electrosoft

For on the go rear laptop elevation I keep a set of these in my bag: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FDDWHMF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not sure if Prema is around but @Mr. Fox is alive and active on the forums....

I see value and merit in both big true DTRs and T&Ls. I love DTRs and they will be my mainstay ( because I like to tinker ) till they are grossly outclassed performance wise but I also keep T&Ls around (see sig) because there are situations where I'm not lugging my X170 out in the field or for onsite telemetry or Pi/robotics tinkering. I would also not drop thousands on a laptop with many points of failure that can render it pretty much DOA. GPUs have a higher rate of failure than many of the other components. System boards fail. I've had a few laptops have their GPUs die or their system boards die and I was able to source and replace that one part versus replacing the entire logic board. Soldered on ram and storage does send me into super fits (my Swift 3 has soldered on 8GB grrrr) but I also realize that is me and my preferences. In the end, companies want to make money and when they see market forces at play showing general consumers prefer lighter and thinner along with great battery life AND they can maximize profits? No one can be surprised at the outcome.

Agreed, that's why I always offer to meet if somewhat in the same locale. You get to meet felow techies and cut out the wait, overhead fees and BS.

BAH! Unless you're hitting 5.6ghz @ .0800v running full tilt Prime95 on air in 90f ambient are you really even OCing? Er, I mean nice!! gratz!

I explain it to buyers all the time who ask "Why is ur price so hi lolz?" You end up having to explain to them: Sales tax is automatically collected and remitted. eBay's cut S&H I will take the time if they're nice to explain how a $100 sale ends up being $106-$110 for them w/ tax and ~$87 in my pocket after ebay fees. Now multiply that by a factor of X to reflect the actual sell price before S&H even enters the equation. On the other hand, it's a free market and you're able to sell anywhere from a local flea market to a global platform like eBay but everyone wants their cut. You could sell on Amazon but if you think seller rules can be draconian on eBay, Amazon will kick it up a notch for you for shiggles. The final insult? The new reporting threshholds ($20k now reduced to $600) to the IRS making it a PITA to just be a private seller offloading used items you no longer need so now you have to be even more meticulous with record keeping and filing your taxes yearly.

Ack, so it looks like Prema is DOA for the X170KM-G then??

How bad does the socket look? Do you have some pics?

Sheesh, $800 but it is an almost sure way to not get shanked by a bad chip but the overhead to stock may be much ado about nothing. My p0 9900k beat down my 9900ks on the top end easily but it did run hotter and heavier on the bottom end. If you don't overclock and you have decent cooling (>=280mm AIO), the KS is a big waste of money. You aren't guaranteed to get a cooler running stock chip and I'll be curious to see what they consider the baseline for binned silicon. If I was building a new system with the KS on the market at the time I could see where you might pony up a few extra beans for a bit of certainty.

Looking better, but you're still throttling either power, heat or both. A 10900k should score 16000+ in CB23 at stock. Here is my ZtecPC binned 10900k tested on my desktop board while I zoned in its ranges for optimal undervolting. At pure stock, 214w. It could handle an undervolt to -90 and would pull ~196w max in my X170SM-G before I replaced it with a better binned chip that pulls ~180w max. I would be curious to see how your chip is on a desktop to get an idea of its characteristics to dial it in for laptop use.

I usually run most of my priority benchmarks first thing in the morning as my computer room is pretty cold. If it is a dry, cold day I'll open the window and shut the door and let the room get frosty, set fans to max and let the rad and internals get nice and crisp on the desktop before running. For some of my P870TM runs I put my laptop on the backseat floor of my car and left it outside for an hour before running. Good stuff!

That is AWESOME to read and I'm glad everything worked out properly. I would do the same thing and still offer to send it back on his dime if he wants it. Like you, I've been on both ends when getting or attempting to get scammed and it isn't pleasant.

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.