electrosoft

Same name and joined NBR August 2008 seeking answers for my Alienware mALX at the time. Here's to hoping this site (still wondering what the final name is going to be) has equal longevity!

Glad to see you made you're way here @tps3443! Seeing the price hike from the 3080 -> 3080ti and how normal 3090's are priced all the way up to $2300 MSRP, I'm just waiting for the insane pricing of the 3090ti to drop.

eBay tends to be hands off until you ask them to step in or message them directly. If the seller doesn't accept returns as a condition, eBay will STILL stay hands off till you ask them to step in if the seller doesn't respond. This ia a flaw in their system because some sellers WILL respond, say they are sending a label and never send a label and try to time out your window. It sounds like he maybe called in manually to void the return with a line of BS which will keep you in the dark while everything sits in limbo and you wait. What they don't realize is you can reach out to eBay via eBay, Facebook and Twitter and they will jump all over it ASAP. They also don't realize that everything they said or sent digitally and even voice is for full view by eBay CSRs from both sides. What she said was correct in that he informed you he would accept the return/refund then never sent a label but had you and the system thinking he did. I've even seen shady sellers try to indicate they MAILED the buyer a label so that's the hold up while they wait for a time out or for the buyer to get frustrated and quit. Either way, once he indicated he was accepting the return / refund that is all eBay needs to see and if he fails to send a label they will just auto refund you. Most transactions on eBay go well but I've had some hiccups and problems with sellers and being proactive and on top of things and detailing everything with their messaging system is key to getting satisfaction. I went through something like that with the X170KM-G except the seller (XoticPC) just opted to not respond at all so I escalated (which is what you're in the process of doing right now). They STILL didn't respond so eBay ruled in my favor by default then suddenly they found the respond button to send a label and try to lay the groundwork to give a partial refund before I even sent it back so I made sure to document everything and send pictures of everything. eBay refunded me the entire amount. I will never do business with them on any level again nor recommend them to any buyer ever again. When I went through my 9900ks fraud fiasco a few years back on eBay the seller even tried to misdirect, agreed to send me a label, then sent me the wrong label and after I shipped uploaded a different tracking # in hopes of being able to show the package wasn't shipped/delivered. I don't think some shady sellers realize eBay has access to any and all communication and images at all times. They quickly saw what they attempted to do, updated the tracking # to the proper one on his attached label and let it play out accordingly. They auto refunded me and ironically the package was returned to me a month later with the 8100 he tried to send me inside. If you do happen to get a label make sure it correlates to the proper return address. Is this the same seller @tps3443 used for his chiller? With eBay, it really comes down to documenting everything. Uploading pictures is a major help too. Hope it works out for you bro.

I applaud Best Buy for waiting this long to take advantage of market conditions with their GPU sales but even they found a way to have their cake and eat it too. Suffice it to say I saw that and clicked right out. I have no desire to sign up for their tech support $200+tax BS. I did watch a stock watch stream and saw people absolutely losing their minds over it. "I'm gonna sue! This is against our constitutional rights!" Errr...ok..... I really love the idea of reaping all those points with a state of the art core system and swapping in all types of cards of all types while also pressing CPU performance too!

Yeah I figured I'd queue up as always and never score the elusive FE 3080 but then that popped up on screen. I checked all the other cards and it is for all of Nvidia 3000 series cards down to the lowly 3050. And it is now tied to it like Newegg bundles. Non-refundable unless you also return the items bought under the exclusive window within the return period. Like Newegg, they learned from the early adopters returning pieces of the combo when they had the "exclusive access" BS back in October with PS5 sales. I guess the upside is you only get shanked once and then you don't have to worry about confronting "combo" deals on the regular like Newegg. For Newegg, I occasionally find something of value to select. Today it was a SFF 3050 for 250. A few weeks ago I won an EVGA 3060ti @ retail plus an EVGA 650w gold PSU that happen to be on sale (Normally $150, $100 on site normally so during the shuffle so that was the price paid) so that wasn't too bad considering I actually needed a fully modular ~600-700w PSU anyhow. I'm putting the finishing touches on a secondary system to go along with this: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B095TVWL6M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 a Dell 25" 240hz 1080p display on my other desk so my daughter and I can play WoW real time in the same room and she will get a chance to experience WoW full ultra on a much larger display than her laptop. 1080p paired with an M2000M Level 4/10 graphics settings on a 17.3" stock display will pale in comparison to a 3060ti on the Dell 25" 240hz gaming display with full KB/M. I also have a spare set of gaming cans with 7.1 which should really bring it home. We also want to give FF a try too since it seems to be all the rage now.

Even Best Buy is now side hustling on GPUs with an "Exclusive Event" requiring you to sign up for their $200/yr total tech support package wow:

One reason I also abandoned their RGB memory in the wife's system. It would never retain the lighting settings and you had to run the software each and every time. I wrote a little script to run it on boot up and terminate but then it started having the memory just switch/turn off during normal use and wouldn't stay consistent unless the software was running. ME: Yeah that software is pretty gross and bloated and most likely intrusive. Can't be any worse out there *Asus Armory Crate has entered the chat*

iPhone 11 Pro Max. I skipped the last few cycles but I'll probably upgrade with whatever Apple brings to market in the fall as we use a family plan and phones trickle down as needed and the iphone 6s plus in the family rotation is about to most likely be phased out this fall with the new iOS. We, overall, use iphone 11 pro max, iphone 11, iphone X and an iphone 6s Plus. Over the years, I've used Android and even used a Nokia Lumia 1520 Windows phone for over a year which I actually liked.

Using a ZtecPC X170SM-G: Upgraded the stock binned 10900k to an even more binned 10900k Upgraded to Corsair 3800 sticks and dialed in 14-14-14 timings @ 3200 Ordered another stock 256GB SSD to match the factory installed one to go Raid 0 but it got lost in the winds so I'll order another

I've been using the Cooler Master NotePal U3 PLUS for 5+ years now. It fits every laptop even up to the P870 and Alienware 18. I like the adjustable fans and it is fairly light weight.

That was a crazy run of bad luck for sure. on many levels. Hopefully Mrs. Fox is doing much better too.

Good luck!

Definitely this. Supply is definitely catching up and things will completely normalize and prices will hopefully get sane soon. DDR4 vs DDR5 comes down to applications and games and Aida64 bandwidth tests definitely do not correlate to real world tests but they are new and exciting and the future so fun to play with if you can. Crazy how many are running 12th gen here now. We're just waiting on @Mr. Fox 😀 I'm giving Windows 11 a run on the main desktop since it's Alder. Still putting it through its paces to see where it stands.

Sp rating won't potentially change unless you flash >1000 BIOS. I think there is 1003 and 1101 (NVlink license enabled for SLI) available now for the Apex. Very nice start!

Not sure how I missed this post but that's a damn nice SP92 right out of the block! Can't wait to see how it runs especially since we have identical cooling and big cases.

Pre 1000 BIOS variants are devoid of the AVX neutering / MC update. As @johnksss said, the 0811 variant for your board does seem the most popular. 1000 BIOS variants also fine tune the SP rating system even more coupled with the MC update. Some CPUs go up a bit. Some go down. I went ahead and updated to continue to test 4x8GB B-Die on the D4. Most stay the same. Mine was an SP90 and after the update it went to an SP91 and the P-Cores went from 101 to 102. ecores stayed the same:

In those uncertain times, you didn't know who was going to emerge or be persistent. I kept advocating to hedge your bets and sign up for all three. If all three make it? Great! I visit numerous tech forums that have a lot of cross over. If one (or two) go the way of the dodo, then everyone will eventually consolidate to the last forum standing. Most likely, traffic will uptick a bit both here and laptopforums. I just wish the redirect page for notebookreview listed the three forums that did arise so those who punched it in after being away would at least have some idea of where to go.

Looks like notebook-review.com is down atm. Not sure what is going on. Anyone in direct contact with Spartan?

Very nice run! 73c @ 339w yessir!

Very nice run! 73c @ 339w yessir!

Now that you've enabled performance mode to actually push the machine you will start to see some of the real thermal and power issues rear their ugly head. As @solidus1983 was asking, the BIOS / EC on the KM is crucial as earlier variants had more problems than current iterations. Was your unit bought straight up barebones then spec'd out by you or is it a name brand bare bones purchase? If you have no problems using another company's BIOS, XMG is currently the savior for the X170KM-G in regards to driver and more importantly BIOS support: https://download.schenker-tech.de/package/xmg-ultra-17-id-xul17e21/ You did everything hardware wise you could. You've documented a temp decrease switching to that killer heatsink along with delidding and relidding with a copper IHS. You've implemented an undervolt. The next step is to make sure you're running a current BIOS. Last step outside of double and triple checking your liquid metal application under the IHS and seeing what spread pattern you achieve with the new heatsink to make sure you're getting a proper pairing is to then zero in on the CPU itself as it may be a hot and heavy sample. If you want to take it to that level then you start hunting down a better binned+ chip. I've tested 3x 10900k's in my X170SM-G each with a -90 UV. One was a hot monster, the second was the stock "binned" chip that shipped from ZtecPC. The last was a chip I specifically bought used which was a Silicon Lottery verified chip. In successive order each chip ran with less power and cooler under the same conditions on the test desktop I had and subsequently the laptop. The Silicon Lottery one ran cooler and consumes at most 182w without a delid than the other two did with delids (195w and 209w respectively).

I agree in the SM-G being much more smooth sailing than the KM-G. Prema helps a lot and really eliminates the need for Control Center. I don't even run it on my SM since RGB effects can be set to persistent even with a CMOS reset so I set it and forget it. I will say replacing the already binned ZtecPC 10900k with an even higher SL qualified binned chip has it running basically quiet outside of gaming and even then the GPU fans kick up more than the CPU fans. My less than a month of ownership of the X170KM-G let me know it still needs a lot of work and Prema to get anywhere near the SM-G at this point. Here's hoping it isn't so problematic that Prema won't feasible on it but 12th gen is already here and 12th gen laptops are now arriving so I'm not sure. Maybe down the road we will see a Dsanke level BIOS release or Prema will update the SM BIOS to enable 11th gen support. I suspect if you swap in the proper heatsink (either 3rd party that offers a better model or stock), a 3000 series card will work as is. You just have to mod the drivers as always. I had planned to swap my 3060 from the KM down the road for testing but with all its problems and defects.....

I signed up for all three (as all should do during these transitional times), but I must admit I've all but abandoned going there now in a meaningful capacity and stick primarily with Spartan's notebook-review.com site and here.

LOL, the crocs always get me! 😆 Your 420 looks the same as the rev I got and yeah that case is massive! This should be a great buildout. Looking forward to the pics and benchies!

Oh man I used to love getting and locking down the RL. We would LAN locally with a few other of our friends every weekend and do FFA to warm up, 1v1 and tons of 2v2 on DM3. Truly magical times! I didn't even know LRO was still around. I played off and on during the early days but went back to WoW and EQII. I might have to take a looksy and see where it stands today.