Mojo-Jojo

Honestly I'd just contact ASUS and ask where you can buy a second adapter. They should offer replacement parts and then you know it's a proper one. Amazon has a lot of knock-off/poor quality crap from dropshippers nowadays.

As with so many discussions in the current geopolitical landscape, we need to be cognitive of polarizing statements and black&white thought patterns and apply nuance wherever possible. This is why you should always listen to peoples' arguments from multiple sides of the story and try to reach your own conclusion. LTT is not perfect. GN is not perfect. No-one is perfect. It's okay to agree with people sometimes, and disagree with those same people at other times. It doesn't make you a hypocrit. You don't have to choose sides. I know it feels like that these days where we all have to have an opinion about everything OR ELSE!!! But in reality, you really don't. It doesn't serve anyone, especially you. And if you can't (or don't want to) evaluate all arguments from all sides, then just... Step out. Choose to not care. It's an option. I apply this to every instance of drama in my life. Family members fighting, colleagues arguing.. If I don't have all the facts, and the arguing parties aren't presenting coherent facts. I will just excuse myself from having an opinion. And/Or tell both parties to grow up.

NewPipe is my go-to app for this.

I would personally put repairability, and access to schematics under the "features" section as well. But your point still stands.

Depending on what UPS it is, it might not have switched over fast enough for the capacitors in your PSU to fully keep all the rails stable.

This could be anything from a bad CPU mount, bad RAM socket, bad memory controller in the CPU or bad/broken traces on the motherboard. All of which could cause signal integrity issues that could cause a particularly sensitive combination to just not work. No way to know for sure. Might try reseating the CPU and see if it helps. But if not, it's any of these options and if the RAM works in the "wrong slots", I'd probably just "meh" it and move on.

Step one - do a memtest with memtest86. If my hunch is correct, I think you'll find RAM faults. Try reducing the RAM's clock speed to see if it's fixed. I think the 7600 only supports up to 5200 MT/s. So you're at the limit of what it supports. Your troubleshooting step of "Switch the ram with a faster MT/s same result" fits that theory.

Our neighbours in Germany usually have pretty similar laws to us (Netherlands). That being said. Here if you buy something that happens to be stolen or illegally obtained, but you yourself paid for it in good faith, you are not at fault. Good faith is an important clue here. If you have no suspicion whatsoever, and the price seems reasonable, then you cannot be charged for any crime. Worst case you'll have to spend some time to explain the situation to the police. However, if you're buying stuff and you know the price is too good to be true, i.e. grey market license keys, or a $5 bicycle with a destroyed lock, that's where good faith ends and lawful pursuit begins. So long story short, it all depends on the intent here. Like you said.

I mean, I was thinking GTX 3660 but that's not much better

Why is this even an RTX? Who would run raytracing on this? Why not go and release another GTX range cards like with the 1600 series?

They tried a single stick as a troubleshooting step already, which passed testing using MetTest86 before using it. I second using another SSD/HDD just as a testing step. Maybe try reseating the drive/connectors as well. It might (even though filesystem and drive should correct errors) be that something is somehow ending up corrupt on the drive and causing weird stuff to happen.

Looks like you've tried a lot already, all good and valid troubleshooting steps. What I'd try at this point (In order): - BIOS update. I've seen some BIOS updates for your motherboard that mention compatibility & stability improvements. - If that doesn't work (or you're already up to date), I'd reseat the CPU (and inspect socket) - If that doesn't work, I'd try a stick of lower-clocked RAM. - If that doesn't work, I'd try a different power supply After that, I think the only possible leftover explanation is a defective CPU. Although I've personally never seen that before, it happens.

Since you mention that the analog port works fine, I think you're looking at an issue with your USB ports in general or the headset in particular. Most PC's share USB ports on a single or maybe two controllers. You said you've tried different ports, but they may all be sharing the single controller. Once that controller is busy with something else (internal Bluetooth or WiFi maybe?) it might not communicate in time with your headset resulting in audio problems. What you could try is buying a dedicated PCIe to USB add-in card, effectively dedicating an extra USB controller to your headset. I'm not certain it would fix things, but if you buy at a store with a good return policy, it shouldn't hurt to try.

Pulse should be good. As far as I can find on their site, the GPU can take up to 140W, so it's a "full-power" design rather than a neutered 4070 for laptops.

The motherboard traces, the substrate traces, pins and bonding wires will all have their limits. The thermal interface material will have some thermal resistance as well. So yes, there are many limits.