Schiggy

Will do. That saves a ton of money to. The thunderbolt nic and 10gb card are going to be expensive enough on their own lol.

Hey thank you guys! I guess I didn't consider chipset compatibility. I'll look into setting up a 10Gbit switch and a card for the desktop to handle that.

I am currently using a Lenovo Legion 7i with an i9, 3080 mobile, 1tb main drive (m.2 gen 4), 1tb scratch disk (1tb m.2 gen 3) and a 64gb ram update in a couple days. My profession is video editing, and I travel enough that having a laptop like this is more practical then a desktop (i have a custom dock at home to keep it cool enough for the 3080). I have a bulldozer build with 8 cores and 32gb of ram running primo cache as a NAS at the moment. I use the NAS specifically to hold games and other applications like UE5 or blender as I don't have enough room on the laptop for both my video projects and Unreal projects or games. I would like to connect this pc to my laptop via Thunderbolt 4, that way I don't have to saturate it's network connection if I want to play games while my NAS is syncing footage at night. My plan was to buy a thunderbolt 4 pcie card that would allow me to connect the 2 computers together. But, the one I found was by asus and required an asus motherboard to function properly (I think?). If anyone has a suggestion on how go about this please let me know. There might be a switch/pcie nic or raspberry pie combo that could get the job done just as well, but I really want my laptop to load at the same speed as just having a standalone desktop. Maybe even faster since the NAS is using its own resources to write/read/cache... I plan to continue researching this but I figure there are some people here who could stop me from wasting time on a bad solution. thanks!

All good info. Thanks guys. I am running the big boi Noctua air cooler at the moment. I had a liquid loop but it was aluminum and I figured out the hard way that aluminum and gallium don't mix. I could check the cold plate on the noctua cooler for flatness cause I really don't know what it is, but I have no idea how I would measure it without really odd tools. Also right now while I'm in school I am working part time at an autoparts store so ill check and see if I can get my hands on any tools/ sandpaper for engine building that might double for this purpose. Noted on the LM and re-using IHS. I will try some MX-4 and see if it helps temps just because its a thicker paste. If that doesn't do it ill probably lap the die, use liquid metal, and just go wild with my cpu till it breaks. I wouldn't mind getting a second gen x299 chip anyway. I would just rather put the money into my car instead of my pc right now. thanks for the help guys! much appreciated!

I have been running a 7900x for a couple years now. For about the last year it has been direct die cooled (der8auer tools). Since I first did direct die cooling, I have had worse CPU temps. I'm talking like 50c on core 2 and 100 and thermal throttling on core 8. It has been one of those problems that is just at the back of my mind but I haven't gotten around to fixing (busy year)... UNTIL NOW! (maybe) I believe the problem is that my specific die is more convex that usual dies. I tried all sorts of different mounting pressures and torque rotations to make sure it was not just a simple mounting issue, but I am convinced it is a problem with die height consistency. Since these chips have been out a while now, is there anyone who has ran a skylake x chip with a lapped die using liquid metal? Is there any data showing that it eventually seeps through into the chip and breaks it? I remember it being a concern in 2018, but I have not seen any examples of people that ran a setup like mine long term. If this is my best option to fix it, is there any suggestions for decently priced calipers and super fine sand paper? I checked harbor freight already and they don't have what I need lol. Also, is there potentially a way to make my coolers cold plate more concave? that might solve the issue with less risk to my cpu.

dang. thanks for the help. i guess vega frontier will have to stay as my main gaming card. lol

I'm wondering if I can buy these two water blocks for their respective cards and run them SLI. I have made 1 custom loop before and I have these GPUs laying around, but i have no clue if the tubing lines up. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-fc1080-gtx-ti-aorus-rgb-nickel https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-fc1080-gtx-ti-tf6-acetal-nickel thanks for any insight!