Sir Beregond

I totally forgot you had picked up some Saudi Prince Edition ram.

Mainly the combo deals, everything else isn't anything special. But just wanted to check.

That's pretty compelling competition feature wise against AM5.

Not really how Micro Center works, so guess the answer is no.

Does Micro Center count?

Did go ahead and pick up a P55 board for the competition and then found the rest of what I had that would qualify.

Got a deal on a slightly used 42" LG C4 and moved the 48" C1 to the living room. On one hand it feels weird to downsize. On the other hand, for my desk, this size feels much better.

Anymore, anyone who wants to do high speed DDR5 overclocking with tweaking specifically wants 2 DIMM boards which as far as I know only exist at the enthusiast high end tier of motherboards.

Yeah this is absolutely part of it...going back to @Fluxmaven talking about aesthetics. It's also why us custom watercoolers are frustrated at a lot of the newbies entering the space because go to r/watercooling and its all about how cool it looks, meanwhile its the most hot boxed, bad performing loop you've ever seen. But that's ok...it "looks cool".

This was touched on, but I don't think the person putting a system together with a $300-$600 motherboard is also going to be putting in a GTX 1050 and some low end CPU. If they did, then yes, of course they would be better served buying a new CPU and GPU, and they shouldn't have bought an expensive board in the first place. But again this is also the premise of the gamer / casual overclocker. There are definitely different demographics here and how the motherboard plays into their needs is going to vary as a result. Gamer - Just wants to turn it on and play a game. Likely comes from consoles. Doesn't know anything about hardware, has never messed with a BIOS, and has no desire to. Absolutely this gamer should not bother overspending on a motherboard. Gamer / casual overclocker - This is the gamer who also knows enough to tweak the system for decent enough performance gains in gaming and probably will want a board to support what they want to do, but being casual, still probably doesn't need a super expensive board. May want RGB, etc. Gamer / enthusiast - This is the type who knows what they are doing with PC hardware, builds a system that makes sense in its config - i.e. a high end system with high end CPU, GPU, etc., mid-range system with good mid-range config, etc. They will want the convenience features, the easy diagnostic features, they want a board that will support memory overclocking and tweaking, they can play with voltages, boosting, etc. They probably want to bench their system in addition to gaming, but they aren't looking to build a test bench. It's still a daily use system, but also might be a system that has multi-use purposes for professional uses in addition to gaming so they might want the better I/O, networking, etc. Here you probably do want a better than average board. Enthusiast - Building a system for benching only and wants all the high end features to support that. Wants to be able to easily swap parts, is probably putting it on a bench. Wants support for things like LN2 cooling, etc. They want the super high end boards with the features to support this, 2 DIMM, etc. I mean this would be really what the more expensive motherboards are for. So I guess that goes back to which demographic is the premise of this thread referring to when asking the question. In my opinion there's tons of nuance here. If all you want to do is enable PBO and XMP/EXPO, then sure don't overspend on a board. If you want to actually get into water-cooling and tweaking your CPU, memory, etc. then perhaps a better board is warranted. Want to do more enthusiast grade benching and other things like that? Then yeah go all out. Even if not doing benching but want certain I/O and networking features that the motherboard manufacturers have segmented arbitrarily into higher priced segments? Then yeah gotta pony up. Sadly I think the motherboard makers are all in cahoots for how they segment even convenience features like a post code display and push button clear CMOS into $300+ motherboards when 10 years ago I could easily get that at the $150 tier. Just another way we are all getting screwed in the PC hardware space in addition to rising GPU pricing, and other shenanigans.

To be fair, a lot of features I used to be able to get on a $150 motherboard no longer exist on $150 motherboards which is part of the problem. And you are approaching the overclocking discussion from the position of a gamer. Absolutely for a plug and play gamer, there's zero reason to be overspending on parts like a motherboard. Enthusiast boards on the other hand are absolutely built for...well, enthusiasts. That is the person whose game is to bench hardware, do LN2 cooling, try to break records, etc. which is its own hobby. These are the people who will delid a CPU, or try some janky mods all for the pursuit of better performance. While there could be overlap with gamers, we're not exactly talking the same demographic. Your Joe Average gamer isn't doing that, and they would be completely wasting their money on ASUS Apex and EVGA Kingpin boards. Now onto the topic of overclocking, are we actually in a "post overclocking era"? Maybe in the traditional sense, but we aren't really passed the era where tweaking other things matters whether its undervolting, power management, tweaking boost behaviors, memory overclocking and tweaking timing. You maybe can't do much to traditionally OC a Zen 3 non-X3D chip, but it sure loves and gains not an insignificant amount of performance from memory secondary and tertiary timing tweaking for example. There's a reason people went nuts for B-die DDR4...including gamers. To circle back to your original premise, no, there is no reason for the plug and play, hasn't ever messed with a BIOS and doesn't want to gamer to buy an expensive motherboard. Are you a gamer who does actually want features that enable faster memory, you want to do more exotic cooling and do some benching? Then yeah maybe spending more to get a 2 DIMM board and other features enthusiasts like for benching is warranted. It just all depends on who you are and what you actually want to do with the hardware.

Good luck! I am not poo pooing the deal if they are real lol.

Cheap, yes, but also older models?

It's definitely not immediately obvious, so can't really fault you there.

Honestly might wait for Zen 6 at this point.

Yeah the main chamber is very roomy, so was otherwise a breeze to build in, besides the bit of a lack (imo) of rear cable management space.

It's' paying $389 for a 6-core as far as gaming is concerned. It's not as good a deal as you think it is if gaming is your main concern. What kind of uplift are you looking for to be "worth it" I think is the real question here.

Thanks so much @Mr. Fox! I really tried to show everything here and I am happy it came through! If you look closer those first three are different. Those are showing different orientations for the four front panel pieces that can be swapped around.

This. There are cheaper ways to game on 6 cores. It's the one Zen 4 X3D chip that really makes no logical sense to me. Either got 7800X3d or step up to a 7950X3D, or more realistically just wait a month and see how the Zen 5 chips turn out.

Yeah I very much figure that if you are already on an X3D Zen 4 chip, that there would be very little to no reason to upgrade. Keep in mind the IPC increase claimed is against Zen 4 non-X3D. I suspect the 7800X3D is going to hang right up there with launch Zen 5 just like the 5800X3D did with Launch Zen 4.

What is with a lot of newer model cars literally puting even climate control in a touchscreen menu. Terrible trend

Yeah the BG 44k is what I ran through the gas tank. I am at 135k miles now so probably could use a carbon clean up. Yep, MAF sensor can be removed pretty easily. May try cleaning it and see what happens before I go down the rabbit hole of replacing parts one by one. Oh...how do you like the 2021 Miata? One of these years when I have "fun car" spending money, I would love to get an ND Miata. I really like the looks.

For the best. It's an addiction with questionable returns on performance for money spent these days outside some outliers. But I'm still gonna do it. Send Help.

I already ran a bottle through. Direct Injection though so not sure it does much of anything anyway. Also usually try to use Top Tier gas. I did notice the stronger gas smell, so something definitely off.