Fluxmaven

Don't you have a 4090? I thought you'd be way ahead since I was mostly just running the 4070ti. I did notice you finally running me down. Fired up the 3x 3090s for the last 4 hours of the comp to stay ahead

Whoop forgot the foldathon was coming up... I already promised the boys I'd work on Team Cup this weekend. Still in with the 4070ti, but probably wont have any of the 3090s online if I want any hope of benching in the office without dying of heatstroke

The ole AMD fine wine approach making it's way over from the GPU side of things I'll make the switch and see what I can squeeze out of my RAM once some non-beta BIOS with the new AGESA roll out.

Having a Microcenter nearby is awesome. On top of a lot of their stuff already being competitively priced, they do huge markdowns on open box stuff. Typically their open box stuff is cheaper than used components and still have a full manufactures warranty. I've also built/upgraded/repaired PCs on the side as a hobby off and on over the past 15 years. Don't really bother with it anymore. To make it an actual career you'd need to sell a ton of PCs to replace a full time job with benefits. I think it actually gets harder moving into all new component builds as your profit margins get slimmer to keep the overall price competitive. You need to undercut established names in the prebuilt or custom space. Why would someone drop $1500 on a random Etsy store when they can buy a system with a warranty from a brand they have heard of? Not trying to dissuade you from pursuing this, just saying that it will be an uphill battle to make a living doing it.

My first Crucial SSD was also an M4. Put this in my 2011 Macbook Pro that I had in college along with doubling the RAM capacity beyond what was "officially" supported I would probably still have it if I hadn't given it to a friend that was building on a tight budget about 5years later. Also agree, great job on the review. I still don't think most normal people should bother with gen5 yet, but on an HEDT platform with more lanes to pay with these would be sick for a blazing fast editing setup.

Time to rice that thing out with a loud exhaust to scare off all the wildlife and Karens that keep jumping out in front of you

Maybe a bit of bias considering I have two AM5 setups, but I think you made a pretty solid decision going AMD this round. The only reason I would consider balling out on an intel platform is if I actually cared about HWBOT The 13900KS with an Apex or a Dark is the way to go if you want to do serious overclocking. For a mixed workload the 7950X3D should be a pretty solid option for you. I agree with some of the other comments, the 7900X3D doesn't make much sense due to the nature of how it parks cores. It's literally the only part in the lineup that I can't see any justification for buying. As far as motherboards go, I've already mentioned in this thread that despite the Asus hate train, I am running them for both my AM5 setups. The Crosshair Gene was just because I really liked the look of the board . The ITX board I intended to go MSI, but my local Microcenter mostly stocks Asus, Asrock and Gigabyte. I still have the 5900X in an MSI X570 Ace. I've had that board since they first launched when I ran it with a 3900X. Aside from early bios slow boot times, it's been absolutely rock solid. I've even spilled coolant on it (thankfully powered off at the time) and it's still going strong.

The 13700k and 14700k are the same base clock and the single thread scores in that leak are very similar. I just meant they will probably sprinkle 100Mhz on the higher SKUs and act like it's amazing. Also, I would never hold my breath on Intel actually working on IPC gains instead of just giving it more juice to feed the extra cores.

I feel like for a refresh that's likely just sprinkling in a few extra cores here, or a 100Mhz there, it wouldn't justify a name change... Just call it the 13750K, 13950K etc. I'm willing to be blown away though... If the 14600K is a total beast without adding a bunch of power draw, I might pick one up for my z790 setup. Although if I did that, I'd end up giving my little sister the delidded 12600K.

Yea I like having higher core count just to be able to multitask better. I have a ton of * running at any given time on my main rig and it just plows right through it. Obviously if you ONLY use a PC for gaming you can "trim the fat" and pare down to just the essentials and get a better bang for the buck with a CPU like this. That said, it's a Microcenter exclusive which means its really only a viable option for a small percentage of the population. Also Microcenter has crazy combo deals pretty regularly and often huge discounts for open box stuff... So a budget conscious gamer that is lucky enough to be near one, may very well be swayed by other deals that MC has to offer.

I mean if your bored and depressed anyway, what's it hurt to try? I was thinking you were trying to land a decent paying job in IT. If you just want to work remote answering support tickets for a PC component manufacture, you don't need hardly any experience for that. Hell Corsair has just the job you're looking for right now https://edix.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1/job/7324/?utm_medium=jobshare Starting Pay: $15-16/hour which sucks, but it's better than sitting around being bored.

Yea even if the only hardware you have is covered by someone else, I'd still run it. Because subs WILL get thrown out. I think the unofficial HWBOT motto is "if you can't beat them, report them".

Mine will probably be going up soon... I just remembered to pay the speeding ticket I got recently. First one in probably 5+ years... Considering how I typically drive is honestly amazing.

Gonna be brutally honest, I really doubt you're going to walk right into a decent position with one random cert and zero relevant job experience. Most likely would need to start at some BS bottom tier support position (think call center "have you tried turning it off and on"). At least for a year or two to build up some work experience. I worked in IT from 09 through 21. Started with zero certs and my Bachelors isn't in a related field. Was always quizzed in interviews and clearly just knowing what you are talking about holds a fair amount of weight. Having great references helps as well. I'm not saying people don't value certs, some companies get a real hard on for them (and will pay you to get them once you're on board). That said, any desirable position will get hundreds of applicants and they aren't even going to bother interviewing anything but the top candidates. I think bettering yourself and getting back into the workforce sounds like a great idea, but just be prepared to struggle a bit to get your foot in the door somewhere. Or be ready to take on a lower paying super entry level gig for a while.

I considered building something like this when I did the last network refresh, but I knew I wouldn't spend the time to get it right and implemented so I went the easy route and just dropped in a UDM Pro. Build came out nice though. It's cool that you were able to stuff the PiKVM into the chassis.

Walked out this morning and it was too nice out to not take the Miata. Stopped at the grocery store to pick up some snacks along the way I wish this thing actually got 35+ MPG... Maybe if it spent less time sideways at 7000RPM

I've got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell Also, I like the Frank painting

Always enjoy seeing your setup and its progression. Seems I spot a new interesting tidbit every time you post. This time, it's the pair of drum sticks you have mounted. Are you a drummer/percussionist?

I like how writing everything on the whiteboard wasn't enough and that you've taken time to label everything as well... Peak OCD Meanwhile I fully expect you to make fun of me when it's hours before the comp ends and I'm drunk at 2am tearing the office apart trying to find some random piece of hardware to get a sub in.

I like it when you talk dirty

In fluxmaven

Great review! 4x NVMe plug and play with backwards compatibility without needing bifurcation is huge. The existing solutions in this space are either just a "dumb" card that is cheaper but just splits up an x16 slot. In addition to it using up said x16 slot, that also requires a motherboard that can do x4x4x4x4 which is mostly only in HEDT platforms. Or they are fancy hardware NVMe RAID cards that cost several times more than this Sabrent. This was a product I really could have used a couple years ago. At the time I settled for SATA drives, then ended up shelling out more for motherboards with multiple onboard M.2 and buying larger capacity drives once that was available.