Post your Last Purchase

[Fluxmaven]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

I cancelled the order. Upon further research, the PCIe bifurcation is all effed up on the Apex the same as the Hero. No longer wanted if I can't use the PCIe slots except with the GPU slot cut back to X8. Too bad A$$zeus can't get their act together. I saved $300+ and went with an AORUS Master since both of the extra X16 slots are untethered from the CPU and using them has no effect on the GPU. It's really unfortunate that 4-DIMM motherboards are so common and 2-DIMM so rare. Such a waste having the two unwanted memory slots on nearly every option available for purchase. The designers of enthusiast motherboards seem to be universally stupid and out of touch with the people that buy their rubbish. The Master has asynchronous BCLK as well.

 

PCIe lane distribution is very stupid on almost all the current crop of boards and it is annoying. I agree that we should have more 2 DIMM options. Most people buying consumer gear are never populating 4 slots anyway. It's a shame we'll never get an EVGA X870E Dark Kingpin. That Aorus Master looks like a nice board and if it fits your needs for $300 less, seems like a no brainer.

 

 

As for my recent purchases... I picked up a Ryzen 7500f, i5 13490f, and a DDR5 6000 CL28 kit on Aliexpress today.

 

I have a friend that's wanting to try PC gaming. So I'll build them a rig with one of those CPUs along with the Arc B580 I just bought after I do some HWBOT runs on everything. 

[damric]

2 hours ago, Fluxmaven said:

 

PCIe lane distribution is very stupid on almost all the current crop of boards and it is annoying. I agree that we should have more 2 DIMM options. Most people buying consumer gear are never populating 4 slots anyway. It's a shame we'll never get an EVGA X870E Dark Kingpin. That Aorus Master looks like a nice board and if it fits your needs for $300 less, seems like a no brainer.

 

 

As for my recent purchases... I picked up a Ryzen 7500f, i5 13490f, and a DDR5 6000 CL28 kit on Aliexpress today.

 

I have a friend that's wanting to try PC gaming. So I'll build them a rig with one of those CPUs along with the Arc B580 I just bought after I do some HWBOT runs on everything. 

Been looking at 7500f

 

Then I saw there is a 7400f?

[Fluxmaven]

21 minutes ago, damric said:

Been looking at 7500f

 

Then I saw there is a 7400f?

I have a 7400f as well. It's basically the same thing but it has paste under the IHS instead of solder and a bit lower clocks. I bought one to delid but haven't had time to mess with it yet. I'll do an comparison between them when I get a chance. 

[Sir Beregond]

7 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

I cancelled the order. Upon further research, the PCIe bifurcation is all effed up on the Apex the same as the Hero. No longer wanted if I can't use the PCIe slots except with the GPU slot cut back to X8. Too bad A$$zeus can't get their act together. I saved $300+ and went with an AORUS Master since both of the extra X16 slots are untethered from the CPU and using them has no effect on the GPU. It's really unfortunate that 4-DIMM motherboards are so common and 2-DIMM so rare. Such a waste having the two unwanted memory slots on nearly every option available for purchase. The designers of enthusiast motherboards seem to be universally stupid and out of touch with the people that buy their rubbish. The Master has asynchronous BCLK as well.

This is good to know. Really unfortunate that PCIe bifurcation is all screwed up these days. I've never really thought about it before, but now it seems you have to be really careful.

[Andrew]

I got my old laptop replaced, now I do nothing faster than I did yesterday.

 

[Mr. Fox]

On 05/04/2025 at 15:40, Mr. Fox said:

It looks like the release date got pushed out another month. Again. I hope it ends up being worth the wait.

 

I have loved owning the Z790 Apex. Best motherboard I have owned in a long time. I finally decided to sell it and the golden 14900KS. I love them both, but they are no longer useful to me since I cannot break any of my high scores or earn any more points with them on HWBOT.

 

On 14/04/2025 at 14:36, Mr. Fox said:

 

I cancelled the order. Upon further research, the PCIe bifurcation is all effed up on the Apex the same as the Hero. No longer wanted if I can't use the PCIe slots except with the GPU slot cut back to X8. Too bad A$$zeus can't get their act together. I saved $300+ and went with an AORUS Master since both of the extra X16 slots are untethered from the CPU and using them has no effect on the GPU. It's really unfortunate that 4-DIMM motherboards are so common and 2-DIMM so rare. Such a waste having the two unwanted memory slots on nearly every option available for purchase. The designers of enthusiast motherboards seem to be universally stupid and out of touch with the people that buy their rubbish. The Master has asynchronous BCLK as well.

For the record, I went ahead and purchased the X870E Apex. I was disappointed for the reason I was worried I would be and the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. It gives me less than the AORUS Master at twice the cost.

Returned it to NewEgg for a refund. It's not what I would consider to be an $800 motherboard in terms of functionality or performance.

[Fluxmaven]

^ It's a shame Asus seems to keep churning out overpriced products that don't live up to expectations. Wish we still had EVGA in the enthusiast motherboard space.

 

As for my most recent purchases....

 

Just snagged a Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 Mobo with an i7-4930K CPU + 32GB RAM for an upcoming HWBot comp

 

Grabbed an open box RTX 5060 Ti 16GB from Microcenter for Folding@home. The PCB is hilariously tiny. I'm going to watercool it for fun and will post some pics when I do.

 

 

Also picked up an Optane 905P to replace the tired boot drive in my sim rig. I have some EXTREMELY special updates for that rig in the works. 

Edited May 22 by Fluxmaven

[bonami2]

Meanwhile i just pimped my server

 

Samsung 9100 Pro on a sabrent pcie card on my z790i edge at pcie 5.0

Peak crystaldiskmark is 14k

And now 2x64gb ddr5 yep 128gb.

Ordered a 500gb crucial to dedicate to swap file and plex/jellyfin cache maybe.

 

Now let see if the race edition g7400 @5.2 can handle the ram.

 

13900k will go there if i ever upgrade.

 

 

 

[J7SC_Orion]

On 29/05/2025 at 09:23, bonami2 said:

Meanwhile i just pimped my server

 

Samsung 9100 Pro on a sabrent pcie card on my z790i edge at pcie 5.0

Peak crystaldiskmark is 14k

And now 2x64gb ddr5 yep 128gb.

Ordered a 500gb crucial to dedicate to swap file and plex/jellyfin cache maybe.

 

Now let see if the race edition g7400 @5.2 can handle the ram.

 

13900k will go there if i ever upgrade.

 

 

 

 

  

128GB is fun; have been running 4x32 / 128 GB (CL30 6400) on the 870E Master and 9950X3D for a while now...even ran a localized qwen 235b AI  (included a 128 GB virtual  / swap on top of the installed 128 GB sticks   )

[bonami2]

1 hour ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

  

128GB is fun; have been running 4x32 / 128 GB (CL30 6400) on the 870E Master and 9950X3D for a while now...even ran a localized qwen 235b AI  (included a 128 GB virtual  / swap on top of the installed 128 GB sticks   )

 

How hard is it to setup an AI ?

That pretty cool.

I ran a software that kinda ran chat gpt locally via cpu and it was pretty light.

 

Imagine it more for specific use to have a dedicated one.

 

 

[J7SC_Orion]

11 hours ago, bonami2 said:

 

How hard is it to setup an AI ?

That pretty cool.

I ran a software that kinda ran chat gpt locally via cpu and it was pretty light.

 

Imagine it more for specific use to have a dedicated one.

 

 

 

check recent YT vids from 'Dave's Garage', one good one is below. Then go and search Google for 'Ollama', install it on you system and choose some of the later and/or custom models (including size) for local install - I have over 23 localized AI models now, running them in 'CMD' as I am still running those in Windows 11 Pro (Ubuntu soon)... Threadripper Pro Rzyen 9k with 512 GB+, and/or 2x RTX Pro 6000, each with 96 GB VRAM is a dream option, second option: upcoming 4x AMD Radeon Pro w/32GB each and a driver for windows allowing 4xGPU (time-stamp below in second vid) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bonami2]

12 minutes ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

check recent YT vids from 'Dave's Garage', one good one is below. Then go and search Google for 'Ollama', install it on you system and choose some of the later and/or custom models (including size) for local install - I have over 23 localized AI models now, running them in 'CMD' as I am still running those in Windows 11 Pro (Ubuntu soon)... Threadripper Pro Rzyen 9k with 512 GB+, and/or 2x RTX Pro 6000, each with 96 GB VRAM is a dream option, second option: upcoming 4x AMD Radeon Pro w/32GB each and a driver for windows allowing 4xGPU (time-stamp below in second vid) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will take a look for sure!

 

Just got the ram took me almost an hour to get it to boot at xmp 5600

[J7SC_Orion]

5 hours ago, bonami2 said:

Will take a look for sure!

 

Just got the ram took me almost an hour to get it to boot at xmp 5600

 

Yeah - first few training times with 4x32 GB / 128GB with 9950X3D were super loooong. Once I dialed the RAM in at CL 30 6400 and tested everything, I enabled MCR - what a relief now having a fast boot. But initial training on AM5 is always annoying, and the more RAM, the longer the annoying. Some AM5 mobos now support up to 256 GB (4x 64GB) - go watch a 2hr movie during first training 

[bonami2]

6 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

Yeah - first few training times with 4x32 GB / 128GB with 9950X3D were super loooong. Once I dialed the RAM in at CL 30 6400 and tested everything, I enabled MCR - what a relief now having a fast boot. But initial training on AM5 is always annoying, and the more RAM, the longer the annoying. Some AM5 mobos now support up to 256 GB (4x 64GB) - go watch a 2hr movie during first training 

 

How long can training take? I just rage and reboot after 2-3 min .

Now slow training boot right aways for some reason. Maybe the auto setting just skipped training.

[neurotix]

14 hours ago, bonami2 said:

 

How long can training take? I just rage and reboot after 2-3 min .

Now slow training boot right aways for some reason. Maybe the auto setting just skipped training.

It'll boot slow and take like 2-3 minutes the first time it trains the memory, after that if you have a setting under DRAM Timings called Memory Context Restore enabled, it'll boot in a few seconds. People advise turning that setting off, especially for high (8000+) overclocks, but I leave it on on mine. Hope this helps.

[bonami2]

1 hour ago, neurotix said:

It'll boot slow and take like 2-3 minutes the first time it trains the memory, after that if you have a setting under DRAM Timings called Memory Context Restore enabled, it'll boot in a few seconds. People advise turning that setting off, especially for high (8000+) overclocks, but I leave it on on mine. Hope this helps.

Oh great make sense. Going to explore further did take more time first time and now it faster. There so many bios option it easy to get lost. And msi/asus don't even use the same word for everything.

[neurotix]

48 minutes ago, bonami2 said:

Oh great make sense. Going to explore further did take more time first time and now it faster. There so many bios option it easy to get lost. And msi/asus don't even use the same word for everything.

Yes, I have a ROG board so that's what it's called on ASUS. It will be called something else most likely on every single vendor's boards. They really need to standardize this stuff so it's the same across all boards.

[J7SC_Orion]

On 01/06/2025 at 13:47, neurotix said:

It'll boot slow and take like 2-3 minutes the first time it trains the memory, after that if you have a setting under DRAM Timings called Memory Context Restore enabled, it'll boot in a few seconds. People advise turning that setting off, especially for high (8000+) overclocks, but I leave it on on mine. Hope this helps.

 

...yeah, I should have spelled out 'MCR' above - I am so used to AM nomenclature now. In any case, I ran AM5 RAM 8400 native M-die with MCR (Memory Context Restore) enabled, but it should be disabled until you have tightened everything and tested it. Going overboard with a change in for example tRFC with MCR enabled might just wreck your install.

[Kaz]

Ordered a VKB gunfighter and throttle + mounts.  I was really worried about tariffs because VKB's site says to expect 45% tariff charge, to be paid at time of delivery.

 

Vkb said they lowered their price by 20% to combat tariffs.  Reddit users were aaying that the charges only came out to about 20%, so I took a gamble.

 

I am happy to announce I did not have to pay any tariffs!  If you were on the fence waiting, now might be a good time to order before VKB has a chance to raise their prices! 

 

I'll post some better pictures when I have everything setup.

[Fluxmaven]

So I've had a Bitspower 2 DIMM block for a while. It uses the original Dominator hole spacing. The new Dominator Titanium kits, while they do have removable tops it's totally different spacing. So for that kit I just got the optional fins to replace the RGB top. 

 

I then bought "normal" IceMan blocks that have Dominator spacing to use that Bitspower block. From there I proceeded to buy 2 DDR5 kits that I just tossed in systems.

 

Couple weeks ago I got a good deal on a F5-8000J4048G24GX2-TZ5N kit but it came with IceMan direct touch blocks. That is going into my main rig with the EPYC 4564P. 

 

 

Thanks to brother @Mr. Fox I got a great deal on a kit of F5-8000J3848H16GX2-TZ5NR that had the heatspreaders removed before (making it much less of a PITA for me). So finally the Bitspower block has a home after who knows how many years I've had it. I'm up to 7 DDR5 kits and 3 of them have blocks. I still don't know a damn thing about DDR5 tuning but everything will look cool at least. 

 

[Mr. Fox]

10 hours ago, Fluxmaven said:

So I've had a Bitspower 2 DIMM block for a while. It uses the original Dominator hole spacing. The new Dominator Titanium kits, while they do have removable tops it's totally different spacing. So for that kit I just got the optional fins to replace the RGB top. 

 

I then bought "normal" IceMan blocks that have Dominator spacing to use that Bitspower block. From there I proceeded to buy 2 DDR5 kits that I just tossed in systems.

 

Couple weeks ago I got a good deal on a F5-8000J4048G24GX2-TZ5N kit but it came with IceMan direct touch blocks. That is going into my main rig with the EPYC 4564P. 

 

 

Thanks to brother @Mr. Fox I got a great deal on a kit of F5-8000J3848H16GX2-TZ5NR that had the heatspreaders removed before (making it much less of a PITA for me). So finally the Bitspower block has a home after who knows how many years I've had it. I'm up to 7 DDR5 kits and 3 of them have blocks. I still don't know a damn thing about DDR5 tuning but everything will look cool at least. 

 

I was surprised how quickly they were delivered to you. Here are some settings that will either work perfect or put you in the ballpark. With the kit you bought from me, these settings were stable on the X870E Carbon, B850 AORUS Elite, X870E Taichi, X670E Gene, X870E AORUS Master and Strix X870E-E. You can probably dial the VDIMM back to about 1.550-1.570V. 

Here are some other random samples of stable settings you can tinker with. Hope this helps you find the sweet spot. 

 

Edited June 29 by Mr. Fox

[Fluxmaven]

 

So I was in Microcenter the other day returning a mouse I didn't like... Somehow ended up buying a monitor I didn't know I needed lol. I definitely wouldn't have dropped a grand on a monitor this size, but they had one open box for $500 which is still a tad cheaper than a basic 240Hz OLED. Zero hours on it so whoever bought it must have just had buyers remorse and took it right back. 

 

The main monitor on my bedroom rig had been an older Viewsonic Elite with an actual G-Sync module. So I had been thinking I should do something different with that rig. Going back to an Nvidia card that is better than the 6950XT (without regressing on VRAM) would have been considerably more than I spent on the monitor. It was also tax free weekend in Ohio for under $500 which was the cherry on top. 

[The LAWN oob]

Got a few pounds of NOS

[Snakecharmed]

I upgraded my NVR's CPU from a Ryzen 5 5600G to a Ryzen 7 5700G. Why? I don't know. Because I could and their respective resale values are almost at parity on the second-hand market. Once I account for the fees to list my 5600G for sale, the CPU upgrade might cost me about $25.

 

 

The 5600G was running just fine before. Running substreams of my seven cameras in the Blue Iris main window keeps the CPU utilization low regardless. Getting an extra two cores was a nice-to-have feature even though the machine based on its current use patterns will never come close to needing them. The slightly faster iGPU is also nice for the games that I will never play on this NVR because it's a freakin' NVR. 

[Sir Beregond]

Been getting interested in replacing some of my older Ryobi brushed power tools. I dont use tools in a job or anything like that, but am interested in maybe starting to learn some woodworking so I can make some things. 

 

Been eyeing some Makita deals. Still a bit pricey, but after trying some, I like them. Feels good in hand. 

 

Haven't quite decided to pull the trigger yet. 

Edited November 3 by Sir Beregond