Mr. Fox

A powerful CPU is not necessary for gaming. The GPU is more important. As long as the CPU is not so weak that it becomes a bottleneck, it really doesn't matter that much. And, if gaming at 4K isn't something that is important, you don't even need a beast GPU. You can have a decent gaming experience at 1080p or 1440p with an inexpensive midrange GPU. Heck, I have been playing games the past couple of days on a Xeon E5-1680 V2 (8C/16T) X79 CPU overclocked to 4.7GHz with DDR3-2400 paired with a first generation Titan Black 6GB GPU and it does fine as long as I run medium to high settings (not Very High or Ultra) and keep the resolution at 1440p or less. No issues at if the game doesn't insist upon having the latest cancer OS and the newest video drivers. Very respectable experience.

I have no issues of any kind with my 13th and 14th Gen CPUs. Excluding the use of Atom cores (which breaks AVX functionality) they are the best processors I have ever owned, hands down. I wouldn't want to own anything else as an alternative, Intel or AMD. All three of my LGA-1700 desktops are overclocked 24/7. I think the issues people are having are due to using eTVB (or PBO if you are an AMD fan) and allowing the two preferred cores to boost to the moon with crazy voltage and using adaptive voltage that allows wild swings and spikes. I overclock the way I always have. Sync all cores and set static (manual) voltage at the value needed for stability. My VID and Vcore are close to the same and I run very high LLC so that idle and load have minimal change. The gamerboy approach to overclocking with massive undervolting and manipulating LLC has never been a good approach in my opinion. If I were going to complain about anything with my LGA-1700 CPUs it would be the use of Atom cores instead of just adding more normal performance cores. These CPUs perform wonderfully, but they would be even more awesome with more performance cores with hyperthreading and AVX in lieu of the "efficient" (i.e. weaker) Atom cores that lack hyperthreading and AVX functionality. I do not care for this person. His potty mouth and self-aggrandizing behavior is over the top. But, that said, more often than not I agree with him. If you haven't seen it, watch this video. It applies to Intel and AMD. In my opinion it is the only "right" way to overclock. And, it can make a degraded CPU stable again. The degraded CPU is really no different than a brand new silicon lottery loser that requires more than desirable voltage. No need to worry if you do it this way. This is one of his better "how-to" videos. If you do it from day one (sync all cores and set static voltage) you will likely never see degradation unless you go crazy with high voltage and cook the CPU with insane thermals. Doing that will kill any Intel or AMD CPU, or GPU.

Very well done review, Brother @RageSet. Your testing was thorough and the presentation was excellent. I am surprised there was a distinctly measurable difference between these two good fans. The price is pretty steep though, as mentioned in the review.

I have two 4090s and I have not had any issues. To be clear, the bend itself isn't the problem. The issues surface when the connector doesn't remain properly seated in the socket. As long as it remains fully seated and there are no weak connections inside of the socket due to poor construction and lousy contact at the pins you should be fine. The 12VHPWR cable is a fragile and ill-conceived engineering abortion that never should have seen the light of day. I would love to see multi-nation governmental involvement result in forcing NVIDIA to recall all video cards that use it and refund original purchase prices including taxes and shipping. They deserve to be severely harmed financially for having released this trash.

That was a great review. Amazing how much the SSD temperature throttled. It provided an excellent visual example of why proper cooling is so important.

So that was not very observant on my part. I have never been very good at picture-based puzzles.

Great review, Brother @Sir Beregond. Very thorough and well-written, and I enjoyed the write-up. I think you did a great job of presenting this case in the best light possible, while not allowing the shortcomings to go without mention. I had a question about the first three photos in the review. I had an issue with Wordpress doing this to me on one of my reviews. Even though they were not the same photo Wordpress was displaying the same photo more than once. It looks like the first three are duplicates. I don't remember for certain what I had to do when that happened. I think I had to delete them, re-upload and insert them again to correct the problem.

FANTASTIC review of the case and fans (pun intended). Very professional and thorough. Nice work, Brother @RageSet. That is a really nice case, too. It looks like the front glass panel is hinged rather than screwed or snapped to the chassis. Is that accurate? A trend with rear chamber cases seems to be moving the PSU up from the bottom and having it kind of centered on the rear I/O panel. My O11 XL EVO is like that as well. There are pros and cons to it. I don't like that the PSU partially covers the CPU back plate access hole with the PSU positioned there. But, otherwise I think having the area beneath it open has some benefits.

Well, I put that 14900KF that I recently bought with the excellent SP ratings and SA bug into my mini-ITX Munchkin PC and it's doing quite nice. The only thing holding it back now is the 360 AIO. It can't cool more than 57x all P-core and 46x all E-core effectively even after a delid. I ordered an EK CR360 Direct Die AIO to replace this CR360 Dark AIO so we will see how that does when the IHS isn't holding it back. That won't be arriving until sometime in May (on backorder). I was able to get the memory overclock to 8200 with tight timings. Now I will start pushing the cache and see how much it can handle so I can pull that latency down. If it can manage 51x cache with the 1.130V VCCSA that should bring it down to around 51 ns. I'm getting better results with this little guy, in spite of its thermal and power handling limitations, than some folks are getting with a much larger and more robust platform. I put my Byski RAM jackets on the G.SKILL 8000 and my generic aluminum heat sink strips screwed to the top of them with a Corsair RAM fan blowing on that and now I can finish long memory stability tests without the memory overheating like it does with the crappy stock heating blankets. I just played a little over an hour of MWIII and with enjoyed ~150 FPS with maxed out settings at 1440p using the ARC A770.

The thing is, if we create a tutorial for something simple like clearing CMOS, once it is there, it can be referenced and linked to open in a new window in the context of another tutorial where clearing CMOS is a recommended procedure. So, even if it offers minimal value as a standalone, it can be used to support other tutorials. Then you don't have to waste time explaining how to clear CMOS in a tutorial focused on another topic.

I like it. Fantastic idea. I have identified several topics I could easily tackle. Below (from your list) are things that I routinely do where a tutorial could be benficial to others. Let's see how many respond and want to chip in. As long as it is an area of familiarity to me, you can count on me to fill in gaps if anyone is passionate about taking a specific topic. A few similar topics could be things like how to take control of Windows Updates, Tweaking for Performance vs. Security, Disaster Preparedness using Drive Images (Macrium Reflect), How to Multi-Boot Operating Systems, etc.

Thanks for the compliment, brother.

Thanks, brother. It's a shame they are not going to release it in the US. I don't understand that.

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Thank you. I appreciate the feedback. Yes, it is a good drive for a good price.

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Great review and a thorough analysis of this air cooler's capabilities. For an air cooler it does an impressive job. The fact that it beat the universally respected Noctua NH-D15 in a measurable way commands some respect. I think your observations are excellent and the recommendation against using an air cooler for an overclocked CPU capable of pushing over 250W is spot-on. This cooler looks like a very good low-cost thermal solution for someone running a system with basic use routine in mind and modest performance expectations that remain below its TDP-handling limitations.

I read this review and got side-tracked and forgot to post. Excellent job on the review. That's quite the speedy NVMe drive. It's crazy how fast these Gen5 can move data.

Very good review! Thorough and professional.

A new masterpiece from Brother Tom... sweet. Not a rap fan, but I do love the message and the good men behind the message. And a couple of good recent releases... especially like the first one.

Just crested beyond the official half-way mark today. Some say that's over the hill, but by my calculations it is still a long way to the top.

Thank you. I agree.

Yes, I agree on both things. I have two direct die CPU blocks, a dual D5 pump housing and now the direct-touch memory block from IceMan Cooling and all of their stuff seems to be top quality. It is a real pain dealing with Supercool, and they are so slow. Quality is generally acceptable, but their direct die block is a pain in the butt to deal with how it mounts. Requires extra effort to avoid spilling water, which is silly. And, it took me multiple emails and posts in comments on their YouTube videos to get the missing parts sent to me for their RAM block. And, they still never sent the missing screws. Luckily, I had some that worked, but do not match the design. I think Supercool is run like a hobby more than a business.

I actually showed it in a previous screenshot, but I just ran it on both systems at 8600. Here are the screenshots, with all of the timings and voltage values. Apex Encore Apex