Mr. Fox

Well, the saga continues. It appears that the people at UPS have only fecal matter for brains. They are saying that a punitive 200% tariff applies to steel and aluminum products where the country of smelting it not known. This is a serious flaw in their application of federal regulations, but I do not have much confidence that I will convince them of their error. The product is not manufactured from steel; primarily copper, acrylic and nickel plating The product has no aluminum components except for the backplate The product is manufactured in China, so "country of smelting" is not unknown Other than the aluminum backplate, none of the other materials are covered by the regulation The extra 200% is being applied to the full retail value of the finished product, which is primarily copper and acrylic. If the country of smelting were unknown the 200% would apply only to the value of aluminum material used to make the backplate, not the enitre retail product Here is what the imbecile that replied to my email offered as his half-assed rationale for applying the normal import duty + extra 200% tariff: UPS Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Form I have messaged Aquatuning by blind copy on all of my email communications with these idiots at UPS. This whole thing is absolutely ludicrous and it is entirely due to their ignorance and incompetence and nothing to do with trade regulations. Rather, their inappropriate application of regulations that are not even applicable to the shipment. Here are my last two replies to them:

I don't understand why anyone would want one anyway. Those beige and brown Noctua fans are the ugliest fans in the world. Why would anyone want that on their GPU? I mean it is one thing for something cheap to be ugly. Something as expensive as a 5090 needs to be superior by all measurements or it is a fail. It needs to run, look, feel and smell phenomenal and be near-perfect to partially make up for the absolutely ludicrous price. At some point the product, service and customer experience degrades to a point that profit margin, no matter how great, will not be sufficient to save a company from destruction. Without sufficient gross revenue there is no opportunity for net profit. Budweiser learned that the hard way not long ago and came close to biting the big one. And, the way they found out is something we need to see leveraged more often. Consumers wielding the sword of rejection and organized boycotts are weapons that should be leveraged more often and in a more brutal manner than they normally are. I'd like to see things like that happen with regularity and frequency. The only way to reach their brains is by punching them in the wallet hard enough to draw blood. Well, it looks my email to UPS stirred up a bits of a hornet's nest. It is not resolved yet, but apparently a big shot in their Supply Chain Solutions department got ahold of it and copied a bunch of team leaders and supervisors with instructions to assist me and reply to all (with me on copy) with a response. If it is not resolved today I suspect it will be tomorrow or Monday. I'm less concerned now than I have been since Tuesday when I was given the erroneous notification of the amount due. Three of the supervisors copied on the email are out of office. One of them has an out-of-office reply with key names, emails and phone numbers I am going to hang onto for future reference. They might come in handy if I need to kick the hornet's nest again. 🤣

I suspect part of the issue is everyone I speak to has a heavy accent suggesting they are offshored contractors in India or the Philippines. Good chance they are merely call center grunts. Maybe as more pressing matters get resolved the Trump Administration can implement something to discourage or make it unaffordable for American companies to use foreign entities to service American consumers. I would love never having to speak to a foreigner that doesn't work for a company that I need help from. A high percentage of the time they are utterly worthless and cause more frustration than satisfaction. Because they are not employees of the companies they represent they often have no skin in the game and don't genuinely care about the customers looking for help.

So, the block is loaded on the truck for delivery but the amount due has not been corrected. No response from the past email. Spoke to another person again this morning. Now I am given a similar email with a "T" added. AKNENTYRVW at UPS dot com. Everyone I can speak to identifies the error. Nobody I can speak to has the ability to correct their mistake. I forwarded the previous email to the new/different address given to me today. The billing department number for this issue is 866-493-7140 x5. You cannot escalate to a supervisor. Apparently nobody has a supervisor (yeah, right). I was told that if the driver arrives today and the amount has not been corrected to let the driver know that I am not rejecting the delivery but UPS cannot complete the delivery until they correct their mistake and ask the driver to bring it back when he has the correct amount due to collect on delivery. The new owner of the 9070 XT is happy.

A$$zeus is the retarded god of customer-screwing scams and schemes.

Yeah that proprietary connector ruins it as an option all by itself. So does the requirement for a BTF motherboard and having a case that supports BTF motherboards. The idea of paying an absurd price for something with those kinds of strings attached is a non-starter for me. It would also be harder to sell when you no longer want or need it.

After speaking with multiple people at UPS I ended up with a person in their billing department who had a very heavy Indian acccent that assisted me. He confirmed the calculation was entirely inaccurate and told me to email the UPS customs department the tracking number for correction at AKNENYRVW @ UPS dot COM. Because of his accent I confirmed the address three times using phoentic verification for each character (A as in apple, B as in boy, etc.). He confiirmed the error was internal and told me the tariff should be 20% of the $179.68 purchase price according to their table, which makes the grand total about $10 less than if I had purchased it from a US reseller like Titan Rig or ModMyMods. I am totally fine with paying that, just need it resolved so I can accept delivery. It looks like the decimal point was placed in the wrong position and is one digit too far to the right. I am waiting for a response to the email he told me to send. Edit 8/22: No response from the past email. Spoke to another person again this morning. Now I am given a similar email with a "T" added. AKNENTYRVW at UPS dot com.

Thank you. After I talk to UPS about correcting the mistake tomorrow I will share what I learn, whether it was a simple mistake or something else. There is no way the amount they are stating can be accurate. When I asked for a return and explained why the customer service rep spoke to their supervisor about it and they offered that instead of a return/refund and I took it. The reason I requested a return was the price drop and explained I could buy an exact replacement (from them) cheaper, not product dissatisfaction or malfunction. I do not believe it is their policy to do that. I have found the people at NewEgg are usually accommodating when I am polite, kind and respectful to them on the phone and explain what my concerns are.

The entry-level Solid is $1999.99. The Solid OC is the same price at Zotac Store that I paid NewEgg already. So probably not going to return it. https://www.zotacstore.com/us/graphics-cards/geforce-rtx-50-series/geforce-rtxtm-5090 but I have until 9/6 before the window closes. Given that the price has not gone lower within my return window I wouldn't feel returning it is the right thing to do. I do not feel I was wronged in any way and I did not get a product that has any quality issues. If the price of the GPU I purchased drops more than $50 during my return window I will contact NewEgg about either a return or in-store credit for the price difference like they did the last time this happened. I don't remember if it was the Arc A770 or 4090 Suprim that they gave me in-store credit for the difference in the form of a NewEgg gift card. NewEgg also has the standard Solid model for the same price as Zotac store. https://www.newegg.com/zotac-solid-zt-b50900d-10p-geforce-rtx-5090-32gb-graphics-card-triple-fans/p/N82E16814500597 Yeah, it was an instant WTF reaction, LOL. After I thought about it a few minutes and fired an email off to Aquatuning my logic kicked in and it seemed obvious that someone made a huge mistake. Even if a 100% tariff applied (and it does not) it would be less than half what they say is owed, which is like 260% of the purchase price, on top of the purchase price. I am contacting UPS tomorrow morning. If what I am reading online is accurate there should be no duty or tariff on a purchase from an EU country if it is an online consumer retail purchase under $800 or $2500. (I see both numbers and do not know how to interpret the difference, but either way I may owe zero.) It looks like a tariff, if one even applies, would be 15% of the sale price, at most. The second person I spoke to at UPS confirmed that Aquatuning declared the correct $179.68 retail value on the customs forms.

It appear someone grossly miscalculated the import duty owed for the Alphacool CORE 5090 block. There is no way the amount UPS says I owe is accurate. Based on my understanding of the import duty from Germany it should be something less than $50, which is totally fine and I was expecting to pay something similar, but not anything remotely close to what they are stating. I am going to have to work this out before accepting delivery on Friday when scheduled. I have reached out to Aquatuning. Edit 1: I contacted UPS and the person I spoke with confirmed that it appears the import duty was incorrectly calculated based on the purchase value reported to US Customs by Aquatuning. They advised that only Aquatuning can correct the mistake and told me to have them contact UPS international at 800-782-7892 to get it corrected. The purchase price was $179.68. They must have had the decimal point in the wrong position when they filled out the customs forms. Edit 2: I received a call back from someone else at UPS. They have the declaration documents from Aquatuning and the amount reported at $179.68 USD is correct. The person told me that it appears they made a mistake in calculating the duty and he provided a number for me to call tomorrow to speak to someone about correcting the errant duty calculation. (That department was closed for the day.) In case anyone needs it that number is 866-493-7140 option 5 between 8AM-5PM EST.

Forum seems very sluggish and unresponsive right now. It was fine earlier. So sluggish, in fact, that my 2FA code was expiring while trying to log in because it was taking so long to process. It took 3 attempts.

This is type of decisive action is totally awesome in every way and should become a routine operation. This needs to happen again and again and again until they are all dead. This is how a good POTUS that puts America first behaves. They proactively find and exterminate enemies. Unprovoked and by surprise. No warnings or threats, no negotiations and no discussions... just sudden death. What bothers me is there are certain people that are against it. Hard to believe that it is even true that there could be. Cartels and organized crime rings have no rights and do not deserve to be treated as if they do. Keep up the good work... there is still more trash to take out. This is pretty cool, too... 500+ pieces of garbage gone forever.

Another fine mess from the Redmond circle jerk posse.

Yes, I saw that "sold and shipped by Amazon" and almost snagged one as a knee jerk reaction because of that. Then I remembered I had already ordered the block and don't know that I could effortlessly return the Solid OC to NewEgg for a full and fast refund (probably could, usually can, but no guarantee). It would have been nice to put another $400 back in my pocket. Otherwise there would have been nothing gained by the purchase. When it comes to certain high demand items like GPUs, I think Amazon frequently pulls a fast one and sells a tiny number at the right price under their own name and then allow their scummy scalper marketplace reseller trash to gobble them up en masse so they can turn around and drill Amazon customers in the butt. Really messed up. They should not allow their marketplace resellers to purchase anything. If they are going to run a shady operation and allow a small group of special privileged garbage human beings to buy up stock to resell at inflated prices, they should at least force them to have the product shipped to them and make them move their scalping scam operations to eBay. They should also not allow resellers to call their storefront things like the "ASUS Store" or "MSI Store" or "ASRock Store" etc. when they are not an authorized reseller of the brand whose name they are using. You can often tell they are not authorized distributors when you visit their "store" and see the other trash they have for sale. That is very dishonest. When I bought my first 4090 Suprim Liquid X it was a "sold and shipped by" GPU and when I snagged it quickly it was the only one, and no resellers had any. Then within a matter of 30-45 minutes of me buying it, Amazon had none and somehow magically multiple resellers had new inventory they did not have an hour earlier at a gigantic markup over the Amazon offering. They obviously didn't have them shipped to them for resale. They merely changed ownership internally at the warehouse. That should not be allowed by Amazon and I would even go as far to say it should against the law. It is an immoral way of doing business. It is conceptually the same as buying up all of the generators and bottled water after a natural disaster and then selling everything at a massive markup over what was paid for the product. The impact is different, but it still falls into the category of taking advantage of consumers and acting in a predatory and unscrupulous manner. I know NewEgg does that to some degree, but I do not see as many blatant examples of this sort of treachery and customer abuse as I do on Amazon.

You know when A$$zeus lowers prices to reasonable levels that sales must be totally in the toilet. I bet the overpriced 5090 GPU sales have become worse than stagnant, and rightfully so with how completely absurd prices have been. I hope they all learn a lesson from this and stop making screwing their customers a primary business objective. Brother @electrosoft needs one of these.

Looks like my timing was bad on buying a 5090. Should have waited a little longer for prices to fall even further. That's the first "good" price I have seen for an AIB partner 5090. If I was confident I could quickly sell my 4090 for enough to cover the cost of that GPU and a block for it I would grab it. I really like the TUF component aesthetics. The industrial looks is a lot nicer than the ROG gamer stuff. But, the firmware is frequently inferior on TUF components. I never noticed it until just now, but that's an odd vacant space between the backplate and heatsink radiator above the fan on the end. It looks strange. I have seen in some reviews that the TUF seems to run hotter and has a less effective cooler. I wonder if that is why? They should have filled up the space with pipes and fins.

Well, both of the US sources that I normally buy from had this waterblock but they are sold out already within 2 days. I went ahead and ordered the Alphacool Core from Aquatuning in Germany before they're all gone everywhere. I learned my lesson with the 9070 XT. The block for it was in production more than a month and they sold more orders than what they produced, so I ended up in the second round of waiting for production to catch up to demand. Strike while the iron is hot, or potentially end up with nothing. Even with their totally ludicrous shipping costs it was about $10 less than total cost from either of the two US sources where I was planning to buy it. I could have saved a little bit on a Byski block but I have seen people posting online that one variation of the Bykski block that is supposed to fit this model does not because of the RGB header. One variation has a notch for it and the other one does not. Ain't nobody got time for that kind of nonsense. Plus, the 4090 Suprim Core waterblock is excellent so I know what to expect.

Happy birthday brother @Papusan!!! May today be the first day of the best year of your life, filled with blessings and happiness

Here is something I thought worth sharing. As most of us do, I absolutely despise having to install RGB software. After so many years of running external radiators I really hate having to use the motherboard headers for fan control and having to create custom fan curves in the BIOS. Monumental waste of time and energy. I grew very fond of using manual (hardware) fan speed controls. Controlling the RGB with an external device and remote is nothing new and I've been managing lighting with a hub for a long time. However, there are not a lot of options for manual fan controls. I found a hub that includes fan speed control using the same remote as the RGB. I bought a couple of these $11.99 hubs today and love them. Very simple and extremely effective. The fan speed options are low, medium and high. Not infinite speed control, but I don't give a rat's tail about that. This does exactly what I want with no fuss. Neither my RGB nor my fans are connected to the motherboard headers. Permanent static white with the press of a single button and no need for bloatware is always awesome. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DS2273B8?th=1

I have not ordered one yet. I'm waiting until the 9070 XT is delivered and I know that the buyer is happy before I spend any extra money. It is scheduled for delivery by USPS on Wednesday. I generally do that when I sell something in a forum marketplace to make sure I take care of the fellow community member as well as not have my own reputation harmed by some kind of unforeseen problem. If I have to make a claim with the shipper I want to be able to immediately refund the buyer instead of making them wait for me to get the money back from a claim against the shipper.

I don't remember the exact number JayzTwoCents was pushing through his Astral using the EVC but I think is was something like 1.300V or 1.400V and 1600W+ before his Astra 12VHPWR socket started melting. That was on LN2 though. My core max is about 3325-3350. I cannot get the clocks to stay that high with air cooling + cold AC because it doesn't stay cold enough to hold the clocks that high. You can see that here in this run. That is a max temp of 45°C which drops the core clock to 3165 MHz due to temperature. That is with 1.070-1.075V so I think the silicon sample is very good to go that high with such low voltage without crashing.

Thank you. I will report back if it has any effect on voltage or performance. If nothing else the +4% power limit should help. Many of the vBIOS do not go past 100% TGP. The Gigabyte vBIOS I am using and the stock Zotac are 100%. It does not seem to have done anything with the voltage for me. With the MSI vBIOS max is 0.005V less for some reason. I matched offsets (not clocks) and the Gigabyte AORUS Master produces the best overall results with the highest power draw. It also has the highest default boost limit maximum without any offset. That is interesting because the AORUS Master power limit shows 600W and max is 100%, but it seems to pull substantially (110.5%) more power in spite of the 100%/600W max the firmware reports in GPU-Z. The stock vBIOS and Master vBIOS do not have any positive power limit offset... 600W at 100% or less. MSI must have done something different at a hardware level to uncap the voltage at a higher maximum because the vBIOS itself does not seem to alter the core max voltage. If a shunt mod doesn't bump it up I may have to do more soldering when the time comes. That is assuming I decide that it is worth the hassle. First things first though. Waterblock must come before power and voltage mods. https://imgur.com/a/SV7jyFv

Interesting. Could you please dump your vBIOS with NVFLASH and share it to see if that will allow me to get similar voltage if I flash it?

Here is Steve's investigative movie... I haven't finished watching the entire thing, but the smuggling is different than some may have thought. They actually have some criminals buying them legally in the US through ordinary channels, both new and used, then they secretly ship them into China. Much more difficult to control that scenario and also harder to identify the bad actors.