Sir Beregond

B stock for one of these for an old EVGA card still in my closet. The shipping cost more than the block which was $11. Figured might come in handy for HWBot in the future.

If you are going to venture into doing new parts builds, then take a look at your competition. Once you are getting north of $1000 I'd be expecting Zen 4, 12th gen/13th gen platforms. If still using Zen 3, then has to be a 5800X3D at that point. I know not everyone has these around, but I look at the PowerSpec lineup at Micro Center locally for a good idea. Honestly it's why I thought the Zen 2 system at $1200 was kind of a ripoff, because $1200 can get me an i5-12600kf and a 3070 Ti based PowerSpec. Obviously can look at other SI's for price point configs as well.

Good game. I also use parking lot mods.

That's just luck of the draw on RAM OC/FCLK. My 5900X can't do crap over 3733 either. But yes, you'd buy this for a plug and play gaming PC. I wouldn't buy this if you want to OC.

Pretty good choice for gamers if still on older AM4 and platform supports Zen 3/Zen 3 X3D. microcenter.com WWW.MICROCENTER.COM For those not near a Micro Center, also seen for $299.99 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/AMD-5800X3D-16-Thread-Processor-Technology/dp/B09VCJ2SHD

Thank you! My first EVGA board, and is going to be the foundation of my future test bench. I've been pretty happy with my ASUS boards over the years, but I totally get it. About the only thing I saw on the Apex that looked interesting was that DIMM.2 slot. Wish my X570 Dark Hero has that as one of my only complaints is a mere two m.2 slots on it. Why I may need to look at that Sabrent adapter card you recently reviewed.

Oh man, rip. I acquired a Z790 Dark a couple weeks back, but I'm doing quite the mismatch as well with a 13100 . I was saving the big bucks for the 14900k.

Yep, been my go to since my 128GB M4. Crucial SSD's are always my default choice for other people I occasionally upgrade storage for or whatever as well. Agree, top notch review as always with excellent formatting for pictures, tables, etc.

Coulda been dinner.

Its technically 8/8 CCX/CCD now. 4/8 would be Zen 2. But I totally agree, I'd love to see a 12 core CCX/CCD. I get that, but isn't the default behavior to do core parking on the non-X3D CCD in gaming workloads? That essentially turns the 7900X3D into a 7600X with 3D v-cache, and the 7950X3D into a 7800X3D. I don't know maybe its just me but instead with fiddling around with this weird hybrid CCD approach that has janky scheduling solutions that is sure definitely appealing to a niche market, the option was simple. 7950X for those needing more professional workloads, and a 7950X3D with both CCD's having 3d v-cache for those that want it on higher core parts. I don't think the way they did it makes any sense at all. But that's just me.

^ Yeah I don't know what AMD was thinking with that split CCD design choice for x3D. The 7900X3D especially makes no sense as its essentially worse than a 7800X3D for gaming. And I am not sure the 3D cache is helping much in workloads you want 12 or 16 cores for. I don't know, was a very strange design choice imo. The market that could potentially benefit from this split design seems pretty niche to me.

Yeah I mean if upgradability of CPUs with the same platform is a big deal to you, then it makes sense. LGA1700 is at its end with the Raptor Lake Refresh. AM5 will probably get Zen 5. They said 2025, so don't necessarily see it lasting past Zen 5 unless they extend it like AM4 was. To me it feels like AM4 was sort of an anomaly. But it does mean you have a longer period to upgrade on AM5 if getting in now. So I totally get it.

Got two matching 650 Ti Boosts on the way.

When I started Help Desk in 2009, it was an entry level position for $11/hr. I was 18, had no certifications or a college degree as I dropped out of college in 2010 and definitely didn't have any prior experience that was relevant to it. To this day I still do not have a degree and have a grand total of two certifications to my name (ITIL Foundations v3 and SAFe 5.0 Practitioner). All to say that the reality is that simply getting a degree or a certification won't guarantee you a non-entry level position. But at the same time, if you get your foot in the door, a lack of them won't necessarily hold you back either. That said, I have a lot of admiration for anyone at any point in life saying they want to do something to improve themselves or their lives. I think you'd do well starting out in Help Desk and combined with your future treatments to help address your pain issues longer term, I think you can put your mind to small goals like @Slaughtahouse said and work towards those. Things like the interpersonal skills and others are all skills like anything else that can be worked on and developed if you are willing. As for any of the other negatives, there's not much use dwelling on those and allowing them to hold you back. Figure out what you are good at and build on that, the things you are not good at can be worked on with time as you move forward. Break everything down into small achievable nuggets or micro-goals that build towards something bigger. Honestly when I started my IT career in help desk, I was extremely shy, not good with interpersonal skills, wasn't very confident in myself. As time went on and I gained experience, those were things that I was able to work on. Help desk you talk to random strangers or employees of the company you are supporting. I learned how to crack jokes, make an analogy when something didn't make sense, etc. and for most it helped wind them down a bit and humanize the interaction. When I did desktop support from 2010 to 2014, I got to talk to, get to know most everyone in an office of about 500 people which made talking to them easier and working on their issues better, especially if something wasn't a quick fix or needed something more radical or they weren't going to like the outcome. During this time I also learned how to read my audience. The average user is not tech savvy with what you are supporting so leave the highly technical lingo out. Same with executives. They want the tl;dr one liner of whatever you need from them. Anyway, I later moved into software and software release where I started interfacing with many different departments and in higher level positions later on, had some authority on how things were done. I'm a release manager now for a fortune 10, but I still have 0 degree and two certs to my name lol. Why? I suck in classrooms and I learn by doing, so really looking back it was all about just getting in on the ground floor and putting in the work to gain experience. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have help along the way. I had a mentor at one of my earlier support jobs and as they moved up, thought of me for new jobs and I'd apply over there and usually get the job (not always). In other cases, I took some big risks on some contract to hire positions vs some safer full time slots that propelled me to better things later on. Nowadays I'm pretty gregarious around work, confident, and pretty decent with my interpersonal and communication skills, but I do sometimes still catch myself. Sometimes in my pursuit of logical change I have to make sure I am not tearing other people down and how they do things. Anyway, I say all this to say, there is always a way if you are willing and there are always ways to help manage or mitigate things you feel are holding you back. Sometimes its the mind that is the biggest thing holding one back. It was for me a lot over the years. But small incremental goals over time help build to bigger and better things and seeing what you can achieve often helps drive your attitude and want to reach higher.

OK gotcha. Knew it was something like that for Zen 4.

I don't have it setup yet as I am still acquiring parts so I can't say for sure. I'd imagine you're not wrong about out of the box. I guess I've just seen a lot more opportunity for places you can tweak whether all core, or with RAM in a more traditional sense vs say messing with PBO and CO on AMD and RAM overclocking being completely limited by the Infinity Fabric clock. I heard they decoupled that in Zen 4, but sounds like there is still a sweet spot for Zen 4 and not much point of anything faster. Not to say that's a bad thing, again for just getting a system up for the average person. More I just want to push to the limit and see what I can do. I really want to do more HWBot stuff. I mean you can do HWBot with anything new or old. I just want to get a good test bench to do some modern stuff on.

Makes sense. I totally get it and its hard to disagree. I think Ryzen has for the most part provided everything anyone could need. I think Zen 3 really pushed them to that spot. I wasn't quite sold yet on Zen 2. I don't care much for the launch MSRP's for some SKUs starting with Zen 3, but they quickly course correct I notice. About my only beef with AMD is that overclocking on Ryzen systems is boring which is why my test bench that is in progress, I decided to go back to an Intel based platform. For someone getting back into the fun of overclocking, I didn't feel like Ryzen was scratching that itch. About all that's to be gained there is from RAM timing tweaks. Not much you can do frequency wise due to the Infinity Fabric. PBO for the most part manages everything else so there's not much else to do there unless you start playing with curve optimizer and that's a PITA. All to say, Ryzen is perfect for getting pretty much a plug and play experience. I still feel Intel is where you go if you are wanted to get into overclocking and pushing the limits. But for my daily, happy to stay on my 5900X. Sips power by comparison and runs me just fine. Until I built my Zen 3 system, wasn't really seeing much point upgrading my 4790k because the Intel gen on gen gains were so minimal.

Yeah it didn't sound like much of a MHz boost, so there must be some IPC gain somewhere, but I hope that wasn't just adding a ton more power draw.

Yeah kinda odd. When they refreshed Haswell the 4770k just got replaced by the 4790k. Maybe they are expecting a generational uplift here, but does seem weird.

Bought a cheap 13100 to play with for now, just going to wait for the 14900k at this stage for my Z790 Dark.

I always upvote Picard facepalm.

At this stage, the value of more cores is less for gaming itself and more for having a ton of other crap running at the same time while gaming. As far as I know, there are very few games that can actually leverage all the cores once you hit 8 or more cores. And in the case of Ryzen CPUs, you definitely take a small hit for crossing the infinity fabric between CCD's on the 12 and 16 cores parts (Zen 3 and 4), Zen 2 even worse as it is two groups of 4 core CCX's per CCD. Interesting to see in that CP2077 chart that there really isn't much of a different between the 5600X3D and the 5800X3D.

This came in yesterday. Will run it with my 4790k system. Need to find a DVI to HDMI adapter though lol.

I don't think this is surprising news. GPUs were the bulk of their business, so without those it makes sense that they need to shrink considerably. If that means they are also leaving the motherboard and PSU space, then I don't know. What else do you have at that point. Bad news all around. Wish I bought more EVGA stuff throughout the years.

Love that. I liked that movie. Cool bat!