Mr. Fox

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.

It's a mixed bag. They do some things well, and other thing pretty horribly. Very inconsistent quality and service, but when they do something right it is amazing. When they fail, they fail real hard, LOL.

Yes, 100%... All of it is garbage. The worst I have ever used, without question, is ASUS Armory Crate. MSI's is a close second in terms of being Satanically horrible. I have never used any of the other motherboard manufacturer RGB trash, but the ASUS malware drops a payload of filth on an order of magnitude unlike anything I have ever seen before. The Thermaltake, Corsair and OpenRGB are also pretty bad, but they are still win32 apps that you can use to set your lighting as you want it, then exit the program and set it to not run at startup. The ASUS feces runs all of the time, some of it cannot be terminated manually and the only way to totally eradicate their sewage is to use something like Revo Uninstaller and the ASUS software removal tools. Even with it disabled in the BIOS (where it should not be in the first place) if you ever install it once and do not go to great lengths to remove all traces of it, including registry keys, it occasionally tries to sneak its viruses in when you are not paying attention. Just about anything that gets distributed through Micro$lop Store behaves in a manner that resembles malware and is wasteful of system resources. That part is probably contributing greatly to the ASUS software being abnormally horrible. When Aura software was a standalone win32 utility that wasn't a UWP app, it was not particularly horrible because you had control of it and could manually manage how it behaved and worked. As a rule, win32 apps are all universally vastly superior to UWP dung that Micro$lop Store projectile vomits onto anything it comes into contact with. Choosing that as their distribution channel speaks volumes about how incurably retarded and incompetent they have become as a company. The best way to control lighting is to not use the motherboard at all and get a cheap external controller that is Molex or SATA cable powered and connect everything to it that would normally connect to motherboard headers. With an external controller, no software is required. You push buttons to get what you want. Your settings are permament and stay the same forever, until you manually change them. Nothing relies on being stored in NV ram and settings are not lost when you reset the BIOS to defaults.

Because I can totally identify with it, my favorite part of the video was when he said... I do not like cycling screen content and I would really hate that, and I also do not like screensavers. I thiink I would end up having regrets no mattey how nice things looked on the screen

I just find it refreshing to encounter people that freely speak what an overwhelming majority think but never say (or fear it will have repercussions if they do) because it is not politically correct popular to allow the expression of mainstream traditional views about anything. Depending what kind of crazy liberal wierdo mind-control outfit they work for, the fear might be justified. I've gotten in trouble with HR for daring to possess an opinion that isn't woke enough and being so insensitive as to express the mainstream alternative perspective in the context of a conversation on a topic of one-sided controversy. Isn't it funny how something totally normal and innocuous qualifies as controversial only when someone seeks to exploit the crime of being offended? I hadn't really given any thought to the guy reposting it. I have no idea if he is making any money off of it. Good chance he isn't. I suspect he likes it for the same reasons I do and decided to distribute it. I've never received a single red cent from my YouTube content. At one point I started to have a tiny cash balance that was too small to process, (under $5,) then they changed the rules to make it very difficult for content creators to prosper.

Nice looking people look so much nicer when they have a brain that functions correctly.

Banshee got an upgrade to her cooling system. But, it's more of an upgrade for my benefit than hers. I've always loved the EK-Pro manifold from the day that I installed the first one. It makes managing a loop and removing individual components so stupidly easy. And, it also improves flow rate. When you have a loop with components in series or parallel, the most restrictive component affects the flow rate for all of the others. With the manifold that problem is eliminated. Each components has its own flow rate based on its own throughput capacity. Banshee also finally earned the privilege of having a waterblock added to her memory jackets. The 4-DIMM block is not as attractive as the 2-DIMM version, but the 4-DIMM motherboard is a compromise on multiple counts. The sticks are too far apart to use a 2-DIMM block, even though I only use two.

Indeed. That is something I always look for. Sometimes I skip the opporitunity to purchase something I want because SaaS is a ripoff and I believe in paying for something you want... once. I also hate DRM. I shouldn't have to pay for the same thing twice just because I upgraded my hardware. That is also a scam. I try to find something similar that I only have to buy once, then use it forever. Even if it is not as good as what I originally wanted, I like it better because I don't like getting screwed by greedy software developers.

A side benefit, and a partial reason behind it, for me having no interest in online multiplayer gaming is the cheating like they demonstrated with snipers that are invisible or too far away from the point of focus for any normal player to know they are there. Lots of other reasons, too. Offline single-player campaign is just more enjoyable to me even without the reasons. Playing solo, I do enjoy using cheat codes for god mode, all weapons and ammo, etc. It makes the game more fun to me. When I game, which isn't very frequent, it is generally for enjoying the thrill of the kill versus demonstrating skill. (And, there you go... I'm a poet, too. LOL.) Playing solo, there is nothing to demonstrate or prove... my best friends (me, myself and I) don't care. 😉

Speaking of collective knowledge pool as it relates to gaming...

That happens probably more than we realize. Remember, we are living in a McDonald's drive-by, Tik-Tok, BLM, point and click, XMP, PBO, TVB, AI-is-important, dumb-dumb, cookie-cutter, muppet show era. A whole bunch of people are not smart enough to troubleshoot a complex problem. Being a stupid idiot is the new normal. They push a button, reach for another piece of candy, (or their favorite legalized recreational drugs,) and hope it works. They tweet about it, post pictures of it on Instagram, and if their friends on Facepoot can't help them fix it they're totally lost. Then again, if a system runs completely stable 24-7/365 and the only time it doesn't is when you launch a specific game, it is really logical to blame the game for being a piece of garbage. I think all of us would because it is the only conclusion that makes any sense. If it is true and launching one isolated software title causes a system to malfunction, and there is no way to reproduce the problem using other programs or synthetic tests, I think it is safe to blame that piece of software. If you paid for it, you got screwed unless the developer cares enough to fix it.

I think maybe we expect too much from stupid people. I find it much easier to expect nothing intelligent, true, good or useful from them. In much the same way that I am not offended by a person with horribly disgusting body odor, who never bathe and have terrible personal hygiene; because I intentionally stay away from them and avoid directly exposing myself to such repulsive people. Therefore, I am less often repulsed. Where we start having problems is when they come over and fart in your face, they don't stay away and they want to force their stench on you, expect you to like it and demand that you give them special treatment and be extra nice to them. Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, the Dave2D channel, Tik-Tok and Facepoot are their spaces. Being part of the hivemind is important to them, and without it their lives have no meaning or purpose.

I will hold it for you until the 28th. Not a problem. If you want/need the docking station and headphones I will let you have them included in that price. It might make the shipping a tiny bit more, but probably not much. Let me know. The concubines were quarantined by Winduhz Defender, so no concubines. I will mark everything you want as sold in this thread. Let me know.

I will hold it for you until the 28th. Not a problem. If you want/need the docking station and headphones I will let you have them included in that price. It might make the shipping a tiny bit more, but probably not much. Let me know. The concubines were quarantined by Winduhz Defender, so no concubines.

Hi Brother @ryansure, I would ship it to Canada for you. Send me a PM with your delivery address and I will check the cost for USPS and let you know. No concubines. Mrs. Fox doesn't allow me to have those.. 😉

Hi Brother @ryansure, I would ship it to Canada for you. Send me a PM with your delivery address and I will check the cost for USPS and let you know. Sorry, no concubines are included. Mrs. Fox does not allow me to have those. 😉

Well, it looks like I am going to be waiting until June for a 13900KS to become available. The only ones available for purchase are from scalpers. All normal retail channels are out of stock. I am not interested in paying more than necessary. Even NewEgg's price is about $25-30 too much. It sells for just under $700 from reputable sources like Microcenter, Provantage, Central Computers, B&H Photo and Bottom Line (shopBLT.com) and I don't really want to pay $700+ for a CPU that will soon be obsolete. Current status from Provantage is my order is projected to ship on June 5. It looks like BLT has a small batch arriving in less than a week, but their backlog (visible to the public) shows more pending orders than incoming CPUs so there is no real hope of that working out. Plus, I can't use PayPal to pay BLT and that's where my money is sitting and waiting to be used. BLT is a good option for avoiding sales tax. The only state sales taxes they collect are for residents of CT and HI. If I thought there was a remote chance I could get one next week I would consider shuffling my money around and save the sales tax. The downside is, if you open the package BLT does not accept returns. They only accept returns on factory-sealed products. So, for now, I am leaving the pending order with Provantage active. The 100% unconditional satisfaction guarantee return policy rivals Microcenter, so I'd rather waste my money on sales tax and have that option available. I am glad Brother@Talonrecommended Provantage because of their return policy. It's a short time windows (not like Microcenter in that respect) but certainly long enough to confirm the silicon quality isn't garbage. Since I don't have access to a Microcenter, they are the next best option.

Indeed. It is both arrogant and specious to believe we are impacting climate change. It would happen without us. We are not that powerful and influential. But, we think we are, or so it appears. Certainly, we don't want to deliberately spoil the water we drink or the air we breathe, but those distinct topics are easily confused and spun into the climate change narrative because there is a political agenda that needs to be fed. Everyone knows we should stop eating beef because it is cruel to cows, but even more importantly, because cow farts are causing global warming. If we stop eating beef, will the cows stop farting? Will the population of cows increase and thereby increase the frequency of cow farts? Should we solve this by killing all of the cows? But wait, that's animal cruelty. Uh-oh, now cows are an endangered species... OMG. We need a committee, a 5-year multi-billion dollar impact assessment, a new government agency, and new laws, to manage this problem or we're all going to die.

Not sure what that is all about...

I agree that climate change belongs at the bottom of the list, if included at all. The most widely embraced fake science hoax in the history of the human race, created to drive political agendas.

This is true only if you select workloads and certain titles that RDNA2 is good at. In some circumstances, the RX 6900 series trails 3090/3090Ti by a pretty massive margin in areas that can matter a lot. In a graphics-focused workload such as Blender, the RX 6900/6950 XT gets slaughtered. Nvidia has CUDA and Optix rendering, which are significantly faster than the OpenGL rendering the RX 6900/6950 XT have access to. That’s not to mention the memory speed and bandwidth on the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, RT and Tensor cores. Both of them use GDDR6X memory, which tops out much higher than the GDDR6 the RX 6900/6950 XT have available. If you’re serious about ripping through GPU-bound workloads, ray-traced content and content creation, it’s smarter to spend the extra for the 30-series Nvidia flagships. And, it is well-known that RDNA2 fails pretty miserably where ray tracing is concerned. If you only play games and run benchmarks where the RDNA2 architecture does better, then going with the 6900 Series is an intelligent way to save money by doing without things you do not need. If you're a number chasing benchmark maniac, you need both and will have to identify the best assault weaponry for each battle. I can say for certain that where the 6900 XT shines, it shines brightly. Where it doesn't, there is nothing to write home about. The better all-around option is unquestionably the 3090/3090 Ti. But, that comes at a high cost. All of the above aside, the 4090 is grossly overpriced and anything less than a 4090 is a waste of money. The Green Goblin shows its darkest side releasing trash like the 4070 for $600+. Better to buy a new 6900/6950 XT, a good used one, or a good second-hand 3090/3090 Ti and skip the garbage sub-flagship Green cards. The MorePower Tool is what makes the 6900/6950 XT really shine. Without MPT spicing things up, they would be more boring and less fun to overclock than the 3090/3090 Ti. Even when you make very little progress using it, MPT makes it fun trying. It is sinful that a similar tweak tool is not available for the RTX cards. Not everyone has access to supreme options like Kingpin and Galax HOF GPUs, and those are the only Nvidia options that beat the tweaking fun the MPT brings to RDNA2 cards.