electrosoft

I've had to do a few RMAs with MSI over the years, including my old x670e Carbon, and it always went well. Either repaired properly or usually they just sent me a new one. They really won me over back during the 1722 17.3" laptop days with parts and repair accessibility. Untill they, PERSONALLY ( IE bombarding me with anecdotal examples means nothing since my anecdotal evidence says otherwise), give me a reason to not deal with them, they will always be on my top 3 list for consideration. They still have the best mass commercial market laptop BIOS on the market and to a certain point, they treat their laptop BIOS like their desktop BIOS and I like that.

I posted on this back on the 19th but only briefly.... The fact he picked a 4 dimmer (Asus Maximus) over a 2 dimmer (MSI Unify) because of scratches/aesthetics just left me shaking my head but he is only running G.Skill TridentZ CUDIMMS 8400 sticks and the Maximus should do 8800 no problem.... Jay: "The aesthetics I don't really care about" (Holding the Maximus) Also Jay: "I'm bothered by it because it has scratches" (Holding the Unify) At worst, it's something new and fun to learn the ins and outs of platform wise. That's my take along with seeing how it does in my favorite games. Once we moved away from monolithic designs, things took a turn for the worse in regards to what WE want in CPUs at least. ----------------------------------------------- Some more testing with the 265k and Strix Z890 and best I can do is stabilize on this 265k at 8400 is now but anything past that is near error out in G2 and at 8600 it artifacts green and locks up as soon as it tries to load Windows. That is pushing SA/VDD2 up and down even to SA@1.35 and VDD2@1.45. Not sure how far I want to go past that in the hopes of breaking past 8400. Just not a great IMC on this chip. Of course in G4 the MB can run up to 8667 before giving up the ghost. On the other hand, the combo was less than $400 for both so.......yeah. I could just tighten everything up at 8400 and still extract the bulk of the performance I would get a 8600/8800 (maybe more with the tighter timings) and then focus on OC potential next which was the plan anyhow. SA/NGU voltages did nothing to change the situation. I'll really need another 265k or 285k to bounce off of to get a clearer picture. Still tempted to re-order a Unify at the least....

Understatement of the year....memory is stupidly expensive and continuing to climb. Anyone caught up knowing of the ramapocalypse and didn't suck it up and spend a bit more the last month or so is really going to feel it in 2026 and prices now might look like a bargin next year till this sorts itself out. Same may happen for SSDs too as next year progresses.

The temp reductions moving the wife to the Antec Flux Pro from the DG-77 are substantial especially on the GPU front. We're talking 10-15c+ across the board for GPU (Hotspot and memory) and DDR4 memory. I'll be able to run the OC profile again after re-tuning. CPU temps increased ~5c since it isn't front intake anymore but top mounted so it gets all that nice warm air, but still under 80c for WoW (74c vs 79c) and still in the 60's for CB23 so still running nice and cool. I am running the AIO just off the CPU fan header. It has an option to split the voltage and have it run the pump independently with a 3 in one option (fans, pump, vrm fan). I could go back and install the 3-1 cable vs 1-1 and probably bring them down to previous levels if not more but I'm content atm. I can see why the Flux Pro was one of the top rated cases for airflow for 2025. -------------------------------------- New stepping for the Ultra refresh with a mature node for the same price. 270k basically turns into a 285k..this feels like 11900k/11700k territory all over again Improved IMC and support from 6400 to 7200 officially across the entire plus refresh https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-core-ultra-200k-plus-series-reportedly-aiming-at-more-for-the-same-price-approach

Merry Xmas and happy holidays to all! It bit funny and ironic we just talked about your adventures with Best Buy.....good luck! Two observations on the yellow tip again: If it were black, you wouldn't be able to see even the mild scorch marks. Companies should start including these in white or yellow for clear visibility of scorching. I still suspect there are plenty of black connectors out there already with scorch marks. You just can't see them. The bottom row strikes again with the weaker, [ ] design which I posit is susceptible to physical stress and speeds up the cycle as they are heated up and in conjunction with the physical stress are pulled ever so slightly open making them even more susceptible. --- These connectors really should not be physically stressed at all and the weaker the design (like MSI's bottom row array) the more the stress can cause meltdowns in conjunction with migrating imbalance of amps over time for various reasons.

Great card! Congrats on the snag! I also like the all dark aesthetics. I am almost certain you will pick the 5070ti over the 9070xt. When push comes to shove, it is the superior card. The 9070xt shines MSRP vs MSRP but if the prices are anywhere near close, 5070ti would be my pick everytime. Amazon Resale is so hit or miss and the descriptions rarely match. "Used - Acceptable?" Well hello, it's basically brand new. "Used - Like new?" Hey, looks someone ran over it 10x before shipping it out but made sure to remove all the accessories before doing so.... --- I still have a sealed Nitro+ 9070xt that was planned for my daughter's rig but I am almost certainly going to send back unopened to Amazon. WoW was running great the last 3 months but with the new patch/update, it has gotten super chunky on the wife's system and suddenly my old friend AMD timeout errors have returned on her Gigabyte 9070xt. Googling wow crashing and 9070xt for the last month and yep, it's back. Nvidia? Smooth sailing as always. With the Xpac around the corner, I can't really take any chances of incurring her wrath. I woke up Saturday with her literally standing over me going, "WoW has crashed 2x already....FIX IT!" 🤣 If things don't change quick, I'll be picking up a 5070/5070ti myself for her rig and the 9070xt becomes a backup/play around/sell off candidate.

Epyx looking good! Which sticks are those and how are they cooled?

My update was in two parts (ASUS 4242 and PD-GX) and each firmware update was run independently and worked automatically unattended. The first,4242, gave a clear and present progression status in dos text showing each step. The PD-GX showed me absolutely nothing on the screen so I checked events / task manager to confirm it had run its course. Then I rebooted After a reboot, all ports were front and center and my second (of 4) USB-A front port now works normally where before it basically did not work at all after the bios update. This was after a BIOS flash from 1512 -> 1805 as previously mentioned.

The bulk of my work is with external media both personally and professionally. Main reason I jettisoned AM4. To suddenly see USB port issues pop back up caused immediate concern. Installed the firmware update a bit ago..... And just like that my second front USB-A port now connects every time......like before the last BIOS update. I was ~3 BIOS updates behind though. I updated mainly for more 8000 stability on the Hero.

I'm still on 1805 from last month (newest) on my hero , but I went and checked and a new firmware update was available for connected devices for stability. Makes sense. Since the last bios update, my front USB-A ports are suddenly sporadic in whether devices connect or not. Check to see if there is a firmware update available for your board. Yeah, if you look back through some of his other videos, DIMMs are dying with a quickness recently. I actually enjoy his Fix or Flop series. If anything, it shows you the power of having spare parts laying around.... Arrowlake is new to me and my favorite part is the beginning stages of a brand new platform and slowly exploring all the nuances over months. Just realized fabric potentially comes into play with OC and optimal freqency. Looks like ~8600 might be the sweet spot for dialing in timings in correlation to AL OC especially for gaming. The deep dive will continue over the next several months. I may keep this Strix board if that's the case since it can do 8667 and just focus on binning chips around ~8800. I did put up a feeler on OCN and of course got hit with the mailbox full of "message my friend at IWILLSCAMYOUHARD AT SCAMUGUD DOTZ LULZ" to report and ignore as always.... Did get 9200 back up and running in G4. I'm also realizing these "heat blankets" as @Mr. Fox calls them are coming into play on some of these stress test runs... Good video showing speed tiers (but without super deep timings optimizations) on 14th and Arrowlake: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Whenever @Papusan shows new Crocs on the forums (timestamped) 🤣:

So with the new BIOS and further tuning and goosing, I've encountered a few new things. Vengeance 9200 sticks wouldn't boot with XMP timings because Corsair was Pushing Dram Write Recovery Time to 138 for some reason. That one, single XMP setting was shutting down the Strix every time. Took a little to track that one down. This 265k gives up the ghost at 8400. The Z890-A Strix gives up the ghost at 8800. I can't do G2 8400 fail I can do G4 8400 pass I can do G4 8667 pass I can't do G4 8800 fail So the Strix-A is doing better than expected and it did fail HUB's 8800 check during its review so no shocker. May come down to binning boards at this lower tier. This is the entry level Strix board. That Unify-X I ordered won't ship till next week so that gives me a few more days to at least see if I can get the board to 8800 which is my return/keep threshold. If I can stabilize 8800 I'll keep it. If not, back it goes. I'm thinking this 265k was an open box return to MC because someone tested the IMC and went "garbage!" and returned it. I'll probably go ahead and put some feelers on the OCN and/or grab at least 1-2 more 265k's to bin. But the testing continues....

In classic Asus fashion, new BIOS drops for the Z890-A Strix and now it won't boot G4 9200 at all.... 🤣 Going to retest 8000->8400+ but I'm not expecting any miracles. I did place an order for a Unify-X on the 'zon for $399.99 because I'm a FAFO kinda guy, they only had 8 left and Amazon is known for shifting prices back to everyone else still selling it at $699.99+ real fast. I really had no complaints about my Carbon X670E or Unify Z690. I went for the after Xmas ship option to snag 8% back in rewards because I'm in no rush and that gives me an extra 10 days to continue to work with this Z890-A strix. --------------------------------------------------------------- Jay switching to Ultra 285k from AMD 9950X3D..... Went with 4 dimmer Hero over 2 dimmer Unify (his first pick) because of scratches on MB......aka aesthetics. 😕 ------------------------------------------- After much searching by the Mrs, this is the case she ultimately decided upon..... I gave her a list of high airflow cases to check out and once she saw the Antec, she promptly jettisoned the 4000D Airflow and Asus GT302 that were her previous two front runners. Flux is also one of the top rated airflow cases on the market. I have to switch her away from the EVGA DG-77. When she was first running a 12100f + 3060, it was ok but running a 14900KS + 9070xt and the case is a sauna affecting the OC on her memory and 9070xt. Even stock, temps are getting juicy unless I run it with the side panel off. I like that the Antec comes with 3x 140mm in the front, 2x 120mm for GPU intake on the bottom and 140mm rear exhaust. Makes it easy to move over her components. I will probably replace her EVGA CLC 280mm AIO with my test rig Lian Li Gallahad 360mm which is definitely a tier above the EVGA in cooling. ------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to FAFO and give the Z890 Unify-X a whirl especially at $399.99 on Amazon. Worst case scenario, back it goes! I liked the MSI BIOS, but can readily admit I still find Asus BIOS to be my favorite especially now that EVGA no longer makes motherboards. 😞 I could see why they exited the GPU market, but I still don't understand why they also did away with their excellent motherboard division. 😠 -- I think the wonderful thing about games is they are pretty much a leisurely pursuit and you can opt to play or not play without a meaningful impact to your core existence. It sucks it has come to this point, but blame the cheaters. As someone who has played competitive games for decades, nothing can suck the wind out of a game/franchise like rampant cheating. I said it before, but cheaters and cheat creators have reached such a point in sophistication that it has now come down to hardware level monitoring to assure all assets and code are not compromised even at the cost of giving up control and security and placing your trust in the game makers. Best bet is, again, to create a games only install on Windows and keep your other install for everything else if you opt to give up that level of control to play certain games. I'm ok with this. What is the alternative? I do see merit in the argument about a "single player only" version devoid of this level of security and monitoring, but that is an entirely other argument to address. As per Tom's: "DMA devices are some of the most advanced cheating techniques, and most of them are expensive and difficult to implement. These types of mods aren’t used by casual players; instead, they’re often applied by hardcore players looking to gain an advantage in esports matches, especially when there is a monetary prize. When Riot Games’ security team discovered this vulnerability, it immediately worked with hardware manufacturers, which validated their findings. They then released BIOS updates to address the issue, ensuring that no one could exploit this weakness and gain an unfair advantage. If your computer is affected by this bug, you’ll be given a restriction, and you won’t be able to launch Valorant. You can resolve this by updating your motherboard’s BIOS to the latest version and by ensuring that all security features like Secure Boot, VBS, and IOMMU are activated and working properly. If you don’t want to be inconvenienced by a security warning before launching your game, Riot Games recommends that you update your BIOS to the latest version as soon as possible. “BIOS updates aren’t exactly as exciting as looking at ban numbers, but this is a necessary step in our arms race against hardware cheats,” Riot's blog post on the matter reads. “By closing this pre-boot loophole, we are neutralizing an entire class of previously untouchable cheats and significantly raising the cost of unfair play.”"

Like @Rage Set and @Mr. Fox said, this is a blessing and a curse. Actually forcing optimizations in software to compensate is a blessing. Luckily (unluckily?) the memory shortage hits VRAM, RAM and potentially storage. If it only hit VRAM, nothing would really change. You just lower the resolution and asset requirements. RAM? Well, now you're talking not only assets but asset management and actual game code Storage? Well, not you have to be cognizant of your total install size which encompasses assets, asset management and game code. I think when all is said and done, high end GPUs won't be hit as much because texture sizes are variable and selectable. Even now, most 6GB video cards can run just about every game out there if you lower the detail level unless they take a shared memory model approach and dump off into normal system ram to compensate for texture sizes. As a precaution, I picked up a few Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB NVME's a bit ago and prices have already spiked from what I paid (~$130) to now $170 each. I already had a few 2TB SSDs (990 Pro, 9100 Pro) and a boatload of laptop SSDs (512GB to 2TB) sitting in the ~7 laptops on my shelf. Some of these have to go, though. I feel like a mic drop was done right after saying that.... 🤣 It is most likely going to be a UNIFY or APEX. Do you plan on using an Apex for some 270k/290k binning? Maybe I'll put out a WTB on the OCN forums for a tested and certified 9000 G2 Unify or Apex.

Ugh, full day of Xmas shopping with the wife..... me at the end of the day..... ----------------------------------------------------------- Time to pick another motherboard as the TG 8200 sticks, which I had running at 8400 no problem on Z790i Lightning and 14900KS also borked out in G2 and G4. So that's three sets of sticks (8200, 8400, 9200) giving up the ghost on the Z890 Strix-A in G2 and G4 at 8400. Even boots at 9200 G4 and AIDA64 run with the Vengeance sticks, but passing TM5 is a whole different story... This is when having other CPUs / MBs is a plus to start bouncing off each other. At least I have 3x sets of DDR5 in the kitty though so that's a blessing.

Correction. I wasn't paying attention (in a rush today since it is the wife and my official holiday shopping all day "fun"), I forgot when you switch gears it auto resets the memory frequency to auto so that G4 pass run was at 5600 (DERP!). This means most likely last time in G4 it was back to auto frequency too when testing the KB sticks and it passed. So I set it to G4 to remove the CPU from the equation, set to 8400 and it failed again on both the KB and Corsair sticks. So that is a double failure at G4 on the KB 8200 sticks and Vengeance 9200 sticks when testing 8400 but 8200 passes. So now it is pointing to the MB not the CPU. I'll dive back in either very late tonight or tomorrow as now onward to Xmas shopping and dinner and more shopping....