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!

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.