It’s guaranteed to work correctly when down clocked to 4800 MT/s according to ARK. On some (gaming) laptops and mini desktops you can probably activate RAM overclocking (XMP/EXPO) up to some higher speed, this isn’t guaranteed to be stable. It has to be said though that the Intel 13th gen Datasheet says 13th gen HX supports up to 5600 with 1R 1DPC and 5200 with 2R 1DPC. I guess if you install RAM with a 5600 JEDEC profile you’ll see what the BIOS does.

Also, only RAM modules that are exactly the same, PCB layout, chip type, etc, are supported. Mixing RAM isn’t supported and can cause problems.

Yes, maybe, or the board’s SATA logic was damaged, by ESD, etc.

One thing not mentioned is your PSU. It’s possible your PSU has gone bad and it’s causing your GPUs (1080 and 7900) to crash under load.

The Samsung module is very different. I wouldn’t run such a mixture, I’ve seen too many problems with mixed RAM on here, but of course you’re always free to do your own thing.

Yes, 4800 is the JEDEC profile, so it should be good for 4400 there.

Like I wrote, don’t mix (DDR4 and DDR5) RAM, it won’t work right. It’s possible the BIOS has a safe guard that sets the RAM to 2000 MT/s if it sees mixed RAM.

Both the CPU and GPU are malfunctioning under load. I guess they could both be bad, but it’s probably best to improve things they share first. Like making sure stuff isn’t overheating and possibly replacing the PSU with a (much) high capacity unit (850 watts is often good to aim for).

According to the PSU tier list the MPG A650GF is probably a good unit, with some caveats, but it may just be too small for your system or your unit could be bad.

You can’t throw enthusiast grade RAM that needs XMP into a name brand machine.

Also don’t mix RAM if you want stability. You need to use modules that are exactly the same, down to the PCB layout and chip type if you want a supported 100% guaranteed stable configuration.

To get the best performance from this machine you need to get RAM with a JEDEC profile for the speed you want.

Also, in this datasheet it says the RAM will run at up to 4400 MT/s, very likely this is with only two single rank modules, maybe with two dual rank modules (the CPU supports this, but the machine may have thermal limitations). With 4 modules up to DDR5-4000 (4x SR) or DDR5-3600 (4x DR) is supported by the CPU. The machine may limit RAM speed below what the CPU supports because of thermal limitations in a tiny SFF housing. DDR5 gives off a lot of heat.

Looking at this article it sucks:

The 2TB Kingston NV2 is a dirt cheap NVMe SSD and not much more. Performance is fairly bad, the drive runs hot, and you cannot be certain of the hardware. It makes for a cheap secondary drive but is not ideal for laptops or for use as a primary drive.

Apparently the actual hardware sold under this name varies wildly, so that could easily explain the strange performance difference you’re experiencing.

We don’t recommend products here, but you need to get a drive with a DRAM cache and TLC flash for the best performance.

Samsung 990 Pro, Samsung 980 Pro, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G, WD Black SN850X, etc.

It might work, but nobody is guaranteeing anything.

Also, using a sucky QLC SSD as a system drive will likely negatively affect performance compared to the drive that’s in the machine now. The 670P is a pretty low end drive (though far from bottom of the barrel).

It’s normal for electronics to make some noise. The noise you’re hearing may or may not exceed the manufacturer’s specifications. If it annoys you too much you’ll either have to replace the device (warranty, buying a new one from a better brand, etc), or fix it.

Fixing it involves opening it up, etc. with your current knowledge of electronics this could literally get you killed, so you’ll either have to learn yourself or find someone knowledgeable if you want to fix it. Must likely there are some sub-par coils in it, or you just have to put a bunch more silastic material on some components.

Post the brands and models of the devices. Of course there are massive differences between different brands and models of SSDs. Some are utter garbage, like DRAM-less drives for example.

A bad board or bad RAM perhaps then.

are there any other ways to check the VRAM of the card?

How much more evidence do you need?

has anyone here encountered this issue before?

Yes, unfortunately stuff breaks all the time.

is it time to give up and RMA the card?

Yes. IMO you’ve spend far more time on this than you should have. It’s not your job to debug stuff you’ve paid a lot of money for.

If you’re talking about bypassing the speed restrictions (QoS) settings on a DOCSIS or fibre optics modem, then no, they cannot be bypassed and trying it or even providing instructions is probably illegal (theft of service) and we don’t do that stuff here, rule 8.

Don’t put money in this old stuff. Replace the whole thing and reuse the video card.

Problem is, 6th gen CPUs aren’t supported under 11, the max. you can upgrade to is a 7th gen, same thing, not supported. These CPUs are also very outdated and slow compared to modern CPUs, the best ones are about 1/3 the performance of a modern higher end CPU.

Also modern 16 Gbit based DDR4 RAM isn’t supported on 6th and 7th gen CPU. If you replace the RAM, make sure you get 8 Gbit based RAM (8GB 1Rx8, 16 GB 2Rx8).

SATA2, 3 and 4 are independent of the M.2 slots, so they should work. Make sure you’re actually using 2, 3 and 4, sometimes the numbering can be strange. On your board for instance SATA1 is on the lower right side of the SATA connector block.

 6 4 2
 5 3 1

With a SATA SSD in M2_2 SATA ports 6, 7 and 8 should also work.

What’s damaged on this machine? Do you actually know it still works?

Check if the machine has AppleCare+, if it does you can get all of this fixed for $250.

Make sure dynamic contrast is turned off in the monitor’s OSD. without knowing the exact type we can’t look up the user manual.

From examining one of the ViewFinity monitor’s manuals it looks like there’s mainly a “Picture Mode” setting that can be turned to “Dynamic Contrast”, turn that off.

Your mainboard doesn’t have a memory controller, it’s integrated into the CPU.

Testing the board with a different CPU, the CPU with a different board, testing both with different RAM, etc.