it probably wouldn't be up for sale. Selling it would defeat the purpose of their frantic quest to find the best one. So, what are they not telling you about the overpriced silicon they are offering to sell you for a horrible price? I'm not interested in helping them benefit by recovering more than their actual out-of-pocket loss. I'm willing to pay what they paid for it when they bought the batch. Offering them the chance to break even on the sale of a used part should be viewed as a gift.

I actually already own it and love it, so great recommendation. I bought in on GOG a couple of months ago on sale and played it for several hours on the first go because it was so addictive. @ryanwould like it, too. I also like games that I can finish in one day. When it is a good game I enjoy the familiarity of things so playing through again there are no surprises. I know for some people that seems weird, but I also enjoy use console cheat codes and don't care about earning "accomplishments" and finding secrets, etc. If it takes too long to finish I lose interest in playing. (Probably one of the reasons why I do not enjoy open world games and prefer linear gameplay.)

I agree. CPU and memory overclocking is SO MUCH more fun. GPUs have become so locked down and castrated that it almost doesn't matter what you buy at this point. All cookie-cutter gamer wuss trash now. Unless you open your wallet wider for a Kingpin (now history) or Galax HOF you are not getting anything special. Congrats on the CPU. I probably would not have been willing to pay what you paid for it, but that doesn't matter if you are happy. I can't claim to be any "smarter" having purchased a 4090 at the "proper" (but still grossly inflated) price before the gouging on steroids started. How do you identify if a 14900K is an "R" batch at the time of purchase? Can you tell, or you have to wait and find out when it's too late to do anything about it? How do you identify it if you have one? I really wish I would have tested the AIO on an Intel CPU. I told my son I would not mess with his PBO and RAM settings. My impression is that it is better, but I have little to base it on other than logic. If it has a higher flow rate and pressure with the dual-pump design than a normal Asetek AIO then it is going to be better for no other reason than that. PCCOOLER seems to have put a lot of effort into getting their CPS-branded stuff right. Edit: By the way. Thanks for all of the stuff you shared with me on the Y-Cruncher memory tuning. It was good stuff. That TeamGroup Xtreem 8000 C38 memory kit was absolute rubbish. It was worse than the cheaper TeamGroup 7200 Expert garbage I returned. It produced errors in TM5 and TestMemPro no matter what settings I used. The XMP profile performed unusually well compared to others, but I am thinking the kit I got was either a bad sample or the marketing information about binning their memory ICs is just a bunch of nonsense, hooey or deliberately lying. It's on its way back to Amazon and I got my money back. So far nothing I have tested in the 16GB A-die memory kits has performed as well as my generic green sticks from AliExpress. Nothing else overclocks as well or is as stable as those modules are, and they're not even a matched "kit" like the retail trash. After pulling the Xtreme junk modules out and reinstalling my generic sticks, they booted and ran every test error-free using the XMP profile that was unstable with the TG sticks. That is super-disappointing. There should be no silicon lottery when you pay extra from something advertised as being superior. Beyond disappointing, it is an inexcusable and unforgivable lack of QC. If Amazon publishes my review (with memory test error screenshots) they probably won't sell many of these trash sticks.

I am sure if I were doing what you mentioned I would absolutely "feel" the difference. Where the difference is not readily evident is normal daily use for most users. Yeah, no such thing as "too much" drive space. I am phasing out all of my 512GB NVMe SSDs. I am no longer interesting is such a small storage volume. It's a waste of space. 1TB is now the minimum acceptable drive size for an OS installation in my mind, and anything less that 2TB for a storage volume is a waste of money. I'm moving toward using my 1TB SATA and M.2 SSDs for USB storage now and buying only 2TB and 4TB SSDs for storage. The only reason I think 1TB for the OS is OK is because I frequently install programs to a drive that is not occuppied by the OS. I only install things like Office, Photoshop, Acrobat and my core OS tweaking utilities on the same drive as the OS. For example, all games are installed on a 4TB NVMe at G:\Program Files and G:\Program Files (x86). Being an Intel user, Gen5 is a total waste and is of zero interest to me. I am not about to consider sharing GPU PCIe lanes with storage. So, until Gen5 applies to all PCIe lanes that exist on Intel platforms the technology means nothing to me and has no application.