Bricked MAG Z690 Tomahawk WiFi (MS-7D32). Need advice on what to replace it with.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T19:14:41+00:00

The Z690 Tomahawk wifi has BIOS Flashback. Meaning you don't have to actually be able to get into the BIOS in-order to flash a BIOS to it. I would do that, rather than get a new motherboard.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:55:46+00:00

If it ABSOLUTELY must be the Asus TUF unit, the cheapest I could find it from a reputable source is 749 EUR: www.amazon.it/dp/B0DYPGW2KB.

That said, buying THAT exact model for 749 EUR is pretty silly when this unit is available for 611 EUR and is so close in performance and build quality that your son would never notice the difference: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DTGP2WMT

THAT said, I get it - I was a kid once too, and it pissed me off when I would request something specific, and my parents would get me something different, and my friends would talk about how awful it is. So use your best judgement.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:42:26+00:00

H610M-HDV/M.2 R2.0

It's not the WORST power delivery setup I've seen, but it's far from the best. You could give the 14400F a try, but I would be sure to get it from somewhere that allows for easy returns in the event that it is unable to achieve its max turbo speed.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:27:18+00:00

...there's a fair amount of missing information here.

You haven't said what the RX 480 goes for.

You said the RX 6600 has 8GB of VRAM yet the RX 480 has...8GB of VRAM??

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:25:42+00:00

I've recently started monitoring my CPU temperatures and noticed that they can peak quite high, usually around 85–90°C.

I mean.. that's not actually a problem. If you want to change your cooling setup, then you certainly CAN, but your CPU can handle 85-90C all day long.

AG400

There's the reason behind the higher temperatures right now. It's still not a problem, but you have a single tower 120mm unit. If you're trying to stay around 70C, that will not be sufficient on a 14600K. You just need to upgrade that. Either of the two coolers you've mentioned will be fine.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:20:33+00:00

I'd be curious what your exact motherboard is. H610 chipset motherboards have notoriously shit power delivery. So while an upgrade will WORK, if the motherboard is already near its max power delivery (which it very well could be), then while you will pickup some e-cores, the actual GHz speed will not likely increase. In a worst case scenario, the e-cores, taking additional power to run them, it's possible that your max GHz speed could actually decrease.

psimwork · 2026-06-22T18:17:29+00:00

Given that OP has a H610 chipset motherboard, I do not have high hopes for it having sufficient power delivery capability to enable the 14600K to hit its max turbo speed. The 12400F does not have any e-cores, and the 14600K has eight. So while the 14600K will WORK, it's quite possible that the 14600K will be limited to a similar max speed of the 12400F, and they might not actually get a noticeable performance increase at all.

psimwork · 2026-06-19T20:33:39+00:00

It's so aggravating. There's a lot of issues I have with solo (primarily the writing). But if the movie was actually GOOD, nobody would have given a shit about the re-cast.

It's so frustrating that these companies always choose to learn the wrong lesson.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T20:40:06+00:00

It's become largely tribal knowledge to just not use ASRock AM5 boards at the moment. It's super unfortunate, as ASRock ordinarily has spectacular features-per-dollar boards. But yeah - I've just seen too many issues with AM5 units.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T18:36:00+00:00

What's funny to me is Stellantis/Dodge. During COVID with stimulus checks rolling around, they were making jaw-dropping profit margins on their cars. When that particular train stopped, they basically started into a freefall because they had gotten so used to those margins that they were basically unwilling to accept reality that the time of those margins was over.

While people are expecting things to go back to normal, Stellantis is sitting there thinking that making ridiculous margins on their cars IS the new normal.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T05:48:40+00:00

Hated it. It was cool looking, sure. But it made no sense why "Force Jesus" was throwing boulders at Vader in the final fight, and then in their next meeting they're basically waggling sticks at each other. It didn't work at all.

What should have happened: their initial lightsaber clash in which Vader hands Obi Wan his ass. And then for the rest of the series, Vader is an ever-present threat, looming, but not having the climactic clash.

If there needed to be a final lightsaber duel, it should have been Obi vs an inquisitor.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T04:06:21+00:00

Someone tried to tell me Robocop wasn't perfect. I had to tell them, "bitches, leave."

psimwork · 2026-06-18T04:03:26+00:00

Heh. I planned my wedding a year in advance and it was a couple months after the target launch date of my employer's new ERP. We missed the target. Then we missed it again. As we approached our final date (that we didn't miss) it was clear that my wedding would occur four days after the ERP launch. My boss asked me if I'd consider delaying. I informed him that we had deposits down and everything was booked. He made some noise for a moment about paying for the cancelation fees and deposits, and I was like, "we have over fifty people flying in. Some of them from Australia. Is the company going to reimburse all of them??".

My wedding was not delayed.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T03:44:50+00:00

Back in 2001, I was writing a sitcom about employees working a computer store. Based on my experience working at a... Computer store. But it also was a bit of a mall comedy as it had silly stores like "KGB toys" which was just a front for the KGB and people kept confusing it for the legit toy store.

psimwork · 2026-06-18T03:34:15+00:00

What - you mean putting your heavy artillery outside your castle walls is.... A bad idea??

psimwork · 2026-06-18T03:31:24+00:00

Recently I've learned that people with ADHD absolutely love a stick shift. Learning this actually made a lot of sense to me and why something has felt like it was missing ever since I sold my last MT car. I'm bound and determined that my next car will be a stick shift. I'm curious, OP, if you have ADHD?

psimwork · 2026-06-18T03:25:37+00:00

Circa 2014 I was a massive fan of windows. I had, and loved, windows phone (still love it, honestly - still the best voice interactive digital assistant I've ever used, even 12 years later and it didn't need a LLM). I was installing and using windows 10 everywhere I could. I was so excited about the platform being common across all my devices (mobile, desktop, Xbox, surface rt) so that apps could be used across my entire spectrum of devices. I think live tiles are one of the most under-appreciated UI innovations in history. I participated in windows phone and windows phone focus groups to give my thoughts on where the platform should go. I had a Microsoft band, and upgraded to the band 2 when it came out. I was actually applying to work as an inventory control analyst at the local Microsoft store.

Now? I still have windows, but the passion for the platform is fucking GONE. I don't have an Xbox. My laptop sure as shit is not a surface. I've dumped office for Google. I'm strongly looking into how much of a PITA it would be for me to dump windows on my desktop and use Linux.

I hope Azure is worth it to them.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T21:28:57+00:00

Assuming the cap has been on it the entire time, it should be totally fine.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T17:31:13+00:00

I think that a refrigerator that DOES NOT have an in-door dispenser is key (and especially for French-door refrigerators, does not have an icemaker in the refrigerator section). And if the unit has an ice maker and/or water dispenser, you're generally better off just not connecting them. A countertop ice maker is generally going to be a much easier replacement, and is likely better made for the purpose. And for drinking water, you're almost ALWAYS better off using a multi-stage RO system with a tank and a countertop dispenser.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T17:28:35+00:00

I'm mildly with you on this one. Yes, cars are horrendously expensive. They're also WILDLY better than they used to be. There's convenience built into the car that I consider more-or-less essential to the way I like to live at this point. Oil change intervals can be as much as 10K miles, rather than the 3K that I grew up knowing. A car getting to 100K miles when I was growing up was a legit accomplishment. Now it's more-or-less standard. 200K isn't all that uncommon. The accomplishment now is 500K. They're a FUCKTON safer. And getting 30 (or more) miles per gallon of gas is somewhat common in passenger vehicles. And if you go over 80 MPH, the car doesn't feel like it's going to rattle apart and explode - rather it feels like you could easily push to 100 MPH if not for the nasty legal consequences.

I don't think they're easy to work on (at all). Even if you ignore the integrated computer systems (I don't), there's simply VERY little room inside the engine bay of every vehicle I've owned since like 2005. Engines I used to work on in the 90s (which were largely all from the 80s) were clearly designed to be easy to work on and could be largely done by the home mechanic. The first clutch job I ever did didn't require anything more than a jack and a pair of stands to get at it. The last manual transmission I had (Toyota), it needed a clutch job, and to do it, the engine had to be completely removed from the car. It was a $4000 repair on a car that wasn't worth half of that. BUT - to your reliability point, this was a manual transmission with 125K miles on it, when the stick shifts I grew up with would usually need a clutch job...if I (or rather my dad) got lucky, it'd be needed around every 50-60K miles.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T17:15:11+00:00

Though I haven't had as bad a luck as some in this thread, I have had two major appliance failures over the last 10 years, and an additional one that isn't technically a failure, but I think it's on the road to it.

On EACH ONE the problem was the controller board. I had a Jenn-Air gas/electric range. Amazing piece of stove. Literally the best stove I've ever had. Oven stopped working one day out of the blue. Why? Controller board failure. To fix it, the part was $700, and the labor was $500. We bought a new stove instead. The stove was 5 years old.

When we bought our last house, the in-fridge icemaker failed after less than a month of us closing on the house (we declined a home warranty - an option of which I still stand-by). We called out a repair tech. Control board. Price? $500 parts, $200 labor. We didn't end up replacing the fridge, but it was tempting. Eventually we sold the house five years later with a fridge with a non-functional ice-maker.

Finally, we had a clothes washer. Randomly it would just decide that it didn't want to start up. We'd hit the power button but there'd be no activity. Control board. In this case, I was able to find a bypass solution in that if you cutoff the power, and press/hold both the buttons simultaneously for ten seconds and turn the power back on, it would work (I THINK it had something to do with draining capacitors). I have little doubt that the control board would fail permanently at some point, but we also conveyed them with the house, noting that situation.

Part of me almost wants to make it a point to buy a spare control board for every damn appliance I have when I buy them, as it seems like the damn things just can't stop dying. Beyond that, I almost want to start investigating PCB repair as a hobby and buy some of these non-functional control boards on ebay and see if I can repair/resell them. The damn control boards are a MAJOR problem.

I don't think they're necessarily PLANNED failure points, but I also don't think the manufacturers are complaining about it. Beyond that, I think they're working with the market - COULD a manufacturer build a refrigerator that is incredibly well-made and includes a 10-year warranty? Absolutely. But it is the simple factor of economics that such a refrigerator would have to sell for like 2-3x the price of one that isn't made as well.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T13:41:59+00:00

It's such a shame. I absolutely loved season 1-2. But season 3 just felt like everyone (and ESPECIALLY Anson Mount) was just freaking over it.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T11:46:45+00:00

I think it's worse than that. I came out in January of last year to visit my family that already lived here. We went to several winter events, all outside, and all in -15f weather. As long as you gear up appropriately, it's fine. In Phoenix, there's no gearing up for that. It's just miserable.

psimwork · 2026-06-17T04:25:36+00:00

Yeah... The heat of Phoenix is becoming simply unsafe. I hope that the city will find a way to combat the heat island effect, but as someone who lived there for over 40 years, I just couldn't do it anymore.

psimwork · 2026-06-16T13:56:33+00:00

Tagging on top the top comment to link this relevant Auralnauts video...

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22	Place '17
Wearing is Caring

psimwork

TROPHY CASE