I had a buddy run one of those on a 90s 5200 and it held for exactly one ride before the steerer tube said nah. That was a long walk back to the car with a broken top tube. In my experience those kits work great until they don't, and then you're replacing a frame. Your mileage may vary but I'd trust a rusty quill stem over a threadless conversion any day.

...and honestly I think half the battle with those DSC panels is just trusting the little stuff you normally overlook. Ive had a few jobs where the magnet gap was like half an inch and the contact would work fine for weeks then randomly throw a trouble. Once I shimmed it down to a quarter inch or less it was solid. Another thing I learned the hard way is if the wire run is too long you can get voltage drop on the zone and the magnet alignment stops mattering altogether. For indoor installs I usually keep the gap real tight like 3/16ths of an inch and never have issues. The old timers might not explain it the best but theyve been doing this long enough to know what breaks.

You said "chip got way too hot," but did you actually check the temperature at any point with a laser thermometer or something? Hair dryers just blast hot air all over, they don't have any way to control the heat evenly, so you probably cooked the board way past what the solder could handle. I mean, those old cards were built like tanks, but they still have a limit on temp before the traces start lifting. Did you even take the cooler off and check if the thermal paste was still good, or was this a full send no prep situation? Honestly, five minutes with a hair dryer sounds like you were trying to bake a pizza more than fix a GPU.

Oh man, the cold ferment is a total game changer for sure. I found that even just pushing it to 24 hours gives way more of that sour tang and the bubbles get way bigger in the crumb. Once you taste that difference it's impossible to go back to a same day bake.

No way, the NYT straight up called it shallow? I always thought that book was sacred, didn't realize it had to claw its way up like that.