Mr. Fox

Yes, I have two 14900KF R-batch CPUs. The first from snakeeyes111 and this one from Andy1981. Both from Germany. Seems like the Germans get most of the good silicon samples for some reason. The nick in the PCB doesn't break the surface and I think he mentioned it in the spirit of full honesty and disclosure, but after receiving it I would consider it inconsequential and is hard to even see looking at it. (I was intitally a bit apprehensive for the same reason you were.) Had he not mentioned it, I am not sure I would have even noticed it. It's that minor. I am glad it is already delidded. Since I am running it bare die one less hassle and I don't have to use any of my QuickSilver. If I put it in the ITX system I am going to order the CR360 bare die AIO to replace the CR360 Dark AIO. I have to be honest in that I am very impressed by that little Munchkin PC. It perfoms far better than I would have imagined considering its size and low phase count. It wouldn't be ideal as a benching rig, but for anything else it is very good. It does everything I hoped it would, and more, extremely well. Being bigger and having more robust power handling capabilities wouldn't provide any advantage with an AIO cooling solution.

The thread was created in February and there has been only one response, on the date of the article by TechPowerUp. Other than 14900KS poor quality silicon (and for a period leading up to KS bin scavenging causing shopper to not be able to purchase a decent 14900K bin) I am not aware of the issues mentioned. I find myself wondering to what degree this is TechPowerUp clickbait. That said, if the SA bug (for lack of a better term) is common, it could be that BIOS default value for VCCSA is too high for the processors that use freakishly low VCCSA. I haven't turned the small errors away yet, but I was able to move from 8266 to 8400 memory overclock last night with only 1.130V on VCCSA with no lockups. This could be what many are experiencing, not knowing their BIOS default is setting for VCCSA too high. I also can't help but wonder if it is why some believe they have a weak IMC that keeps them from running 8000+ and they are simply mistaken, meaning the only reason they can't is because their VCCSA is set too high by default and they don't know that is what the problem is. I am not sure it is a bug in the truest sense. It may be the low VCCSA is what was intended and "normal" is higher VCCSA due to poor silicon quality being common and those that use very low VCCSA are the ones that are the best samples. These are usually CPUs with very good SP ratings on P/E cores and IMC SP. Perhaps the problem is more accurately described as incompetent firmware engineering by motherboard OEMs and lack of R&D/QC on their part. Assuming status quo is going to work today exactly as it did yesterday, instead of actually verifying it does is what I would categorize as incompetence and an absence of R&D/QC on their part.

This CPU might be ideal for the Munchkin PC's Z790i Edge with its pedestrian 360mm AIO and limited power phase capacity. I'm not pushing that past 8000 on the memory, so maybe the perfect match of CPU to system. On my benching rig I can just turn on the chiller and force more voltage down its throat to get it where I want it. That said, I am more impressed by the ITX system's abilities than I have been with the more costly builds. It's not equivalent, but better ratio of cost to benefit. Sometimes spending a lot more to get a little more is a tough pill to swallow even though doing more with MOAR is my favorite approach. Nobody likes getting screwed on overpriced products. The ROG Maximus mobos are a classic of example of paying a whole lot more and only getting a little more in return. You do get more, but it is not scaled against the price.

Not too bad for a CPU that I initially thought wasn't good enough to keep, even if it can't be push to 8400 or higher. I'm probably going to keep it. It's in my work PC, not my benching rig. Passes TM5 and 100% on MemTest Pro Dang Wang and all four passes of MemTest86 Pro with Parallel/HT enabled. SA voltage bug, so this 8200 C36 is totally stable with only 1.120V manually set on VCCSA. Leaving VCCSA set to Auto or manually setting higher than 1.120V causes lock-ups in Windows. Edit: Just tested 8267 and that works fine as well. No changes to voltage or settings, only goosed it a bit from 8200 to 8267 with VCCSA 1.120V.Edit: Just tested 8267 and that works fine as well. No changes to voltage or settings, only goosed it a bit from 8200 to 8267 with VCCSA 1.120V.

Yes sir. And, the talented "influencers" and spreaders of falsehoods are very deliberate in choosing the information that fits their narrative. They are more like salesmen than technicians.

It can certainly help with these monstrous air coolers we are seeing. But, that might depend on which waterblock though. The Kingpin, Optimus and EK dual-sided (active backplate cooling) waterblocks are extremely heavy compared to an air cooler. Also, if you have an older Gigabutt GPU with the big notch cut out on the end of the PCIe connector that creates a weak point that requires special caution because of their inherent design flaw. The new Gigabutt design (which is normal compared to competitors) should not be any different than other brands.

This is a cool project. Will be interesting to see how it turns out. Would like to see an ATX version.

Interesting trend. This customer must be letting his GPUs sag with no support.

They have to spread misinformation. How else can they legitimize mediocrity? 🤣

Windows 11 is an atricious smartphone OS for yes-men and sheeple that believe the Redmond Reprobates know what is best for everyone. These intellectual indigents are willing to lick their boots and they embrace their wickedness and abominable behavior. If installing StartAllBack (an amazing tool that I love) prevents Windows 11 updates, especially build version updates, everyone should install it even if they like the ugliness and functional deficits of the OS.

Organizations run by depraved imbeciles making "recommendations" for anything...

Anyone stupid enough to pay $5000 for a turdbook deserves disgusting trash as a just reward for their abject stupidity. It doesn't get any dumber that that. I left a comment there to that effect as well.

And it makes no sense to me. Why do people like stuff that sucks? Fisher-Price computer trash.

If not for the third-party utilities that make Windows 10/11 functionally and aesthetically acceptable to those that loathe it in the default form, Windows would be hated as much as Mac OS. The only people that do not hate Mac OS are Mac-lovers and they are a tiny minority. In its stock form Windows sucks just as bad, and mostly for the same reasons Mac OS sucks. Windows started circling the drain when Windows 8 was released and it has been on a trajectory of decline ever since. It more resembles a smartphone/tablet OS. It is more bloated than ever before. The increased restrictions and controls, reduced user autonomy and functional limitations go against the principles that made PC ownership something special. There is an alternative, and it is better. It's called Linux. The problem is the lack of decent software and the fact that there is a learning curve that is too steep for most users to embrace the idea. Computers were built on the idea of helping people do things better or faster, and having to learn something new when you don't need to is not better or faster. Windows will have to get worse and software that works on Linux will have to match or beat the quality of software that runs on Windows before Linux can or will take the place of Windows. The Linux OS itself is better.

Well that will certainly come in handy. That 780W Eurocom PSU was one of the best "upgrades" I ever got for a laptop. It seems like it is primarily really crummy E-cores that are ruining most 14900K/KS. I don't understand why so many of them have absolutely horrible E-core silicon quality. That was not nearly as much of a problem with 13900KS. A fair number of them have pretty decent P-cores.

Thank you. It is a really great one. I gave like $600 for it on OC.net a few months ago. You (we all) need a 14900KS like the one in this guys signature. This should be normal for a "Special Edition" not a special one. Normal is not special.

That is awesome news about the way MC takes care of customers the right way. Such a rare thing in today's world. Sad news that you drew another dud from the lottery. 14900K and 14900KS have both been a losing battle for many. My SP117 13900KS should be what an average 14900KS looks like. I wish I had three of these. The only excellent LGA 1700 CPUs I have purchased were purchased used from someone that found a better sample and sold me the CPU their better one replaced.

Awesome. StartAllBack is an indispensable solution to several unforgivable aesthetic atrocities that make Windows 11 disgusting beyond words. Fantastic news that having it installed prevents Windows updates from getting applied. That's probably the best news I've heard in the last year. Everyone should install it immediately. It is also very pleasing and satisfying to see Windows 11 losing the ground on market share rather than gaining. I hope it produces irreversible financial harm to them. They deserve to fail for releasing such a crappy product. What goes around comes around. It's time for them to pay the price for producing sucky trash.

But, it had RGB so you know it had to be good. ASUS is an excellent example of a brand that built a following of dedicated fanboys even though they no longer produce consistently good products. They will sell their overpriced garbage to their fanboys and the fanboys will excuse their mistakes again and again. Much in the same way as the irrational Dell/Alienware brand-worshippers that pay extra for it and swear that their poop doesn't stink.

I have one 1TB SSDs in old Seagate SATA enclosures that had cheap and small HDDs in them that I took out and threw away and they work to my satisfaction. The Seagate enclosures are made better than the cheap garbage empty enclosures on Amazon. They have been very reliable even though the original drives were discarded. You can pick us old USB drives like that super cheap at garage sales and don't have to care about the drives inside being too small or even functional.

Indeed. That is why I am going to RMA these. They were cheap enough that losing $32.50 x 2 wouldn't be the end of the world, but if I can't use them as intended then I want my money back. I would have been OK with them being slow and not performing at advertised speeds because they were so cheap. And, I would be OK with using them in USB enclosures. Not being sure they would continue working from one day to the next is the problem here. I am glad I decided to punish one of them to see if it would stand up to the abuse.

Some people are really snobby when it comes to storage and think they need to buy only the best and most expensive name-brand storage to hold files. I think that is true and super important to store crucial files that would be painful or even devastating to lose. You need that as well as backups. I don't have terabytes of files like that and none of those files are gigantic. And, because I make Macrium Reflect images, losing a cheap drive holding an OS isn't even something I care too about much. But for disposable junk like games and benchmark screenshots and files that don't matter in the grand scheme of things I think it is kind of silly to waste lots of money on overpriced brand name drives. Kind of like paying extra for fancy toilet paper that you are going to use to wipe your bottom and flush. Nope... I don't think so. Cheap and big is the way to go.

Yes, that is my preferred way of doing it. I've done it both ways and it randomly succeeds and randomly fails. I will go back to using my affordable and ever-reliable 2TB Silicon Power NVMe drives for my game libraries. I will just spend a little more and replace them with 4TB drives later on. 2TB is just too small if you install lots of modern AAA game space hogs. It's ridiculous how much space some of them gobble up.

Nothing. I spent a long time searching and even the brand is unidentifiable. As much as I thought it was going to be usable for the intended purpose it will not be. I'm going to have to RMA them. They were both working acceptably as noted, but after a significant round of strenuous workout the one I decided to punish is failing. Now it cannot be formatted and has unusable space on it. And, now Macrium cannot back up to it, so they're junk. Got to love China crap. Sometimes it works out OK and sometimes not. After running a diskpart "clean all" command (writes zeroes to the entire drive) it has a 2MB area that is not accessible and it formatted as a "Basic Data Partition" and cannot be reformatted. Reliability would always be a concern. I ran another clean command on it and reclaimed the space and it reformatted properly and I could create a Macrium Image. I think it could live with the slowness for simple file storage and disposable data like game libraries, but I think reliability is too sketchy at this point. I would always be wondering when it would stop working.

Nothing on it says Samsung and the label is made to look very similar. I don't care about that. China will be China: The land of shady business and scammers. They cannot be trusted at anything. They're both definitely 4TB. The speed is Gen 1 not Gen 4. But that may be a firmware issue because some reviewers posted screenshots showing advertised Gen 4 speeds. Honestly it's twice as fast as a SATA SSD so for cheap storage in a 4TB capacity I'm not going to complain about the speed. It doesn't need to be fast to hold files and twice as fast as SATA SSD is it good enough for $32.50 if it is durable. I plan to use it for installing a buttload of games not for important data. I'm going to test one of them inside of a USB 3.0 NVMe enclosure and I bet the read and write speeds are going to be the same as in a PCIe 4x slot. These are not something you would want to use for sensitive or important data, but for something like a large drive to install games or use in a USB enclosure it's OK. Much faster than SATA or normal USB flash memory for smaller file transfers. I can transfer a 30GB Macrium Reflect image to it with acceptable speed, but a 60GB file slows down about half way through. The cache probably is too small. But, honestly for $32.50 I can't complain as long as it doesn't die unexpectedly. Had I paid $100 for it that would be unacceptable. It does not perform at the advertised Gen 4 speed, but I do not need it to for how I plan to use it.