Bluto

2023/09/22 The beast has landed.

• motherboard: ASUS Z790-PLUS WIFI (amazon) (firmware and drivers)

  There are 12 CPU power pins. I need a power supply that can fully provide that. (as well as the 600w(!!) power to the GPU!)

• memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 Series 64GB DDR5 6400 (newegg)
• GPU: Gigabyte RTX 4090 Windforce V2 (newegg)

  It has the ATX 3.0 power plug on it, push 600W to it

  It is warrantied through 2026-09-27, here on Gigabyte's weird Aorus "club".

• CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K (amazon)
• CPU cooler: (amazon)

  Actually pretty versatile, it survived swapping out of motherboards, even though it has sticky tape requirements like M.2. (STOP DOING THAT, FOOLS)

• PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 ATX 3.0 1050W 80+ (newegg)

  This bastard has the FULL ATX 3.0 600W 12-pin GPU connector, clearly marked. That leaves plenty of space for all other needs, including 16-pin CPU.

• Drives:
  • 1TB for OS (amazon)
  • WD M.2 4TB for games/videos (amazon)
  • 2TB (originally bought for melange but need SATA there not NMVe) (newegg), 8TB sata drive (the eighth of the 7-drive mine array, may need to harvest it if one of those goes bad)

Windows 11 Setup

• I used a Ventoy boot disk with multi-platform Windows iso.
• Download Armory Crate from ASUS windows drivers - but it has some crazy Windows load-from-motherboard hack to bootstrap the network drivers etc. Nice!
• Add/remove programs, removed One Drive, Notes, News, a bunch of other bullshit - but you can't kill Edge

History

• The first round of memory was G.Skill Trident Z 5 RGB (DDR5), got TWO BAD STICKS! Amazon sucks. Rip the seller.
• NOTE that the M.2 drives did NOT work in melange, it locked up when they were installed! Gonna need to get smarter about matching M.2 type there.
• You can jury-rig the GPU power with 4 8-pin PCIe power connectors through an adapter, but fuck that. I returned the first power supply after trying to rig it up - do NOT use CPU cables for PCIe power!! I sent back a Corsair 1000W bc it was shy of one PCIe cable and once i realized i really wanted ATX 3.0 i had to swap it. Took two more tries but the second new Toughpower one actually had a real 600W GPU power cable (clearly marked). Why was that so hard to find!
• This shit Amazon GPU was DOA: ZOTAC RTX 4090 (amazon)
• shit motherboard I had to send back: Gigabyte Z690 Aero D (amazon)

I ranted on reddit:

AFTER A DAY OF WORK I STILL FAILED with my Gigabyte Z690. My tricks:

• I used an old USB 2.0 stick that "flashes" on write (remember those?) so i could tell it was reading from the stick. Without being able to tell I was just shooting in the dark.
• I grabbed an older firmware F21 instead of F26 (which would not work), based on some far flung internet comment in some lost forum.
• I renamed the BIOS firmware to "gigabit.bin". That was weird but I think required.
• I stripped everything out but the CPU and motherboard/CPU power connectors.
• I flipped on the power switch, pressed the case power button to start it up, held the power button to power it down into "standby".
• I pressed the Q-Flash button on the mobo, saw the thumb flash, then saw the Q-Flash led on the mobo start to flash too, indicating it actually liked the BIOS and would consume it.
• I redid everything again to go from F21 to F26.
• After finally getting it to start POST, it stuck on codes listed as "internal use" HOW DOES THAT HELP ME? The memory light was lit. I was done and sent it back for an ASUS board.