I felt like taking a moment to share a supremely interesting story.
Recently I was offered to purchase a X58 Classy3 with unknown CPU, 24Gb Corsair Vengeance 1600, & a CoolerMaster Seidon 120M from a friend for $100. A very decent deal.
The computer had issues, mainly boot loops & only 16 of the 24 ram was being seen in Bios. Further testing showed a few slots were not functioning properly. Research even showed this was a lifetime board, but the owner couldn't locate his receipt so he said warranty was out of the question as part of the reason for the sale.
Now comes the good parts. I decided to do a solid tear down on the system, as I have a working EVGA X58 SLI with a 920 to aid in finding the bad parts. As I pulled off the AIO I was shocked to find a 990X.. I also noticed something was amiss as I struggled to remove the AIO, after pulling up the install information I found out the Standoff studs were installed incorrectly. One side has a what looks to be like painted on washer. This side should be touching the Mobo but it wasn't. Looking at the mobo I noticed that some of the I guess coating had been scratched off under the studs causing a few etching lines to be bare & my guess shorted out by the metal stud.
So I had a thought.. let's try a "Proper" install. I used a Lil clear fingernail polish to cover the scratches. Installed the studies properly. Applied new TIM. Installed the AIO. Hooked up power & BAM!!! We have a system that sees all 24Gb of ram.. in grabbed an old 830Pro SSD tossed windows on, Fired up Aida64 & let it run. I maxed at 35-40c after 8hr run.. idle is 19c. After that I did a small OC to 4.04Ghz still idle at 19 & 45-50 under load. All I did was bump the 133 to 150, no volt change or anything complicated like that.
I'm not familiar with OC so I'm sure that this could hit way higher but as it is, it's better than my stock 920.
I'm very excited as I'm going to move a few parts from my 920 to this. My 512Gb 850Evo, my 970SSC & my 5TB HDD.