Fluxmaven

I'm fueled entirely by RAGE And when that isn't cutting it I'll grab an energy drink or a coffee.

Lol you were the first person I thought of when I read the opening line about EK quality As much as I'm not into AIO coolers, it's hard to deny that they are a great option for the majority of people. Anything short of the top end CPUs don't really need the extra cooling potential of a custom loop. GPUs are an easier argument for custom loop because you typically cut your temps in half. Also these days the stock air coolers are getting comically large so slapping a block on is almost a necessity if you need to plug anything into any of the other PCIe slots.

I've never tried to put the plastic socket protector back on but I assume it just snaps on. I'd have to remember where I put the stock stuff to test that though

I've never really looked at the member video section since it seems like it's mostly full of reposted vids from elsewhere. I just looked through and found a Z590 Dark OC settings vid that you posted. While I'm admittedly wasting it's potential having it in my racing sim PC, I do have a Z590 Dark and currently just use one of the Luumi daily driver profiles that came on the board. I just want to say that it's exactly what I want in a video like that. You go through everything slow enough to see what's going on, but it's not a 20 minute video of babbling about every step of the way. It's also done on a capture card and legible, not some shaky cellphone cam pointed at a monitor.

Rant Dough/Eve On my main setup, I've also been on the 48" OLED train for the past few years. For productivity it's perfect. I feel like it's a bit big for full screen games sometimes though. I feel like 42" is a great size for 4K at 100% scaling. What I'm waiting on is a PC monitor with a glossy OLED panel at 42". Until then, I deal with the mild inconvenience of turning the display on/off manually. For the bedroom setup, If someone that isn't Dough/Eve releases a glossy OLED 27" 1440p monitor, that would go on my wishlist as well.

In fluxmaven

That's way cooler (both functionally and aesthetically) than my old RAM cooler that I zip tied a Noctua on. The stock screws weren't long enough for a thicc fan

Interesting concept but I wouldn't consider it until it became a standard across all manufactures. Don't want to pay the "Asus tax" just to get stuck with with zero upgrade options if they dump the idea after one generation.

Since it seems like a lot of these responses will be peripherals, I guess I'll toss in my original Logitech Trackman Marble from 95ish. I admittedly don't use it daily anymore, but I did semi recently and still like to pull it out from time to time. The Clueboard has also been in the collection for a while, and is coincidentally the board I'm currently using in my work keyboard rotation.

It definitely helps out. I heat most of the 2nd floor with folding in the winter

Finally some SSDs that are big enough for my "homework" folder

Since you like Fractal cases, the Define 7 in storage mode holds up to 14 3.5" + 4 2.5" drives. The XL version bumps that to 18 3.5 + 5 2.5" drives. (you do need to buy extra drive trays to max out capacity) I have a regular Define 7 with 8 drives currently. Fits big coolers as well. My Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power fits with room to spare.

It's a shame AMD doesn't undercut them and gain some market share. At least they have been less stingy with the VRAM. It's just that most people don't want to wait for the drivers to fine wine into something usable. They also suck for VR and F@H PPD is laughable. 7XXX series is barely better than last gen, whereas the 4XXX series Nvidia stuff has massive gains over last gen. I need to pull my A770 out and see how it's doing on the latest drivers. Obviously it's been like paying to be a beta tester, but every time I put it on the bench it's been faster. We've got a way to go before I'd call Intel a real competitor in the GPU space, but it's nice to have a glimmer of hope for a viable 3rd choice in the market.

Nvidia thought what if we make our top end card the only one that really makes sense. Then just price the whole rest of the lineup so bad that people find ways to justify buying a X090. When 3XXX series was coming out everyone freaked out "2080ti performance for $500" with the 3070. We were coming off of a different wave of mining boom so 2080ti's were still selling for MSRP all the way up till just before 3XXX launch. People were just excited to finally get a real upgrade. 2XXX series introduced a lot of cool new technologies but it took a couple years for ray tracing and DLSS to actually be implemented or optimized well enough to actually use those features. Yet that generation came with a price hike over the 1XXX series. Not getting the 20gb 3080 felt like a real scam. Regressing from 11gb with the 1080ti or 2080ti for the 10GB 3080 didn't feel right. Shelling out for a 3090 didn't feel right. The 12GB 3080 was too little, too late to mend our broken hearts. If Nvidia could just stop jerking us around on VRAM and pricing

The whole 4000 series has been a bit of a mess from the very beginning. When 4000 series was first on the horizon people were scared when the rumors of 600w cards came out. They were thinking it was going to be Fermi all over again. As it turned out, the 4000 series is actually very power efficient. People all cry about the memory bus and how cut down the card is, but for the average Joe buying a midrange card that just wants to game the 4060ti is fine. It performs in line with previous gen "70" cards at much lower power draw. What's not fine is that it's priced more like an upper midrange card. The whole product stack just seems off. If the 4060ti was priced at $300 for 8GB, $350 for 16GB, it would be a lot more palatable. Budget gamers aren't trying to do 4K 120. They understand that getting a lower end card means that they may need to tune settings to hit their FPS goals. However, when you drop $500+ you expect to be able to just crank everything up and not worry about it. If the naming and pricing was closer to this, I think it would be more in line with peoples expectations. 4090 = $1200 4080 = $800 4070ti -> 4070 = $500 4070 -> 4060ti = $400 4060ti -> 4060 =$300/350 4060 -> 4050 = $250

As much as I'm not interested in a mouse like that, the review is great and told me everything I needed to know. I appreciate including the firmware update frustrations. It's nice to see an unbiased look at how the product performs. The tilt function is cool, but not new. Logitech has had that in several mice for a while. At least it has a cool name

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.