Mr. Fox

This arrived today. Unbelievable how heavy this sucker is. Looking forward to testing it.

Very true. Memory performance on the 5950X was pathetic. And the plethora of WHEA errors, USB drop-outs and insane runaway thermals at modest overclock speeds were also pretty disgusting. It was one of the worst buying decisions I have made.

I am not offering it for sale anywhere else, so if you still want it and want to save up the money that is fine. It'll collect some dust, but it won't hurt it to sit. The Z690 Apex (thank you for selling it to me) is working fine now that I downgraded the BIOS to v2204. The newest (2305) was trash on the Strix and that proved to be true on the Apex as well. Unexplainable random BSOD and Windows lockups on both machines using identical BIOS setting or running with BIOS defaults. Instantly fixed by going back to v2204. It is really sad and unfortunate that ASUS is blocking firmware downgrades and making customers have to jump through hoops to use the firmware they want to use. That's a really messed up approach to a company masquerading as enthusiast-centric. Their behavior proves otherwise. What is not working fine is the memory overclocking. The Hynix M-die modules I am using ran like at top at 6800 and 7000 on both the Unify-X and Dark. When I put it in the Strix it maxed out at 6400. The maximum supported memory clock on the Strix is DDR5-6400. I assumed that, along with being a 4-DIMM setup, was why. Now I am thinking that was wrong because it maxes out at 6400 stable on the Apex as well. It will boot and run at 6800, but very unstable (was the same on the Strix) to the point of being unusable. So, I'm going to test using the A-die in the Dark to see if it is the memory has degraded somehow. I can't use the memory waterblock I had on the Strix because it is a 4-slot waterblock and the DIMM.2 slot is too close to the memory slots... almost touching. I'm not sure if the 2-slot waterblock will even work. Very stupid that ASUS put them so close together like they did. At 6400 all memory tests pass unless I let them run long enough for the memory to overheat and the system reboots. Running MemTestPro with the DangWang GUI the memory reaches ~70°C and the system reboots. The memory also requires more voltage at 6400 than it did in the Unify-X or Dark. I assumed that was the Strix having weaker memory traces, but the same is true on the Apex. That part is not helping with the high temperatures (which I why I put the waterblock on to begin with).

Yeah, that's real stupid. I'd pay an extra $150-$200 for a golden sample, but paying a little more than double is just downright idiot-level. Better to settle for a lower bin and dump more voltage on it than dump twice as much money on it. Even $1,000 is pushing it, but $1,500 suggests that you're trolling for morons. Aside from the level of stupid it would require on the part of the buyer, I'd be ashamed to ask that much for it, especially in a community where I was established and planned to continue my contributions. Going into the situation with a premeditated plan to screw someone you have frequent interaction with raises questions in my mind about the person selling it. It is a logical and strategic venue to offer it up because it puts it in front of the proper audience, but taking advantage of the audience like that is no bueno.

Climate change occurs at least four times a year in most places. Global warming starts in Spring and lasts until Fall. And, the human race has no say in the matter. But, we like to flatter ourselves and pretend our silly agendas matter. Believing in a hoax makes it real, right? If that is what you want, then it is probably worth a little bit more versus settling for something less to save a few bucks. If you can pay for it, then I'd say go for it. Just don't feed the scalpers. They don't deserve to eat. Let 'em go dumpster diving. If they get really hungry, they can eat their overpriced inventory or dump it for less than they paid for it to buy groceries.

There is always an upside and a downside when it comes to weather. The idea that such a thing as perfect weather exists is fake, because it depends on the person experiencing it. What it allows you to do that you enjoy, or keeps you from doing that you would enjoy if not for the weather, is what determines whether or not the weather is "good" on an individual perspective. That perspective can change as rapidly as the weather as well. What you want to do today might not be what you want to do tomorrow, and if the weather interferes with that it sucks. I like it to be cold (below freezing) and very dry (no snow or ice, and no humidity,) with no clouds and no wind. Kind of like the inside of a chest freezer with the lid closed and the lamp switch stuck in the on position.

I did not know you could. I have used mostly EVGA Precision X1 for GPU overclocking for several years because it has historically been a better utility for me.

LOL, gotta love the tacky Afterburner Windows 11 skin from Derex. The dark one is crappy enough, but the white one made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Truly disgusting feces. I just don't know what is wrong with people. LOTS of wasted space in the UI that just hogs up your screen and adds no value on top of looking like crap. The fetish for ugly software GUIs started with Windowz 8 and it just gets worse with every version update. Totally ridiculous.

Any difference between Z690 and Z790 performance would be attributable to individual manufacturer focus rather than the chipset itself. Intel made no changes to the architecture that directly impact CPU or memory performance, and say as much. The changes are, adding another USB 3.2 Type C port, adding an extra PCIe lane or two on the PCH, and removal of Optane support. So, if there are examples of Z790 systems that perform better it is because the manufacturer gave it more effort than they gave to Z690 performance, or put another way, neglected Z690 performance because they wanted to sell Z790 boards. The actual architectual changes Z790 brings are totally irrelevant to a lot of us. For example, I have never cared about Optane. I have never cared about having an extra type C port that is faster. So, to me, both of those changes are irrelevant and unnecessary. Thank you. This is hot off the presses. I literally downloaded the lastest version yesterday for a new OS installation that did not have it installed and this was released later on the same day. LOL. There are quite a few release notes that will be of interest to many. The first four, in particular, and especially the second to last one relating to the increase of the 40-series VF curve maximum. The old version of MSI Afterburner maxed out below my stock core frequency maximum on the 4090 so it was utterly worthless before. Version 4.6.5 Added NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40x0 series graphics cards support Added voltage control support for GA103 and GDDR6x based versions of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Added AMD RADEON RX 7900 series graphics cards support Added total board power monitoring support for AMD RADEON RX 7900 series graphics cards Added some future AMD and NVIDIA GPU PCI DeviceIDs to hardware database Added Intel Arc GPUs support to hardware monitoring module. Please take a note that Intel Arc GPUs overclocking and tuning is currently not supported due to Intel hardware control API support limitation to x64 applications only Added experimental support for Intel 13th generation CPUs Added experimental support for AMD Ryzen 7xxx CPUs CPU usage data sources in hardware monitoring module have been switched to alternate implementation based on NtQuerySystemInformation(SystemProcessorIdleInformation), because traditional legacy idle time reporting in NtQuerySystemInformation(SystemProcessorPerformanceInformation) is broken in current Windows 11 22H2 builds Added workaround for broken fixed fan speed programming API (Overdrive 5 compatible fallback path) for old Overdrive 7 GCN GPUs on 22.5.2 and newer AMD drivers Added config file switch for disabling native reliability voltage control API on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9x0 series graphics cards and forcing legacy P-state 2.0 voltage control API usage on such hardware. Power users may use this switch to bypass voltage control lock on NVIDIA Maxwell series graphics cards on release 515 and newer drivers families Improved correction formula parser with data format conversion, rounding and min/max functions support Added OCMailbox based bus clock frequency monitoring for Skylake and newer Intel CPUs. Unlike traditional legacy timestamp clock based bus clock frequency estimations, OCMailbox provides support for overclocked BCLK monirtoring. Please take a note that access to OCMailbox is blocked by design of OS when HVCI is enabled Improved SMART.dll monitoring plugin. Added temperature monitoring support for NVMe devices, including the secondary controller temperature for some Samsung NVMe drives Default clock frequency limit of voltage/frequency curve editor window has been extended to 3.5GHz. Please take a note that you may still customize the limits via config file if necessary Update server location changed to new URL inside update checking system. Old update server location reached EOL Edit: I guess I did download the latest version yesterday and had not noticed already. The VF curve goes to 3500 on the 4090.

Nice to see so many former customers taking a stand against their idiotic woke stupidity. I made an immediate decision to personally boycott them as soon as I saw what they did. Looks like lots (probably more than they will survive) decided the same. It's working. Other companies that make similar depraved leftist moron business decisions deserve to die. If Bud Light's demise is not a wake-up call for them, they're next. I wonder who the next casualty of poor judgment will be?

There are no more good laptops brother. There's no such thing anymore. There is no company that manufactures such a thing. A figment of anyone's imagination that believes otherwise. A vast sea filled with digital feces. Do what I did and get an off lease Dell Precision refurb. I have the 7720 with the Quadro P5000 16 GB GPU. Full metal jacket. Except for the soldered CPU it is a proper machine that is built well. The GPU is a standard MXM. Four memory slots, two NVMe and one 2.5-inch drive bay. 17 inch IPS, full keyboard with backlight and a legit touchpad with real buttons unlike the sissy-boy gamer trash. You can do some acceptable gaming with it equivalent to what you did with your Alienware. Very similar performance, perhaps slightly more on the GPU side. You can find them in top notch condition for about $500. If you spend more than that on a turdbook you're just flushing money down the toilet on a piece of trash designed for children. If you need help locating one let me know. My sister bought one just like mine from the same place I bought mine and hers is also like new. I reconfigured mine to triple boot W10/11 and Linux on the dual 1TB NVMe SSDs and added a 2TB SATA SSD for storage. I have disabled the Intel HD Graphics in the BIOS and run the Quadro in discrete GPU mode. Have you checked if the problem occurs with the battery removed from the Alienware? What about the PSA test at boot? Any errors revealed there? From the extensive troubleshooting you've done I would say it's an electrical short of some kind. If not the battery shorting out internally maybe a motherboard defect.

I think the new one he has now that was mentioned earlier today, and the previous golden chip right before it, belong to someone else and he does not get to keep them. Some kind of testing someone asked him to do for them. The exceptional 13900K was traded for the Z790 Apex if I remember correctly.

Even those of us that splurged on a 4090 at the appropriate pseudo MSRP exercised restraint. I could have purchase a 4090 any time I wanted at scalper prices. I waited until I could buy it at the "correct" inflated price. I did not accept the "inflated inflated" scalper price. I also do not trust the marketplace losers. I am sure they are not 100% all horrible, but I am not interested in finding out which ones deserve a fair shake. If you look at feedback ratings, it is very rare to find one with feedback to be proud of. Most are below 80% positive. If you can't trust someone to sell you the product at an appropriate price, then you simply can't trust them at all. They are not trustworthy and they do not deserve to receive enough money from sales to remain solvent. They need to find another work, (a new scam, LOL) and we should all do our parts to help them fail epically hard as scalpers. Same here. Amazon and NewEgg should require that their marketplace scalpers that sell products at a price greater than 3% of the in-house price provide an all-expense paid, unconditional, return for full refund policy for 90 days from the date of purchase that is backed by the marketplace owner with a contractual obligation for the marketplace scalper to indemnify the marketplace owner. Meaning that if the scalper drops the ball, NewEgg or Amazon are on the hook to make it right and then they go after the scalper with a vicious bloodlust to get their money back. That would separate the legit scalpers from the fly-by-night crooks. There is no nice way to spin it. If they are buying product from Amazon and NewEgg and immediately selling it to another customer at a higher price on the same web site it is a dishonorable profession and their scalper business deserves to fail. I also think that business practice should be made illegal. We burn too many calories making laws and regulations about things that do not matter, but we put up with stupid scam shenanigans like this. That's messed up.

Yes. The only ones available for purchase are from scalpers. It's unfortunates that silly people validate their existence by purchasing their overpriced goods. I'd love to see that trend come unraveled and all of them end up forced to sell everything at a loss and ultimately go out of business. I also wish that legitimate companies like NewEgg and Amazon would discontinue their "marketplace" crap, or require that all marketplace sellers cap their prices at a value not to exceed 3% of the "sold and shipped by" NewEgg and Amazon prices. They are feeding the dragon by allowing them to use their platform. The cheapest scalper on NewEgg is more than $150 greater than the NewEgg price on the out-of-stock CPU. And yes, there are dummies that pay that price. That's why all of the scalpers haven't already died yet.

I did but the distributor would not fulfill the order for a quantity of one CPU. They would only sell full tray, so I am waiting for boxed retail 13900KS stock to come in. I have pre-ordered that, so now we wait. I might sell just the mobo rather than wait to offer the CPU as a combo.

Another example of how simple things can sometimes be pretty sweet... The PCIe slot passthrough fitting bracket that I was using was so flimsy. I really didn't like it much. Just the tension on the lines leaving the DG-86 chassis was enough to bend the flimsy bracket. I found this slick 2-slot PCIe bracket designed for mounting dual 40mm fans and mounted the passthrough fittings in that. Much stronger and nicer. It is thicker metal, plus being a 2-slot bracket versus 1-slot added a ton of structural integrity to it.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Even though I have no idea what they are saying I still enjoy their videos. In some aspects it is good that I do not know because I focus more on what is shown in the video. But, then something might be said that is super important that I would not benefit from knowing. Adding the tape makes perfect sense because you do not want the CPU to be lifted out of the socket when removing the block later because you could end up damaging the pins if the CPU comes loose and falls into the socket. You might also damage the PCB with it falling, but not as likely as the pins. The way words are accented in Thai and the increasing pitch at the opposite end of a spoken sentence sounds so much like backward masking to me. It is very interesting to listen to the sound of the language. It's not really any different than all of the accents here in the US other than I am clueless what they are talking about. That direct die block has arrived in the US, (Compton, CA,) so I suspect it will be delivered by this weekend or sooner. If there is anything else he mentioned in the video that might be important other than what you mentioned, please let me know. I bought the Apex that Brother @tps3443found to not be as good at RAM overclocking as his Unify-X and that should be here Thursday. I will go ahead and delid the 13900KF and test that IceMan direct die block at that point. So, once my 13900KS on order from Provantage becomes available I am going to offer a sweet deal on the Strix Z690-E and 13900KF here in the marketplace. It is a really solid mid-range motherboard. I just hope the Z690 Apex is more reliable than the Z490 Apex I had that failed and killed my sweet 10900KF.

Regardless of red or green, be sure to choose a card that has a reference PCB design with lots of options available or one you have verified that at least one or two waterblocks is readily available for the GPU you are buying. After comparing air cooled versions of 1080 Ti, 3060, 3060 Ti, 6900 XT and 4090 GPUs to the same thing with a waterblock, I can honestly say that I absolutely despise air-cooled GPUs. I am so used to the better temperatures, better performance and reduced noise level of the watercooled GPUs that I really think that air-cooled GPUs suck real bad in comparison. Air-cooled GPUs are only good if you live in a natural freezer like Brother @Papusanbecause you can use it to reduce your heating bill. Just run a Time Spy stress test and turn off your heater. After watching this video, AMD seems just as dishonest and slimy as the Green Goblin. Sign of the times. Mister Potty-Mouth Jerk is right again. I agree with his summary, even though I wish I didn't. Last gen flagship or 4090 are the only worthy purchases. 4080 and 7900 XT/XTX bring nothing worthwhile to the table. "Just because I want one" is the only reason to buy one. Otherwise, save money on a 6900 XT or 3090/3090 Ti or buy a 4090 (even the cheapest one available) if you want something special. The stuff in between is a waste of money... higher price tag, tiny bump in performance.

These are made by Cablemod and I bought them directly from their online international store https://store.cablemod.com/. I bought some 8-pin adapters exactly like those you found on Amazon and they worked great. I had no issues with them. It is easy to choose the wrong orientation by accident. I did the first time and had to RMA and repurchase the opposite. The pictures from seller on those you linked are more helpful in identifying the correct orientation than pictures provided by the seller for the adapters I purchased. Between the XT and XTX, I would only consider the latter. The 7900 XTX is a really stout GPU and the XT is too gimped overall. I am pretty passionate about my preference for NVIDIA. There is really no contest IMHO. So, personally, I would choose a 3090/3090 Ti, 4080 or 4090 over the XTX because the quality of the drivers, GeFarts feature set, far superior GDDR6X memory and all-around performance are too compelling for me for AMD to be my top pick. I am admittedly a hardware pig and I would love to have a 7900 XTX as well, but not if it came down a choice of one over another. Even though I honestly loathe NVIDIA as a company and everything they stand for, NVIDIA is still 100% my first choice purely for selfish reasons, even if it is a less powerful GPU model. I value the experience I am confident I will receive from the NVIDIA GPU even though the company is about as evil, greedy, dishonest and despicable as they get.

LOL. Some of what the swami said is on point, some not. I agree with not working extra for free, turning off work after work, etc. But, I believe in working hard during working hours, playing "hard" (not sure what that means to him, but to me it means thoroughly enjoying playtime) when work is over. If you have a good employer, you reap what you sow. If you work hard and produce good results, your compensation should reflect that. If you have to constantly work extra hours (excluding random spikes in brief periods of busyness) to get the job done, then staffing is an issue and you're being taken advantage of. If you do not have an employer that provides the right work conditions and reward results, then it is probably a clue that it would be prudent to be open to better options.

Brother @Ashtrixmine finally arrived. It is surprisingly heavy for how small it is. Seems to be solid construction. Certainly points my 12VHPWR cable in a more desirable direction. Much better than pointing straight out of the GPU toward the window panel. I put the GPU under a continuous load of 421W for 5+ minutes and the metal housing on the 90° adapter only reached 33°C, so it doesn't appear to have any issues with resistance or poor connection. (The metal housing is actually a heat sink with a thermal pad on the inside.)

Did you try Safe Mode? I have randomly seen weird things like this on monitors with high refresh rates. It would be interesting to see if setting the refresh to 60Hz while installing the driver and setting it back to the native refresh rate after the driver install completes would resolve it. Macrium Reflect FTW! It has saved my bacon so many times. Doing a clean install of Windows is not a big deal, but the magnitude of the tweaking and tuning work that follows can be extremely tedious and inconvenient. I do not use Windoze 10 or Winduhz 11 in a form that resembles the default slop. I have randomly had strange things like that happen even after doing some kind of simple operation like repasting a CPU or GPU, (which did not involve physically moving the PC) or flushing the cooling system (which did involve moving the PC). Totally baffling because there has never been an identifiable explanation for it when nothing gets disturbed with the OS or drivers, or the component that decided to misbehave. Thankfully, it is not something that happens frequently. I have seen it more with WiFi cards than anything else, usually on a laptop, which is also odd. I received an email update from EK support this morning to let me know that I would be receiving a tracking number shortly for a revised design die guard and cold plate. I also ordered an IceMan direct die block to compare with my Supercool and EKWB once the revised design parts arrive. I won't know until I have it and can verify it, but judging from photos alone, the IceMan direct die block has both of them whipped on design and ease of use. It is like a Thermalright CPU frame with an integrated direct die block. No worries about making a mess with spilled water or using a vaccum cleaner to eliminate that issue (my handy trick, LOL) during disassembly like a Supercool block and no need to access the back of the motherboard like the EK option. And, I think it looks really nice. I wish I could understand what is said in the Clockemup videos or it had captioned translation. Listening sounds like backward masking or an English recording played in reverse. Vacuum cleaner trick for context...

Sure, anything can go wrong. I have taken CPUs in and out of the socket multiple dozens of times without any issue resulting. By "truest sense" I was speaking of the surface of the pins wearing out or them becoming fatigued due to flexing too many times. There is not a lot of movement involved on the X or Y axis so as to cause "wear and tear" so to speak. Damage can certainly occur from things such as compressing the CPU into the socket with excessive force, or not placing the CPU into the socket flat, (such as one PCB corner first,) and that might not require an element of frequency. All it would take is once. The more often you disturb it, the more opportunities there are for a mishap to occur. The risk is for accidental damage to occur rather than wear. I think we are on the same page here and it is more a matter of semantics than disagreement.

Oh, happy is the child whose laptop is a turdbook, for it shall always be a turdbook. Yea, though his ignorance abound, his bliss also fourishes. And, the turdbook's days shall be as the dung of the sheeple, dry and smelly, scattered on the hillsides without number; and, its filthiness shall endure forever. Speaking of happy, I don't know why I waited so long to put a manifold on my other computer. It's just so much better. Better looking, better working and just so much more convenient for tinkering. Being able to remove one item for servicing or to swap it out with a different component without draining any coolant or disturbing any other component in the loop is just a crazy good thing. I won't procrastine next time. It will be part of the initial system build if I ever need a third one. (I can't imagine why I would ever need another one since they don't wear out, just saying I consider it a basic core component in a custom loop now.)

As long as you don't bend any pins it will be fine. They won't "wear out" in the truest sense. I've swapped and remounted CPUs more times than I can count on almost every system I have owned.