*Official* NBR Desktop Overclocker's Lounge [laptop owners welcome, too]

That would make a sweet sign for me to put on my office door. On a weathered piece of wood with red letters that looks like it is painted in blood: Warning! Power virus applications in use! Maybe a radioactive ☢️ or poison ☣️ symbol on each side of it.

 

Still waiting for EVGA to ping me about the X570 Dark. With the AMD Foundation CPU block I got from @Mr. Fox (thanks again bro!!!), 5950X and 6900 XT, all I am missing is the mobo. I am going to use my old test bench for this build. EVGA, I am waiting......

 

Are you still planning to block the ASRock OC? This is going to be a pretty sweet rig. I saw the ASRock 6900xt down to 1599.99. Definitely dipping into my neck of the woods.

 

https://hwbot.org/submission/485113...lti_core_with_benchmate_core_i7_3770k_5094_cb


https://hwbot.org/submission/485113...chmate_core_i7_3770k_1022_cb?recalculate=true


https://hwbot.org/submission/485118...re_core_i7_3770k_5347_points?recalculate=true

 

Great job. That’s impressive!

 

Yes sir! I got that block ready. I'm going to go over it, the last time I got a Bykski gpu block the jet plate was misaligned.

Now what am I going to do with this 5900x and 6800 XT build......

 

Looks like I won't be cracking open the Alderlake anytime soon as neither of my AIOs will fit. EVGA is flat out incompatible and Arctic has a free conversion kit I just ordered coming from Germany standard post that will be a few weeks.

 

I know the 6800xt build was beautiful IMHO. Will this one be of a similar look?

 

Looks like the X170SM/KM might be the end of the line for Clevo true desktop processor laptops:

 

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Well ****.

I guess it's back to desktops then for my next system. The only way I'm going to be able to get the laptop I want in the future is to custom build one out of desktop parts myself. Every other laptop on the market nowadays is an extremely unsatisfying piece of crap that I would hate owning.

An SFF gaming PC sounds like my only hope for having a portable powerhouse now.

 

In accordance with the prophecy, LOL. A little bit of leaven leavens the enture lump.

I am actually surprised it took so long. The turdbook-loving kamikazes have been wanting to kill DTRs and force mobile users into settling for thin and light disposable BGA smegma for a decade. The rationalized acceptance of it is much like the story about putting a little dog feces into the brownies. It will benefit no one except the OEM/ODM peddling the filth.

 

I had my fun with gaming laptops. And I like the idea of them of course. But since I work at home everyday, I just don’t need one. But I still love desktop replacement laptops. And I don’t want them killed off.

 

The major problem I felt like is, with DDR4 vs DDR5, getting a DDR4 board means we cannot get top of the like SKU Mobos, getting a DDR5 means we will pay for more but get pretty much same performance as the DDR4 and maybe a few in SMT workloads scaling. I feel this point was never mentioned by many people. Optimum Tech mentioned it in his latest video. But people should think about everything. Ofc as you mentioned enthusiasts will always grab the new one. On OCN people bought damn Maximus Extreme Z690 !! And many Apex but no DDR5 sticks.

The better thing I hope is with 2022 the DDR5 game should be up, but cannot say really how this whole DRAM market shenanigans play out. I wasted money on a DDR4 G.Skill Trident Z C15 3600MHz B-Die memory (2x8kit single rank total 32GB) a year back thinking the B-Die would be phased out, lol mega stupidity. Still the DDR4 is available and for even lesser price, 2x16 C16 4000MHz Trident Z Royal Dual Rank B-Die is cheaper than that purchased price. So I think DDR4 prices may even fall more in the future, until Zen 4 arrives there's a plenty of time and all the B boards of Alder Lake will sport DDR4.

That said, it's really a sad future. Clevo also abandoning the LGA CPU systems. It has been a fun while it lasted. I always wanted to get one but held to my dear Alienware 17, It's almost maddening to see what has happened to the NB DTR segment...

From P570WM which had a damn HEDT processor, alongside Alienware M18xR2 which actually gets latest Turing RTX3000 as ssj92 and the Ampere A4000 for future, and so many folks on these forums running Pascal and Turing cards on these Alienwares along with Clevo's signature P750 chassis and the Legendary P870 where folks got the Z170 running from 6700K to a 9700K with capacitor modification and BIOS mods, I hate Intel really for this era of LGA15xx pegging. Credit to MSI on that Tornado F5, LGA beast. Oh that Area 51M, which had a bright change but it turned out to be a mess with blowing GPUs and DGFF BS along with crappy future and UWP CC, and all sort of nasty Dell QC issues.

It's a shame that how MXM has been sabotaged by AMD and Nvidia abandoned to the vultures and now defunct, It all started with MSI when they couldn't keep their promise because Nvidia wanted to kill off this.... Look at now, I can get a P5200 MXM with GTX1080 on GDDR5 HP card with 100% 1:1 980M layout but these companies cannot put the lower powered cards like RTX2070 and RTX 3070 MXM into the machines ? in reality they are chastising the BGA parts to doom, with castrations all over the place. Real sad. and Utter ********.

This is the reason why I quit the NB scene, not going to buy another laptop in the future as long as Computers exist. It's over. Tired of posting had so many bookmarks I can link, it was a warzone on Alienware subforums where I used to bash them left and right, it's was too much, I left and took a bog break... but still we have ultimate people like brothers @Papusan and @Mr. Fox and so many others managed to do a alot to this community which actually enlightened so many folks not just about this junktop scene but actually about the damn computers, I remember how Falkentype and Papusan and Spartan used to talk all over with MSI laptops....& Throttlestop too, it's a god's gift to this community we have.

In fact before I first joined this forum and Techinferno. I bought my first Alienware M15x 10 years ago, it was my first damn big boy PC just because of folks here modifying the BIOSes and that laptop had massive heatsinks and a socketed GPU with CPU I miss that dear machine of mine, I played so many wonderful real games which were made with passion back in those days. Also at that time we had Alienware PR like Porras and other people who were real men in the scene whom actually cared about their products with passion not just dumb boxes to play games but actually learn about the world through Internet. I'm eternally thankful to @svl7 for his amazing work across the ages of GPUs since GTX260M to GTX980M, which I currently run with his BIOS and @Johnksss and Ofc @Prema for their invaluable contributions as you can see my bench sig. I think that score is impossible now to get on 3D Mark.

It just breaks my heart seeing things what I like are just burned to the ground.

 

Thanks, but this build will not receive the same treatment. Tried putting the 5900X/6800 XT build on sale locally and I got people offering 2000 (the watercooling components alone cost about $700). This build is going to live on a test bench until I get tired of it.

 

I expect this new benchmark from UI will will be very well received by the RGB jockey (gamers/average joe). Finally a benchmark they can use without being afraid for fried Cpu/Gpu

UL announces 3DMark Storage Benchmark for gamers videocardz.com

Introducing the 3DMark Storage Benchmark
With fast modern SSD storage, loading times are shorter, levels restart faster, and there are fewer interruptions to your gameplay. PC gamers can now choose from a wide range of high-performance storage options from the fastest PCI Express 4.0 and NVMe devices down to cheaper SATA SSDs and high-capacity hybrid drives.

The 3DMark Storage Benchmark is available as paid DLC for the 3DMark app. It costs $2.99 (USD) on Steam and the UL Benchmarks website.

@Mr. Fox will you now invest in faster and more expensive storage?

------------------------------------------------------------

Be quiet! & ARCTIC Release Z690-Compatible Alder Lake CPU Cooler List, Large Portion of ASUS’s Boards Incompatible

 

EVGA X570 Dark on its way! This is going to be fun. I need to buy more EKWB quickdisconnects

 

What ram you sticking in that bad boy?

 

I have my 4800 and 4000 sets I can use. I'm going to try for 3800 to 4000 CL14. I really want to see how this 5900X is going to perform in addition to my 5950X. My 5900X chip is actually better than my 5950X for RAM OC'ing.

EDIT: Guys, this weekend, I may start posting some of my hardware on the marketplace for a limited time like my 10900KF/Asus mobo. Keep a look out.

 

Ok so I started running 3733 Gear (1) with tighter timings. This makes overclocking easier and stability easier. Not to mention, (3733Mhz gear (1) on this platform) is absolutely a marauder in gaming performance!!

I run this profile daily now.


5.3Ghz (8) cores and 5.4Ghz (6) cores 5.5Ghz (4) cores.

It’s an absolute beast! I run the cache at 4,571Mhz.

It’s incredible seeing DDR4 3733Mhz doing so well.

IO/SA voltages are bone stock or on auto. Less power, and less heat. And it’s all very stable. The 11900K may not stand up to my golden direct die 10850K, but I destroy it in games and average GPU usage.

 

Hey guys I've been thinking about using gpu heatsinks for the backplate and wanted to pick your brains a bit.

What is the best blower type heatsink? Also of the cards you guys used up til have the largest contact plate?

If all blowers suck, what aib card has the largest contact plate?

 

Tweaked, running rock solid and good to go for my WoW and D2r gaming both at ultra/max settings.
I'll end up tweaking the 3800 sticks over the coming weeks and see where they go. Right now I'm just sitting at 3200 stock. I'll see how much I can tighten those timings first then start loosening the timings and bumping IO/SA.

Oddly, that -90 UV was stuck no matter the resets but running control center it zapped it right away and it wasn't there during the next cmos clear.

CPU is rated / binned at 1.31 @ 5ghz so I'll be giving that a try instead of sitting on adaptive.

Clean up and re-delid /re-lid resulted in a 8 degree reduction under load running CB23 so happy with that.

 

The undervolt using BIOS defaults was implemented on-purpose by Prema to help with thermals. It's not part of the stock Clevo cancer firmware. Even the poorest silicon samples nobody would want to own that I binned for zTecpc were 100% stable with -0.090V offset with otherwise stock CPU configuration. People that are comfortable tweaking can set whatever works for them, but that was for the noobs that are not comfortable with tuning and are content to run stock with no ventures into the UEFI with goals to improve their experience.

 

I figured since this was system #3 off the line the 10900k in it had your binning touch on it.

I was wondering since @Clamibot didn't have it but his system shipped with a 10600k so that would make sense. The UV definitely helped bring the stock pull from 224w down to 194w. It has me chompin at the bit to get this 11900k in one of these knowing it pulls at most ~180w and that is without any type of UV applied. I know on the P870TM with Prema we tweaked AC/DC LL to bring down pull even more and find a balance between that and a hardset Vcore. I haven't checked if that is available yet.

I usually let laptops run stock for at least 24-48hrs to set a baseline before resetting everything, clean install and then taking a deep dive into the BIOS and rip open the hardware.

 

I did not touch each system. I only had the developer unit and the one that was shipped to BOAT for his review/video. I did, however, touch every 10900K CPU and binned them all before they went into a build. I used Cinebench and AIDA64 stress testing and followed settings similar to Silicon Lottery, but with tighter restrictions (lower voltage expectations for each bin). Each CPU went through a battery of tests that I plotted in Excel and each CPU was marked with a Sharpie pen on the IHS as to their bin grade.

Those that were average were solded as "unbinned" (they were binned and found to be average). There were two grades of bin offered according to their voltage needs. There were two or three samples that needed to be sold on eBay because the silicon quality was unacceptable and below the average baseline.

All of the work on machines sold, including the delidding, was done by their technicians. You never would have seen the mess you saw had it passed through my hands, LOL. I don't know if @Terreos purchased a binned CPU or went for the "average" CPU.

I also spent a lot of time with memory testing and creating custom XMP profiles with Thaiphoon Burner. The common 3200 CL22 memory is absolutely garbage with such sloppy loose timings. I would not expect to see CL22 until you hit around 5000MHz, but that's how the industry sells fake enthusiast products to noobs that buy turdbooks which can't run more than 1.200V on the memory and no access to custom tune their RAM. You sell them 3200 with sloppy timings that should be bootable on the worst junk imaginable and call it something pecial because it is laptop. Being a laptop arbitrarily qualifies it for getting a pass on being a pile of garbage.

The difficulty there is getting the correct IC on the RAM modules. It seems to be hit or miss with laptop RAM and their supplier could not provide modules with a specific IC part number. The random nature of the supply is obviously going to be a problem with memory tuning.

 

12th gen supports quad channel on consumer boards? 80GB/s seems very low

 

He went with the binned magic. It is a china fab chip which for myself personally almost all of my good silicon seems to come from in the past. Only anomaly is my 11900k which is Vietnam.

It didn't even cross my mind that delid and relid was even potentially your work lol.

3200 CL22 is just insulting. That is why I wanted to give the Team Force a try. I tried Vmem up to 1.5 and it was a no go at their rated timings which were good. I loosened them up to 22-22-22 and suddenly they worked. At their rated timings, they gave up the ghost at 3066 @ 1.4v. That makes them no better than the other run of the mill SODIMMs so they'll be going back tomorrow for a full refund. The 3800 Corsair sticks I ran in the P870TM1 and now the X170SM-G are rated so high at C18 3800. I split the kit and sold two of them to someone with an AMD mini PC that took SODIMMs and he said they're running at 3600 CL16 no problem (max rating for the mini PC I think) so the sticks are not the problem when fishing out optimal speed and timings. I'm going to dial in 3200 as tight as possible and then loosen back up with some IO/SA bumps to see how high they will go loose. The corsair sticks are also x8 and not x16 to boot.

 

Nice laptop! I’d be after a nice 3200 CL12 to CL14 profile if possible. I’ve seen that do really well on my system.

Which CPU are you using?

 

It was a binned CPU. So it was definitely done by you since it was one of the early orders. So they must've taken it apart completely when I sent it in and undid your hard work. Which is a shame. I never fully took it apart to see any of the thermal paste as I just trusted it since it had so many note worthy members here on the forums behind it.

 

• If you run DDR5 memory and have a stick in Slot 1 and Slot 3, then you will run 2 memory controllers with dual-channel enabled. So quad channel.

https://skatterbencher.com/2021/11/04/alder-lake-overclocking-whats-new/

 

Mine had a 50mv undervolt when it came with the 10600K. Once I put my 10900K in and did a BIOS reset, the undervolt went away. I need to find the maximum stable undervolt for my chip.

Also, my new screen came in today! I verified that it works and I currently have it soaking so I can peel off the antiglare layer after work.

 

Lol if that's quad channel then it's a total gimmick .

 

Yep and if you don't know whats up... People will ask the same questions about this mess again and again. The boost in speed is due DDR5 and higher clocks.

Edit. Imagine what we will see/hear with Alder lake for laptops

Quad Channel DDR5?
One of the first things you might encounter with Alder Lake is that CPU-Z will indicate that you have a four channel memory controller („Quad Channel“). Until now, this has been the privilege of Threadrippers or Intel X99/X299 platforms and similar hardware. Such reporting is not incorrect, because every DDR5 module behaves as two independent channels (or logical channels) from the perspective of the memory controller. While in the case of DDR4 a single module behaves as a single 64bit channel, in the case of DDR5 a change has been conducted whereby a module has been split into two 32bit channels. With two modules you therefore have four logical channels with 32bit width each.
https://www.hwcooling.net/en/alder-lake-and-ddr5-xmp-3-0-dynamic-memory-boost-and-more/

 

So I picked up a 12700k and a cheap open box MSI Z690 Pro DDR4 motherboard that I was going to throw in the server. Jokes on me, the motherboard pins are all smashed, lmao. Way to check and make sure everything was good to go microcenter.

 

The boint slaughter have started. 12th gen Intel Hybrid monsters with disabled cores ruin Global points for those who have processors with real amount cores. It won't take long time and your +100 globals from 6 or 8X ranked Cpu will be pushed down to 2 points. But 2 globals is still better than zero. Isn't it?


Edit. And please don't buy etc 12700 or 12900 chips without the K moniker. You can't disable cores on those chips to grab a few global points from the CPU's with real cores.

 

My $37 dollar ebay water pump!! This was for the Alphacool top, and Alphacool VPP755V3 pump.


It works!!!! I disassembled it and cleaned the ceramic bearing shaft, cleaned the top very well too. Reassembled and it’s perfect! It pumps like a full on D5.


Water flow is fantastic!! I have no idea what it is, but it looks fantastic anyways.

 

sounds like someone had problems with the new socket 1700 insertion process.

 

I did not delid the lot of CPUs and did not work on any systems except for the one I was using for development and the initial prep work on the very first one that was sent out to Bob for his review and video. I spent a day with their staff and did some hands-on examples of mods for thermal abortion remediation on several different models of turdbooks and prepped the unit for Bob. None of the work done on models shipped to customers was done by me other than CPU binning.

After I got home with a development unit I started experimenting and tweaking with various mods to try to get the thermals under control. Once I had figured everything out I took photos, and created some videos and job aids for their staff. The mods I had figured out after I got home were conveyed to Bob so he could replicate them on his review unit. I tried to make it as simple to follow as possible. Maybe it wasn't simple enough.

One of the problems I discovered with the design of the unit is an arm branching off of the heatsink near the CPU that attaches to the chassis. It was not correct dimensionally and while it was intended to be a brace to add strength it was causing problems. Because it wasn't made exactly right, it was preventing proper contact between the heatsink and the CPU. So, I cut it off and that immediately improved the temperatures. They probably thought I was nuts. Sawing off a chunk of the heat sink on a brand new system and baking parts to infuse liquid metal into the pores of the contact surfaces is kind of outside the dull routine of installing parts like SSDs and RAM.

I also assisted in testing BIOS mods with Prema as well as the experimenting with memory. I had a truly horrendous battle with instability whenever RAM with Hynix memory chips were involved. I had much better results with Micron and Samsung ICs. At one point the NVRAM was so stuffed up after installing 128GB (4*32GB) of RAM with Hynix chips that I thought the motherboard was bricked. It took me several hours of farting with it trying to get the NVRAM to poop on itself before it would successfully boot again.

In the photos that you are posting it looks like a D5 pump with a nicer-looking pump housing than normal. Is there anything about it that is different than a D5 that you can tell?

 

Well, I finally got Windows 7 almost fully functional. With some assistance with files from canonkong followed by some INF modding of my own (some of my HWID were missing) everything except the same two PCI Express Root Ports is functional. The two M.2 ports the 970 EVO NVMe SSDs are mounted in are invisible (nothing in Device Manager) and there is no trace of those SSDs under Windows 7. Those ports and NVMe SSDs are normal and fully functional with W10 LTSC, W10 Pro and W11 Pro. So, I am thinking that the two PCI Express Root Ports with a code 10 status could be directly related to the M.2 slots not being visible. This issues I was having with Macrium Reflect and Mini-Tool are resolved now. The only issue now is that only USB and SATA drives are recognized (no M.2/NVMe visible) and my assumption (might be wrong, just a logical assumption) is that the PCI Express Root Ports #9 and #21 with code 10 status correspond with the two M.2 NMVe SSDs that are not accessible/visible.

I installed the latest Simplix W7 update pack (released yesterday) and that made no difference.

For the record, I was never able to install Windows 7 from USB on the X570 AMD setup or this new Z590 Intel setup. At the point of selecting the drive for installation during Windows Setup it was always missing a required driver even after slipstreaming all of the known necessary drivers.

In both cases, I used DVD and an optical drive with PS/2 mouse and keyboard. After installing Windows 7 that way I was able to install drivers and get USB working. The built-in EVGA Z590 Dark PS/2 port works perfectly. I had to use a PCIe PS/2 add-in card on the X570 Crosshair VIII system because it did not have a PS/2 port.

@Ashtrix

Spoiler: Windows 7 Device Manager

Compare what is absent under "Storage controllers" in Device Manager.

Spoiler: Windows 10 Device Manager

 

I reinstalled my new screen after my matte to glossy screen mod. I'm so happy now. This laptop is now perfect.

The colors on my laptop's screen are amazing! Black levels are super deep and no colors are washed out anymore.

The one thing I was concerned about when getting a new laptop was having to deal with crappy matte screens. Being used to my Alien's amazing glossy screen, I was hesitant to get any new laptop, including my Clevo X170SM-G, because I did not want to deal with a matte screen. For some stupid reason, it seems everyone is pushing matte displays nowadays, which I hate.

I now feel very confident with modding any of my future matte screens into glossy screens since I have completed this mod perfectly twice in a row. I no longer have to deal with matte screens ever again!

 

Congratulations on having something you consider perfect. That has to feel good. I don't remember the last time I thought that about a computer, but it has been a while. Probably the closest thing to perfect I can remember owning was the X299 Dark and 7980XE. With Windows 10+ and DCH trash drivers looking like the only things we are being left with, I don't anticipate there will ever be anything that ticks enough boxes for me to consider remaining engaged with PC technology.

Yeah, glossy screens have always been better for me as well. Everything just looks better to me, and it is easier to keep the glossy screens looking nice. The matte screens tend to end up with a splotchy, rather nasty-looking surface no matter how much effort you give to keeping them clean.

 

Ah ok. That definitely got lost in translation when the machine was sold to me then. I was under the impression you did some hands on work on the first few units and trained the process Ztecpc guys. Thanks for clearing that up.

Knowing that I would definitely learn how to do all this myself so I can only have myself to blame in the future.

 

Given the fact that it appears the future has ended for high performance desktop replacements (Clevo going full BGA retard vs releasing an Intel 12th Gen X170) you may not need to learn anything.

I offered to help with the building of systems to be shipped to customers, but the very slim profit margin realized by a Clevo reseller would have made an already insanely expensive laptop less affordable. What they would have to pay me on a per-unit basis would basically eat up any profit potential and then some.

Nobody builds monsterbooks for resale merely for the pure joy of it. Most consumers, even some that consider themselves to be enthusiasts, don't want to pay more for something better. And, as it turns out to be the case here (with zTec) and just about everywhere else, the reseller that owns the company is more interested in making easier money churn-and-burn shipping a ton of chintzy cookie cutter crap that is in high demand by consumers with an irrational love of chintzy cookie cutter crap than cater to a small market of true enthusiasts that have set a high bar on expectations and are very critical.

 

Congratulations Brother Fox, it's good news. Great to see it you got it working from that legend canonkong and your expertise & thanks for updating.

About the NVMe you seem to use M.2 Middle and M.2 Bottom slots, both are from Z590 PCH only, so this is related to the PCH drivers/BIOS, you may already know what I'm saying below but anyways upon searching those device IDs it shows as "DmaSecurity AllowedBus Extension" for TigerLake PCH, it's not fully accurate since Z590 PCH is called TigerPoint, but since this PCI Express Root port exists on almost all Intel machines so no wonder it's there on the BGA Tiger Lake as well (11th gen for Lapjokes is Tigerlake on 10nm) also here's some drivers that I found which shows as Windows 7 support too for this PCIe device #9 43B0

Also it might be related to VT-d DMA protection Intel calls it as -> Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d), which states virtualization support for direct I/O access and it's in the 10th generation Comet Lake Datasheet Vol 1 (Section 2.2.2, pg 22) as well, basically to protect the host system and Virtual system memory access it seems. Maybe you can check in the BIOS if that option is there and can be enabled or disabled and see it it changes anything ? Since Intel gives us some platform features to be turned off and this looks like an option to exist on the Z590 chipsets, as it looks like a common option for many Intel chipsets.

Also how was the Macrium reflect and Minitool issue got resolved ? Any BIOS settings or some formatting aspect for the USB drives that you used, good to hear that got resolved too esp when the cancerous UEFI Class III is what we are dealing with here. Unfortunate that Simplix didn't help, but at-least the OS is free from M$ filth and of the HW is also free from debilitating M$ cancer.

PS/2 installation is always the safest and best options Luumi also always says to use that method only. So many other folks also do that or they use that PCIe expansion method if the boards do not have the PS/2 ports. Nice to see some of the top enthusiast lineup use it, even the latest Z690 boards use it, as we already know the CSM option is still there on these boards. I think they know how UEFI causes issues with Linux installations all that BS associated with it. So perhaps that's why and some old VGA and PCIe devices too. I'm a bit surprised how they left all of them despite the fact they were pushing muh UEFI for security BS and all. Esp their latest news is Intel Haswell iGPU has some security shenanigans so disabled DX12 lol and we do not even need to mention how trash M$ software quality is nowadays.

 

Now that's no fun. But, true I think I'll be sticking to my desktop for high end performance. Probably best to stick with mid grade laptops for travel.

Yeah I got the impression when I was buying it and saw they didn't want to go with the new KM model. So figured they were not making much money if at all. Well it was a fun ride while it lasted. Hopefully @electrosoft enjoys it.

 

It is truly a sad day if this is it for real DTRs and non fixed parts for many reasons including the end of specific MXM GPU upgrades. If there is no refresh that means there won't be a refresh on Supers or 4000 series moving forward too for that form factor.

The one beauty of always having a stream of some type of MXM cards was there was always at least the chance of getting newer cards working in older systems with a little bit of elbow grease and spit and polish. Look at the older Alienware systems still getting fairly modern cards working in the along with other items in their dual mxm designs even putting m.2 drives in the other slot with an adapter. @ssj92 as extended his M18x r2 to insane levels. Look at @Meaker@Sager getting a 3070 working in his P870TM-G. Look at how the P870DM was extended to support the entire line Skylake of Socket 115x CPUs from the 6700k up to the 9900k. Things like that will be gone and that makes me sad.

If this is truly the end, I will ride the SM/KM till the end and my other notebooks will be throw aways (see sig) till the day comes that even throw aways greatly outclass my DTR just by technological advancements.

 

I specifically got my X170 for the MXM upgradeability. What a ripoff if this really is the end of true DTRs.

Fortunately I had a backup plan if this was going to be the case. Upgrading from an RTX 2080 Super to an RTX 3080 laptop GPU won't be worth the cost for the minor performance improvement that will yield. Since this laptop has 4 m.2 ports (which I will probably never fully populate with drives), I'm planning on using one of them to connect to an eGPU in the future.

I've seen someone on this forum connect eGPUs to their P870TM through the m.2 ports, and it yielded almost full performance (within 5% of the performance of the same GPU connected to a full x16 slot on a desktop motherboard). I think this is a viable alternative to swapping the MXM dGPU in my system.

Also, given the push for m.2 ports in newer systems, even craptops are technically GPU upgradeable now.

 

I don't have any kind of insider knowledge, only what Brother @Papusan posted in another thread from XMG regarding the death of the last Mohican.

 

Same crap Alienware pulled with the Area 51m...

 

Yes, it is all confusing to me. I started from a clean OS install with no drivers other than was is part of Windows 7 DVD. I went to each device in Device Manager, opened the Properties page and got the hardware ID. I then went to the folder with the modded chipset INF files from canonkong and searched for the hardware id. Whatever INF file it found, I used the "have disk" method to install the INF "driver" for each device because the right-click install method doesn't seem to work. In some cases TigerPoint did not appear in the HWID search list and the TigerPoint INF did not have my hardware ID, but another INF did and I used it because it doesn't matter as long as the device has the proper name. If the hardware ID did not appear anywhere, then I would open the TigerPoint INF in notepad and add my hardware ID. I also compared using the screenshot from Windows 10. I tend to think none of it really matters because the chipset drivers are not really drivers. All they are is INF files that give names to devices that don't need drivers so we can see what they are. There are no actual driver dll or sys files. I also found a modded driver package with ACPI drivers on Win-Raid forums (also from canonkong) and used them because I had a bunch of unnamed ACPI devices that the chipset INF package did not address. The whole thing is a Frankenstein operation, but it works and that is all that matters to me. The only thing that I am upset and puzzled by is the NVMe drives not being visible. They are not identifiable anywhere within Windows 7, including Windows 7 Setup.

I always disable all virtualization crap in the BIOS so that is already taken care of. I also disable Intel ME in the BIOS. Since I do not use things like XTU and EVGA Elite, I don't need access to BIOS settings in Windows and there is no useful purpose for Intel ME otherwise. It is merely a doorway into the bowels of the UEFI for the OS. It serves no useful purpose if you make all adjustment of settings directly in the BIOS.

I am not 100% sure about this, so please do not take is as fact or Gospel. When my delid of the 11900K ended in tragedy and I moved the 10900K from the Strix board to the Z590 Dark, a lot of things that were not going my way at all with Windows 7 began falling in place. I believe that Macrium and Mini-Tool began working after 11900K was no longer in the equation. These are USB sticks I have used for several years and I have no technical explanation for why they didn't work before and now they do; only the observation that they started functioning correctly when I no longer had an 11900K.

The difficulty of choosing to use any OS I want, instead of allowing the Redmond Reprobates the liberty of deciding what OS they think I need, is really bumming me out. It was a massive pain in the ass with the X570 as well. As you may recall, getting Windows 7 to work with the AMD setup was unreasonably difficult.

All of this tells me that the Redmond Retards fear their newer trash OSes being rejected. They know that lots of normal people HATE everything they have done after Windows 7 and they know those people would NEVER downgrade to their newer trash OSes if they continue supporting Windows 7 and allow their OEM muppet "partners' to continue providing driver support. This is their Nazi way of letting us know that they love us and want the best for us and they don't give a damn if we agree or like it.

 

This is most likely the underlying nefarious reason for all "gaming" laptops being pathetic BGA turdbooks. The ODM/OEM cartels can't make money if we can upgrade and repair our notebooks and make them last 5+ years. So, they offer disposable trash that they expect to fail shortly outside of the 1 year warranty and hope that RGB and other stupid gimmicks are going to be enough that most people sheeple don't notice. And, no surprise... most of the sheeple don't notice and don't care.

It is definitely related to Windows 7 not being able to recognize the M.2/NVMe slots. Looks what happens when I use a PCIe slot with an external NVMe add-in card. It works.