Mr. Fox

The new Apex is actually pretty ugly. Not because it is white, but it looks cheap overall. I have no intention of upgrading but out of these I am favoring the Tachyon. I wish it were black though. I like the horizontal memory and CPU socket placement like the EVGA Dark motherboards and it looks like it has all of the necessary overclocking features, some of which it looks like maybe the ASRock and Unify-X might be missing.

ASUS is just a scummy company. I do really like both Apex motherboards, but I really hate that I own anything made by these money-grabbing vampire monkeys. I don't see any upgrades in my future, but if and when that happens I am going out of my way to avoid buying anything from their brand. If this cheap ASRock motherboard wasn't ruined by having 4 memory slots it would be close to perfect in that it was dirt cheap, (now that it is obsolete... it was overpriced badly at launch) has a robust power delivery system and onboard debug LCD, power and reset. Its areas of weakness (besides the sucky 4-DIMM configuration) are single BIOS, no safe boot button and chintzy plastic I/O shroud. I'd put up with most of those flaws to avoid ASUS if it were 2 DIMM slots and I was shopping for a legit upgrade.

Built for idiots (4-DIMM feces) and priced for idiots willing to pay extra for engineering defects. So, the upgrade is a CPU with fewer cores, no hyperthreading and you drop it in a grossly overpriced motherboard that stands a good chance that it probably can't even run DDR5-7400. They can kiss my hind end before I wipe it clean and then eat a bowl full of rat droppings. I'm not interested in downgrading to a newer platform.

Yup, wait and see approach is always best for everything. Early adoption is not very smart when you stop and think about it. It is a leap of faith driven by emotion rather than intelligence and logic. Having faith in God, knowing He has your best interest in mind, is different than having faith in a company that doesn't give a rat's butt about you or what matters to you. They just want your money. If I am not going to benefit in ways I want to benefit then any money spent is a total waste and a foolish thing to do. I'm thinking this kind of half-assed launch is exactly the kind of nudge I need to get me to start losing interest at a more accelerated pace, which will be a good thing at a personal level. I think that everything relating to high performance PC and overclocking enthusiast pursuits is on a path for a major downturn. The final nails in our coffins might be driven in soon. Nothing awesome in life ever lasts forever. Only the sucky things do.

It's a downgrade. It's missing 8 cores/threads. Even E-cores add to multi-threaded performance. You'd have to overclock it to the moon to get the same results with 8 missing cores. No point in buying new tech that is a downgrade if your goal is an upgrade. Not much different than gamerboys buying a newer GPU and calling it an upgrade when the new GPU has less VRAM and a smaller bus width. Newer is always better newer, but it isn't always an upgrade. The fact that it is not sucks. One step forward, two steps backward. Unless they release a CPU with 16 hyperthreaded P-cores or 32 non-hypterthreaded P-cores there is nothing to see here. If it is $150 cheaper than 14900KS then it might be worth considering for a new standalone build, but not an upgrade/replacement build.

Sorry that happened, brother.

Thank you. I think is looks pretty good overall. I like it, but it would obviously be even better had they gone with a 2 DIMM design. Totally worth what I paid for it, but I can tell you it would have been an RMA had I paid the original MSRP. This is absolutely not even a little bit worth the original MSRP, which was a pretty massive rip-off. This is a $150 motherboard in terms of build quality, and no way it is worth $500 by any stretch of the imagination. They were nuts thinking smart people would pay that for it. The sad part is I think it is better than the Z690 Apex was. Even being 4 DIMM it performs as well or better than the Z690 Apex abortion. Or you can do both and leave the beast turned off except when you want to have fun with crazy overclocking. I am working on weaning myself of hardware addiction and I think one of the only ways I will get there is by force. The semi-crappy Asrock build is a baby step in making myself do something I don't want to do, but I am tired of giving up large sums of money for awesome stuff that is only partially awesome and doesn't live up to the pricetag. If something is going to be kind of chintzy, then it needs to have a chintzy pricetag.

Yeah, I bet the default memory timings have horrid latency. When I was trying to find the max overclock on this low budget 4-DIMM Asrock build I dropped in a cheap Crucial DDR5 Pro kit that I got for free to use in brand-focused photos in a Crucial NVMe review and the XMP and Expo profiles are beyond pathetic. And the performance (or lack thereof) using them is laughable. HORRIBLE in fact. Like over 65ns latency and barely better than DDR4 read, write and copy speeds. Using the "performance" profiles on modules like that is a waste of time. Just use default JEDEC and move on. Makes owning a DDR5 motherboard totally irrelevant.

Congratulations on the upgrade. ♥️ Yeah that is a massive performance increase... aren't you glad you don't believe most of the lies you hear on YouTube from the mainstream tech-tarded dumb-dumbs called influencers and reviewers? People that know little or nothing about performance tuning should not be reviewing anything that falls into the performance enthusiast bucket. They are unqualified and incompetent. They should not worry about what the sheeple have the skill to do. If the sheeple are stupid that has nothing to do with the product. People that can't tune should stick to trash like turdbooks and tablets. People that know how to tune don't buy enthusiast products and run them with BIOS defaults. Only the ignorant people do that.

Well, for $112 hard to beat at that price. DDR5-6400 is where it maxes out with my old Trident Z5 7200 32GB kit. Maybe tomorrow I will see if I can eek out a bit more with my spare Trident Z5 8000 48GB kit. I doubt it since it is 4-DIMM. But, this was about my max DDR5 overclock with the 2-DIMM Unify-X so overall it's fine for a test bench. It's actually a fairly nice motherboard except for the extra memory slots bringing it down to gamerboy level. Build quality is mediocre in typical ASRock style. Things like the plastic rear I/O shroud is just cheapskate stuff. But, the VRM heatsink keeps the 17 phases cool enough. The only thing that I am a bit miffed about is the "open box" included nothing except for two SATA cables and antennas for the WiFi that I don't use. The GPU support bracket (which I really wanted) and M.2 standoffs were missing and it was in a plain white box with extra space and no foam padding. No VRM fan and bracket. Luckily nothing was broken with it sliding around in the box. Weird because I am pretty sure it was brand new. Still had all of the plastic peel and nothing looked used in any way. M.2 thermal pads were the original without the film peeled off as well. Now I am going to test the couple of dead CPUs sitting on my shelf and confirm they are still dead. I am using my worst 13900KS in it right now. After what I went through with the Encore RMA where they did nothing and sent it back, maybe I will get lucky and one of them is mysteriously alive again. The BIOS is taking some getting used to. It's not terrible, but I agree that the BIOS is not as good as EVGA or ASUS. I think I like it better than MSI firmware though. The menu layout is more logical to me. I wish all of the manufacturers would stop using different terminology for settings and stick to a common naming convention. It is annoying when every brand calls things by different names. The EK CR360 Dark is doing a decent job of cooling it with the IHS and Kyrosnot Extreme. Better than I expected. It is delidded with liquid metal under the IHS, but still.

I played around with that Celeron once for a few minutes on the Z690 Dark and it easily ran DDR5-6000. I didn't spend a lot of time messing with it to see how far it could go, but that required no effort at all. I just applied one of the built-in memory overclock profiles and it was totally stable. I think ASRock can sometimes be their own worst enemy in terms of marketing. Or, the lack thereof is probably more accurate. In that respect they are similar to how EVGA was. Seemed like their philosophy was "people that know our stuff is awesome will buy it and we don't care about those that do not know" LOL. The exact opposite of ASUS's "people think our stuff is awesome, even when it isn't, and we love screwing them with high prices because they think that."

If the 12th Gen Celeron I purchased for flashing 12th to 13th Gen BIOS updates is an indication everything worked in the BIOS except for changing core mullltipliers. XMP and all of the memory timings worked and so did voltage and power adjustments. Whether BCLK overclocking of the CPU works is dependent on the motherboard having a clock generator. Not all of them do.

As long as the "open box" is fully functional (always had good luck with that from NewEgg) I will be OK with it. If all of the accessories are included, I will be stealing the GPU support bracket for the Encore since ASUS cheaped out and did not include one like they do with the white Apex. I like that type (attached to motherboard standoffs) as opposed to other types that work like a kickstand. I think my 7200 G.SKILL Trident Z5 kit is 16GBx2 if I remember correctly. I will use that and downclock it to whatever clock speed is stable. What is sad is the fact that it will still overclock the RAM as well as the sucky crap Z690 Apex 2-DIMM motherboard abortion did. For $112 if everything works it will be hard to find fault with things, especially considering the features it does have (buttons, debug LCD, generous rear I/O, onboard clock generator to overclock locked CPUs, etc). Not sure why they didn't give it dual BIOS though. I might play with the 12th Gen Celeron I have that is locked and see if I can overclock that wimpy thing. I got it for flashing newer BIOS on older boards (Z690) that would not boot with 13th Gen.

Fun fact for those that didn't already know. The "dead girl" in the video is his wife. She appears in many of his videos and movies.

This is the motherboard going into the Dark Base Pro 901 that I sold the guy from Intel. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/x12spa-tf He is using this 38 core Xeon and installing 4TB of RAM. https://www.itosolutions.net/Intel-Xeon-W-3300-W-3375-Octatriaconta-core-38-p/cd8068904691401.htm I know it is going to suck at memory overclocking, but I wanted the cheapest Z690/Z790 board I could get my hands on to put on the test bench and this was it. Not really looking for the RAM overclocking capabilities as I intend to use it. Got it for $112 on NewEgg. Will be here on Friday. Will see if my opinion of ASRock motherboards is better than my first, last and only impression with the Z370 Taichi Chai Tea. I was surprised to find something with onboard power and reset buttons, debug LCD, active VRM cooling and this many power phases at this price. The was selling for about $500 when it originally launched. I see Brother @Talon either has or did have one of these. (Spotted his YouTube video.) https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162025

I have always loved those cases. They are excellent, but I have never been willing to pay what they want for them. Same was true of Caselabs cases. Amazing products but totally unacceptable pricing. It looks like the Thermaltake prices have come down from where they were. About half what they used to be. Still very expensive but not as outlandishly overpriced. Maybe because the niche market interested in them is small. They probably have not produced a large number of them because they are not as tacky and garish as they need to appeal to gamers that need rainbow vomit, a small footprint and other worthless gimmicks to feel special. It would not surprise me, for that reason, if they have lowered prices to move stock that is hard to sell due to the limited market. Other than my SFF with the direct die AIO, my other system all have external components. The only things related to the loop inside of my cases are the tubing/fittings and waterblocks. Radiators and pumps (and the chiller on the one that has it) are all external components. Defintely the best approach IMHO.

@ryan it is very difficult to make money on YouTube. They changed the rules to make it harder after I started. That is why those that do actually make money have started putting in affiliate links and other things associated with their videos. I don't even try anymore. Too much effort for too little reward. And, if you say or do something that rub them the wrong way or doesn't fit with their perspective on things they will demonitize your channel and won't give you any way to appeal their decision. The only money I have made (and very little at that) by publishing content on YouTube is through the PayPal donation link I add to my videos description section. I think I have received like maybe $10 in as many years.

Funny you mention that. Harrowdale was my favorite track because it was more like metal. I agree about Tom. Speaking of Rob Zombie, here is one of my Zombie favorites.

I have two of these. I think this would work for you. Put the chiller on the bottom and computer on top, the put the reservoir on the desk. That's how I did it on the one system. The other has the computer on the bottom and the radiator and pumps on top. You want the heavier assembly on the bottom. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09SCYSFP9?th=1 The one without the chiller is "portable" (everything on the cart) so I can use it anywhere around the house. Like in the living room connected to the TV when I have been in my dungeon for too many hours. Then I can wheel it back into the office when I am done.

Sold the Dark Base Pro 901 within like 2 days on Facepoot Marketplace for more than enough to cover the C8 purchase. An Intel Engineer from their Phoenix campus bought it for a Xeon E-ATX build. He has worked for Intel for 20 years and will be cut from staff soon with the reduction in workforce. Nice guy. He said while he is kind of bummed out, he is getting a decent severance package so it's not as painful as it could have been. He was impressed with my three desktops, especially the chiller and 5-gallon reservoir.

I am pretty sure that even if they did, at this point, I would no longer care. I honestly don't care about turdbooks anymore. Nothing good or bad they do to them matters to me as long as the same idiots that screwed them up don't screw up my desktops. Laptops are the equivalent of toilet paper or feminine hygiene products. When you need them they are important, but you don't think of those things except when you need them. I certainly do not view them as being special purchases or objects of desire.

Thank you. I really like it.

Fixed. The lights are all white now, so it's all right now.