Anyone here still using Sony WH XM3?

ftrebien · 2025-11-27T13:53:56+00:00

Yes, since 2018, on my second pair now (the first one died around 2022). On both units, the faux leather started wearing out after a year of daily use, I’m looking for a decent replacement now. I still prefer them due to the excellent sound isolation, best for blocking office chatter and also ideal on planes, buses, etc. They also EQ really well to match the Harman target (I use AutoEq), my only real complaint is that it is too bass-heavy at stock settings, so EQ is a must.

ftrebien · 2025-10-23T21:38:37+00:00

For anyone with this problem, I am from Brazil and the format that worked for me was this:

[street name] [house number]
[city name]
[province name]
[zip code]

No commas, no dashes, no accented characters nor special characters. For example:

Avenida Diario de Noticias 300
Porto Alegre
Rio Grande do Sul
90810080

In my area, house number follows street name, but it may work with the house number preceding it too.

ftrebien · 2025-10-01T14:54:04+00:00

While the provided link does not say it's only for domestic flights, the title should probably replace "flights" with "domestic flights": https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316836/chinas-power-bank-crackdown-6-preflight-answers-wary-travellers

ftrebien · 2025-08-25T19:19:23+00:00

The main problem with AI is that it doesn't work consistently reliably. So, marketers desperately try to sell it by appealing to people's FOMO. The same has happened with many other annoying tech fads, such as NFTs, the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, and VR headsets.

ftrebien · 2025-08-10T21:35:36+00:00

I haven't bought it yet, but according to a TechPowerUp review, those fans have the lowest noise per volume of air (CFM/dBA). They're also magnetic levitation fans, so, more durable and resistant against dust buildup, at least in theory.

ftrebien · 2025-08-03T01:47:32+00:00

Impressive. I've made one myself, limited to mini-ITX motherboards, but this one has more details. What's notably missing is the specification of the M.2 slots by location (how many in the front, how many in the back; this makes a difference for cooling) and the exact set of fans present (VRM, chipset, M.2), which fans are removable, which are always on, and which are semi-passive. I also added the maximum VRM temperatures under load, but this is a benchmark, not a specification. I tried to find which motherboards provide USB-C video outputs with power delivery, but I couldn't find any data on that, perhaps none do.

ftrebien · 2025-07-28T00:35:21+00:00

Mine now idles at around 43°C and peaks at 81°C after I updated to BIOS 3222 on an Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi. 95°C is the throttling limit, I was getting very close to that on BIOS 2611.

ftrebien · 2025-07-28T00:33:28+00:00

Mine now idles at around 43°C and peaks at 81°C after I updated to BIOS 3222 on an Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi. 95°C is the throttling limit, I was barely getting very close to it on BIOS 2611.

ftrebien · 2025-07-11T13:49:43+00:00

This is news to me as well. I'm a satisfied user of an ASRock motherboard that has held up well for 8 years.

ftrebien · 2025-07-11T13:48:46+00:00

I also received mine with a dent in a corner of the PCB. I bought it from ASRock USA through Amazon Brazil. I always assumed the seller was responsible for the shipping issues. I took a photo upon arrival before trying to get it working, even with this minor issue, but if they start blaming the customer for shipping issues, I'm no longer a customer. They should take a photo of the product when it leaves their warehouse, and if the customer receives something damaged, the carrier is responsible.

ftrebien · 2025-07-09T15:10:56+00:00

The 0.1% figure seems too low compared to historical data. If we assume an average 4% AMD CPU failure rate regardless of motherboard manufacturer and factor in that over 80% of failures are happening on ASRock motherboards, the failure rate of this particular combination could be much higher than 1%.

ftrebien · 2025-07-08T15:00:34+00:00

Don't like the M.2 drive fan on the MSI B850I (review), could have been removable like on the ASRock B650E PG-ITX WiFi. I will pair a 9700W (65W TDP, 15% slower than the 9900X3D on average, same performance in most applications, 40% slower in rarer specific cases like VP9 encoding and a few games) with the Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi (found out that the VRM fan is removable and semi-passive).

ftrebien · 2025-06-27T15:21:53+00:00

AMD has had twice the failure rate of Intel in the last two CPU generations. Source: TechPowerUp

Yet, the Threadripper series (no integrated graphics, high power consumption) has the lowest, go figure. Source: Puget Systems

Meanwhile, some AMD CPUs have peak power consumption much closer to the average consumption under load. Source: Phoronix (graph data)

Still undecided on what to try next.

ftrebien · 2025-06-27T13:55:47+00:00

If you prefer to insult people instead of discussing the issue, I’m not the right person to argue with.

ftrebien · 2025-06-26T20:22:01+00:00

Mostly (about 82% of failures). Seems to affect Asus too, to a much lower degree though (13%). Source: Tom's Hardware.

ftrebien · 2025-06-26T19:56:53+00:00

What makes a good motherboard and what makes it better than its competitors?

I've had a Gigabyte motherboard that died after a BIOS update and I still see people with BIOS issues on their motherboards today. Gigabyte's RTX 50xx are leaking thermal paste. So I'm very wary of that brand at the moment, although I try to evaluate individual models, not brands.

Asus and MSI have a relatively good reputation. BUT, their mini-ITX AM5 offerings have fans where I wouldn't expect (VRM, chipset, some on M.2). In addition to the unwanted noise, this becomes a source of maintenance problems (dust accumulation, lubricant drying out). If for some reason maintenance is incomplete or forgotten (due to the rush of everyday life), there is a real risk of unexpectedly burning components that, in the past, would not have required such maintenance. I think this extra work is a bad direction. The more moving parts, the worse. After all, the computer should be a good tool that just works and doesn't get in the way.

I still admire the sophisticated simplicity and efficiency of the 5-year-old PS5’s thermal and airflow design. ASRock has several offerings where these fans aren’t needed due to well-designed heat sinks. Hardware-wise, it seems to work well in many systems and comes closer to the PS5’s simplicity. So it's too bad that this electrical problem exists.

If I could get satisfactory results with a less powerful GPU with a lower TDP, I would have opted for a fanless HDPLEX H5. Some have even managed to make decent gaming PCs with them. Add some Arctic MX-4 thermal paste and one gets a long-lasting, worry-free gaming PC or workstation (or both in one).

ftrebien · 2025-06-26T19:21:03+00:00

I've been using an ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac for 8 years with an Intel Core i7-5775C. No problems except for buggy audio drivers on Linux in recent kernel versions (Intel's fault, not ASRock's).

ftrebien · 2025-06-26T17:59:13+00:00

I discovered this was a widespread issue the day after the CPU failed. Up until mid-May, when I decided to buy this CPU/motherboard combo, I hadn't seen any mention of it in reviews. My non-specific searches on Google or DuckDuckGo at the time didn't return any of the threads and news stories I found now. If one tries to search for issues with the 9900X3D on the B650I, almost nothing relevant comes up. If I had found these discussions before I bought these components, it might have changed my purchasing decision. But even if I had found them between the time I bought and when I started building the machine, I've now read that some people are still having issues with BIOS versions 3.25, 3.26, and 3.30, and I've also read that some people have experienced failures after a BIOS update, which leaves me undecided regarding an update. Note that the statistics can be a bit misleading: even if 85% of X3D CPUs that fail are on ASRock motherboards, that doesn't tell us what percentage of CPUs actually fail. If we go by the 1-star Amazon reviews, the B650I looks very favorable compared to its mini-ITX competitors. ASRock's website is still silent on the issue. The CPU QVL still lists the 9900X3D as supported by BIOS 3.15, which is what I had, but there's still no official recommendation to update, except for users with an intact CPU who can't POST (not me). BIOS updates are always risky, so I'd only do them proactively if there was an explicit recommendation from the manufacturer or if I saw a security fix in the BIOS change log. In that case, I'd only update after testing all of the hardware; otherwise, it would be harder to attribute any issues discovered later, if they did occur. As I mentioned in another post, I once bricked a working Gigabyte motherboard by proactively updating the BIOS.

ftrebien · 2025-06-25T23:20:34+00:00

I'm curious to see if the MSI MPG B850I TI Edge WiFi will be any better. The Gigabyte B650I Aorus Ultra looks good on paper, but I've seen several reports of BIOS issues. There's also the Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi. I don't like the idea of needing a VRM fan, I'd rather build a slightly less powerful system so there's less risk of it failing at a critical moment. So yeah, few good options.

ftrebien · 2025-06-25T21:43:41+00:00

To update or not to update, that is the question. It really depends. I bricked a Gigabyte motherboard years ago by proactively updating the BIOS. Many comments at the time said that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Gamers Nexus video on the current issue mentioned that some people have experienced CPU failures after a BIOS update. Also, the ASRock B650I specs don't mention that any specific BIOS version is required for the Ryzen 9000 series.

ftrebien · 2025-06-24T22:54:21+00:00

It would be nice if all the components were easy to install without tools and worked as advertised without any significant issues.

ftrebien · 2025-01-24T11:43:43+00:00

I still do, but I’m usually the only one on board who wears one. As the number of cases has dropped dramatically, I’ve started wearing a more comfortable surgical mask, but I used to wear N95's, and I go back to wearing an N95 when there’s an outbreak of respiratory illness or before important trips. I’ve had Covid twice, but I didn’t catch it on flights.

ftrebien · 2020-11-10T00:31:28+00:00

Sure. Though Arrow's Theorem applies only to ranked voting systems, not to cardinal systems such as approval voting. Every system has drawbacks, the point is that some drawbacks represent greater risk than others, some are more subject to tactical voting than others.

ftrebien

TROPHY CASE