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)

  The first round was G.Skill Trident Z 5 RGB (DDR5), got TWO BAD STICKS! Amazon sucks. Rip the seller.

• GPU: ZOTAC RTX 4090 (amazon)

  It has the ATX 3.0 power plug on it. Get a PSU that directly provides that! It's 600W! Don't fuck around! You can also jury-rig it with 4 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but fuck that. I returned the first power supply after trying to rig it up - do NOT use CPU cables for PCIe power!!

• 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 GF3 1000W ATX 3.0 (newegg)

  This bastard has the FULL 600W 12-pin GPU connector! That was ridiculously hard to find!! That leaves plenty of space for all other needs, including 16-pin CPU.

• Drives: WD M.2 4TB (amazon), 1TB (amazon)

  NOTE that these did NOT work in melange, gonna need to get smarter about matching M.2 type there.

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!

History

• 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.