Mr. Fox

Perfect. As I mentioned in our text yesterday, just having the jackets and block will lower the temps tremendously. It shows how HORRIBLE the garbage stock heatsinks heating blankets are. It is totally inexcusable how lousy the stock ones work/don't work. Did you have any difficulty getting the stock heatsinks off the Trident modules? Did you use paint thinner to soften the adhesives?

That's good to know. It makes sense that most, if not all, are using the same size o-rings. It would keep production costs down if everyone was using a common o-ring and not having a proprietary part manufactured for the various cooling components.

They don't come with any pads? Dang. Glad I have a bunch of extras. Does it say to use 0.5mm pads or did you measure? Did you already get your heat sinks off of the G.SKILL modules? I haven't done mine yet. Will soak them in laquer thinner like I did the last ones. The adhesive comes off easy that way. Excellent. Glad it is working as well for you, too. 👍 I just got an update from USPS. US Customs in NY is processing it, so I will probably receive it Saturday or Monday.

Awesome. Not sure when mine will arrive, but finally at least have tracking info.

Nothing is too crappy for the lowest common denominators and their chintzy disposable hardware trash.

Well, it's going back. I opened the box after work today to look it over. It's actually gorgeous and I am far more impressed than I expected to be. Even though it is white and I prefer black, it looks amazing. HOWEVER, it is not as advertised. It's not new. I could ignore that. It is not without damage. There are some minor scratches on edges of panels and a small and inconspicuous dent in the lower rear corner of the removable back panel. For $77 I could even forgive that. The blemishes are so minor I wouldn't make a fuss over it unless I had paid retail. What I can't accept is the fact that none of the hardware is included. The rear SSD bar behind he mobo tray is missing. All of the removable SSD inserts at the front side area where a radiator can be mounted vertically are missing. None of the included accessory parts, screws or standoffs are there. Thankfully, Nellis Auction has a 7-day hassle-free return policy. Bummer. So, I am only out the gasoline for the 25-minute drive each way. Could be worse. I do not believe it was intentionally misrepresented. The people that inspect and photograph the items to go on auction are probably not the sharpest tool(s) in the shed, and I doubt they would know what should be included or how to identify what is missing. To a novice that knows little or nothing about computers, it would look new/complete.

Yeah, that is really dirty pool these scumbags are playing. The have chosen to withhold support for it in an effort to twist peoples' arms into adopting their latest piece of trash OS. They can drop dead and [insert your expletives of choice]. I can't think of any words that are nasty or vile enough to express the level of contempt and disrespect I have for Apple and Microsoft. I literally hate both companies and wish both would go bankrupt, cease operations and leave the world in a spot of having to choose which Linux distro to install to continue using their PCs and Macs.

Deliberate. Just like the previous lies. Windows 7 doesn't support DX12, rebar, pure UEFI, WiFi 6, Intel HD Graphics, Ray Tracing... all absolute and unadulterated lies and bull crap. They don't ALLOW it because they must control and force their agenda. Poo-poo cah-cah. That's why Linux is the better solution, even when it isn't the best solution. Proprietary Nazi crap.

Nope. I hate it when one AIB partner does something stupid/different than the rest with things like ports. The standard is 3 DP and 1 HDMI and they should all stick to that. I use all three of my DP ports so that would screw things up. In the past I have tried to use both types of ports in a multi-display setup and the color and brightness never matches 100%.

That would be worth looking into, for sure. So, wasn't really looking for it, but I snagged a brand new in-box (very rough box, LOL) Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL for $77 yesterday from a local online auction that sells items with damaged packaging or minor blemishes. I picked it up from their warehouse a few miles up the road after work yesterday. I have no use for it, but it was too cheap to ignore at that price. Now I need to decided if I want to keep it or sell it for a profit. It's white, which isn't my favorite, but it would look nice with the Z790 Apex inside of it.

Oh wow, I wonder when those were released? I never would have sold my beloved Kingpin card had those been available at the time I sold it. 💔 After my last block cleaning and repaste that was timed strategically with the sale, that was the primary driver. I intended for it to be the last time and felt compelled to sell it before a problem developed with a leaking waterblock. I didn't want an unserviceable paperweight, or be put in the position of having to use the stock AIO. It is a major bummer that those were not available, or I didn't know about them. I would have purchased the Bykski block to replace the Hydro Copper block the moment I spotted it. 💔

Yeah, the oils from that full cover pad are crazy. The last time I cleaned and repasted the 3090 KPE I was able to get it completely clean and then cleaned all of the excess oil from the pad using 91% iso. I think it took like 10 or 12 ounces and repeated applications and scrubbing with a toothbrush to get the card clean. It was a real pain in the butt. Much more difficult than K5 Pro removal, which is enough of a pain. If you want a Galax HOF 4090 for about $800-$1000 more than a Suprim X you can grab one from Galax's web store. As idiotic as the price is, it is still much cheaper and WAY BETTER than a ASSUS Matrix joke GPU. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805483024002.html Or, you can waste a couple grand less on a Red Devil space heater. Mr. Potty mouth couldn't even fix his with liquid metal. Seem like it is defectively engineered. Totally unacceptable thermals. He claims he "fixed it" and did make it better, but 96°C hotspot in a Fire Strike stress test is still just garbage. The name is fitting, though... runs as hot as hell, LOL. Yeah, K5 Pro is super messy, but works very well in place of pads. I put it inside of a big syringe and use that to apply it to keep the mess under control. It makes application very neat and easy. I still have quite a bit in a syringe that hasn't been used up. I will probably use that on the Precision turdbook the next time I have it apart. The CPU is running way too hot with KPX on it.

That could be the best way in your situation and I've done it many times before as well. No need to remove the internal storage. Install on another computer, make a Macrium Reflect image of it on USB, then restore it on the system where you want it. Easy peasy.

Can you install from internal CD/DVD and PS/2 keyboard and mouse? That is how I did it with Z490 and Z690. I gave up on trying to integrate USB 3.X drivers.

The block looks great. Maybe even better than new with the sanding grain. Ray tracing totally kills AMD GPUs prior to 7900 XT/XTX. RDNA2 can't handle it well at all. I'm sure somebody is going to want to get screwed over and pay $500 more than the normal and already ludicrous 4090 price to have that red green card. Don't know why they would, but there's no doubt in my mind. There is never a shortage on dumb.

The 6900XT doesn't fare any better than 3090. With Path Tracing enabled it is a slide show at 1440p. With Path Tracing disabled, the FPS is OK but it is still a stuttery mess with Ray Tracing.

Well, we live in a different time and a different world now. They should have responded immediately (like within a day or less) but that assumes that they actually care about being a good moderator, or care about you as a member of the community. Chances are good neither of those things are true and they decided to ban you because your posts went against the narrative they wanted and they didn't care that you had not technically broken any rules. That is the way of the screwed up world we live in and cancel culture cancer has spread beyond the political realm to become a common way people deal with personal hang-ups and differences of opinion in matters that are trite, trivial and generally unimportant. Sad to say, but if you haven't heard anything by now they will likely continue to ignore you because they don't care and they're not good moderators. If they are brand fanboys they used the ban as an excuse to silence a detractor.

Does it actually say "Balanced" anywhere? Or, does the performance equate to setting it manually to "Balanced" mode? I can't tell by any other means on my end. I only see "Auto" on my system and that is all that shows in our screenshots.

If it is truly "Auto" and works as one would expect, it should select based on the capabilities of the GPU and not aribitrarily default to Balanced or Peformance. One way of determining that is to see if your FPS with 3090 is similar to 4090 using Auto. If it is, then it is probably working correctly, meaning it chose a less aggressive configuration for 3090 to allow it to maintain nice performance. Same would be true for say a 3060, 3070 or 3080 if "Auto" is working the way I would expect it to. If it did not then I would say that the feature is broken and manual settings would be needed. Maybe "Balanced" accomplishes the same thing as "Auto" and the outcome resembles the capabilities of the GPU. That could explain why my performance with 4090 resembles the "Quality" setting. The FPS is high enough that it can run at higher settings, whereas an older or less performant GPU could not.

Quality is the preset default. @tps3443 Edit: actually, that is not correct. I double-checked to confirm. Auto just shows "Auto" but based on the FPS it appears to be quality. I don't know how to tell other than that. If I set it to Quality, the preset changes to "Custom" but the FPS performance is the same as "Auto" default.

Even the 13900KS was drawing 450W on my system. That's with warm water, too. The PC has been running for 3 days in a hot office and no chiller running. 100% CPU utilization and 99% GPU utilization. This is using the 1000W beta ASUS vBIOS that wasn't supposed to ever be released to the public (no overcurrent protection, etc.). It works best for me. The stock MSI Suprim vBIOS works better than the Galax HOF 666W vBIOS for me, but this one works best of the three.

Here is with Ultra preset, no DLSS or ray reconstruction. Ultra enables FSR by default. Test with DRS and without. Power draw is notably less with no ray tracing or ray reconstruction. Ultra (FSR) with DRS enabled and 100% scaling to (4K) max resolution. Yes, I corrected that and everything worked. Thank you for mentioning it in case it had not occurred to me. I was using what seems to be the best benching driver rather than the latest driver.

User error. Had to install the latest driver cancer, LOL. What did you do? I need to get my chiller to run colder. Not running the chiller right now and my water is around 32°-34°C. Yeah, power draw is crazy, especially using DLSS Quality and frame regeneration turned off. You need to update to patch 2.0 to see the full effect. That's also using patch 1.63 which does not have the new feature. Patch 2.0 with Ray Reconstruction will load it even more. Patch 2.0 introduces considerably more eye candy overhead. This would be unplayable with a mid-range GPU unless you really dumbed things down. This is how much higher FPS is with patch 1.63.

Updated - I cannot get Ray Reconstruction to turn on for some reason.