Mr. Fox

Thank you. I was hoping the CPU might be OK. The circumstances under which it stopped working certainly would give the impression the CPU wouldn't be harmed. But, the fault follows the CPU to another computer. It won't boot in either system, and any CPU boots on the system where it failed. I tried all three BIOS positions. Swapped out RAM sticks. Cleared CMOS. I recovery flashed it as you would with no RAM or CPU. Finally, I moved the CPU to the work setup. It doesn't boot in the other computer either. In the Strix (no LCD codes, just lights) it fails POST with the VGA light on. I have a spare 10850K and 10900KF and both boot fine on the Dark mobo. (Well, I HAD as spare 10900KF, but now it is in the Strix board and the CPU from that one is back in the Dark again.) The highest voltage I tried was 1.550V (which I have used with all of my CPUs on chilled water) but I could not do 5.7 stable for anything other than CPU-Z benchmark and gave up. VCCSA and VCCIO are manually set and I try to avoid "auto" for voltage, amp and power settings. I also avoid using adaptive voltage. I run core voltage static as well. I generally only leave boot voltage values on Auto.

Well, you'd only have to beat it once. That CPU died. I can't see anything wrong with it. After benching it earlier today, I set it back to 5.3GHz all core at 1.265V. I used my computer for several more hours, then I had dinner with my kids. I came back a couple of hours later, set the BIOS to defaults and went to flash the firmware on BIOS position #2 with v1.10 from EVGA. When it shut down after flashing it never booted again. It also won't boot in the Strix mobo. Shows a VGA error on the Strix and a Q-code 24 on the Z490 Dark. So, I am back to using my SP81 10900K. I am really bummed out. I got to use it 3 days. I don't understand how/why that happened. Makes no sense. $400 down the toilet.

Yes, I am happy with the result, but I would love to have one. Please do keep me in mind. I may need to provide a height measurement since the Z490 Dark has the VRM heat sink next to the GPU. The block won't fit between the GPU and the VRM heat sink, so it sits a little higher than ideal.

That is what I would *love* to have, but I am already in enough trouble with Mrs. Fox with my overclocking fetish. So, I do not know that I convince her that I "need" that, LOL.

Here is a new one when you get to it. 9454.4

I would love to do that but EVGA doesn't even sell o-ring kits for the Hydro Copper blocks. I seriously doubt that they would sell me the replacement back plate, but it certainly worth asking about. In fact I think I will. If nothing else I could use it as a template with a fab shop to have them make one for me. Would be really cool is to make the back plate and block with fins all one piece with the MP5WORKS Plexi top on it. That way the water block plate would be the entire back plate surface.

Follow up on last purchase post... OK, it is not anywhere near on the level of the custom backplate that Brother @iamjanco has on his 3090 K|INGP|N that I am so envious of, but it is a definite improvement. There really is not an elegant way to mount it to a K|NGP|N card other than a custom backplate fabrication, but this worked well enough. Temps would be even better with a slick backplate that is completely flat with no design lines carved into it. Comparison of stock EVGA 3090 K|NGP|N backplate thermal pads vs. Fujipoly full PCB thermal pad (from OptimusPC) vs. Fujipoly full PCB pad plus MP5WORKS block. The test used was EVGA OC Scanner's Furmark Memory Burner test. The first two tests were run for 5 minutes each. After installing the MP5WORKS block I allowed it to run for 10 minutes. You will need to click on the second image 2 or 3 times to view it full size for easily reading the text.

Honestly, I think the owner(s) of the company reached a point of not caring a long time ago and they finally reached a point of not wanting to maintain it. If you look how many years had passed since their last product review, it is obvious that their focus had shifted to IT services. I do not believe they placed any value on the community that was built over nearly two decades of active collaboration.

Thanks, bro. I appreciate it. I agree with your personal preferences. I am more into the monochromatic look as opposed to an animated Neapolitan rainbow puke scheme.

So, I moved the 10900K I was running in my benching monster to my work system. Nice upgrade for it, too. More than enough juice for my workhorse.

I just picked up a nicer 10900K bin. Moved my daily driver from 53x core / 50x cache @ 1.375V to same settings with 1.265V. IMC is also stronger. My 4500 CL16-17-17-30 tRFC 296 RAM clock was bumped to 4600 with no adjustment of timings or RAM voltage. It will be fun to run this bare die with chilled water at 5.5GHz+.

Yeah, the Z690/12900K benchmarks scores are impressive, but I have decided my days of playing guinea pig are over. I am fed up paying lots of money for buggy/broken junk being released as public beta on the bleeding edge. I am trying to make myself just ignore new tech no matter what it looks like until it has been out for at least a year and let other people spend their money on the privilege of being a crash test dummy. I think we have the BGA turdbook jockeys to thank for that screwed up mindset. Nonsense such as it being "normal" for garbage to thermal throttle at 100°C and have CPU/GPU/memory soldered to the motherboard is a prevalent mindset, and it is really messed up. People need to stop forgiving failures and incompetence. They are rewarding the companies selling broken trash by purchasing it.

I don't really care about updates and haven't for many years. I'm still running Windows 7 with only the absolute bare necessity updates for functionality... Things like kernel mode driver framework and SHA signing and NVMe, etc... only what it needs to function. I'm also running Windows 10 LTSC 2019 and LTSC 2021, both with no updates. The Redmond Reprobates can kiss my posterior. I'll do it how I want when I want and I don't care what they think about it, LOL. I've been brushing up on my Linux skills in case the day comes that they no longer have a product worthy of being installed on my hardware. It seems like that might not be too far off in the future. Windows 11 already fits that description... digital feces.

That craftsmanship is amazing. I love it and wish I had the fabrication skill and resources to do the same. I would have to raise it a bit higher on my setup because the Dark motherboards have the VRM heat sink next to the first PCI-e slot. Thank you for sharing the info. I am officially green with envy.

I am beyond impressed. Other than flipping the G1/4 ports on the opposite end, I want that... real bad.

Speechless. Steam punk on steroids. Amazing in every way.

Awesome. Thank you. I will have a look. I am especially interested in how you mounted it. Where did you get that backplate? (If it is answered in your link, I suppose I will find out.) I want one.

Apparently they have been around for a little while, but I had never heard of them until I started Google-searching for options a week or so back. There is not a lot on YouTube. That FrameChaser guy has a few videos, (yes kind of annoying personality,) but they have not done much advertising. I ordered the type with G1/4 fittings and plan to use is in series rather than parallel. I think that will be slightly better for flowrate than parallel.

I sure hope so. Even with the chilled water, the GPU gets hotter than the CPU in most graphics benchmarks and I believe it is because the back side gets hot enough to warm up everything else. I ordered one of the giant full cover thermal pads from OptimusPC to cover the entire GPU under the backplate and that generally helps a lot even without the active cooling. It probably won't be quite as good as an OptimusPC KPE block, but if it gets close and I don't have to spend $600 and wait for 3-6 months I would consider that an acceptable compromise. If I can get a drop of ~15°C with a combination of the full cover pad and MP5 block with chilled water running through it, that will be pretty huge. It will put the core at about 25°C under sustained load at over 800W. Under chilled water cooled to less than 10°C with a scortching hot backplate the GPU core is hitting about 40°C under that load and 40°C just ruins overclocking fun on Ampere and Turing GPUs.

I ordered one of these and waiting for it to arrive. Hoping that cooling the back of my 3090 K|NGP|N will translate into slightly colder core temps for a few more MHz on core. I really want an OptimusPC block, but spending more than $600 USD and waiting 90+ days for it to arrive isn't my cup of tea. (I actually ordered one and cancelled it after waiting 90+ with no hint of an ETA being offered.) I will have to be creative on the mounting because the 3090 KPE is so huge. I will share photos and results when it is installed. GPU-BPC-SERIAL-KIT-CLEAR TOP – MP5WORKS WWW.MP5WORKS.COM

Nice! Very tempted by the amazing benchmark scores I am seeing with 12900K and Rockit Cool having their 12th delid kit out now makes it even harder to resist. I'd love to be running one bare die as I normally do. Congrats on the upgrade, bro. 12th Gen performance is making it hard to sell parts. I've had a brand new/unopened Z590 Dark on eBay and Mercari since Jan 24 with no offers even though it's a crazy good price. I may end up just keeping it and trying to sell my Strix Z490 instead since the gamer kids seems to appreciate mediocrity more than excellence.

Yes, but you need to download the latest version (Sept 2020) from their web site. Older versions will crash with an error message during launch. I fought it and was about to give up when I discovered there was an updated version available for download. That immediately solved the problem. The old license key I had when I bought it when Catzilla was first released worked fine. You can log in to your account and copy/paste it from there if you no longer have the product key. https://www.catzilla.com/download

It is really cool. I wish there were more benchmarks that were equally entertaining.

https://valid.x86.fr/3etxyw https://hwbot.org/submission/4927266_mr._fox_memory_frequency_ddr4_sdram_2355.2_mhz https://hwbot.org/submission/4927259_mr._fox_cpu_frequency_core_i9_10900k_5612.32_mhz

That is true now for me. I used to spend lots of money on cars (custom street rods) and motorcycles (a whole lot more than I ever have spent on computers) and that was at a time in life when I didn't really have the financial resources to support that addiction. Factoring in inflation, I probably still cannot afford to do it on the scale I used to when I was young and wild. Now that I am an old dude, I just want reliable transportation. Nothing fancy as long as it is clean and the AC works. I take care of my cars and generally put over 200K miles on them. That takes a long time because I don't rack up miles quickly. My ride is a 2005 Ford Five Hundred SEL AWD that I purchased for $3500 with under 50K miles on it about 5 years ago. At the rate I am going, it will take me at least another 5 years to hit 200K miles. When Mrs. Fox has something to say about the money I blow on computer crap, I remind her that I could always go back to the more expensive fetish. (I don't let her know I am no longer interested in it, or that trick wouldn't work well, LOL.)