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James R.

James R.

Joined on 10/27/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Worth it!

Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT256M4SSD1
Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT256M4SSD1

Pros: Fast & reliable, what else do you need? Will make any computer with mechanical storage instantly faster and it will cut your boot times at least in half.

Cons: Not as fast sequentially as some of the newest SSDs but you will never tell in day to day performance.

Overall Review: Put this in my girlfriends Toshiba laptop, decided on the 7mm version in case she upgrades to a thinner laptop in the future. Also have a 128GB M4 as the boot drive in my desktop and will never bother with mechanical storage again. If you got this for a laptop and need more storage just get a optical bay caddy and replace your optical drive.

12/16/2012

An excellent product

Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Data Transfer Kit CT256M4SSD1CCA
Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC 7mm Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Data Transfer Kit CT256M4SSD1CCA

Pros: Great real world performance and ultra reliable. Easily one of the best SSDs on the market.

Cons: Not as fast sequentially as some of the newer products even though it won't be noticed in day to day desktop performance.

Overall Review: Got one of these for my girlfriend's laptop, decided on the 7mm version in case she gets a newer (ie thinner) laptop in the near future. Kicks the snot out of any mechanical laptop drive. If you need more storage just take your old drive and put it into a caddy and replace the optical drive with it. Then you have storage and speed. Also have a 128GB M4 as the boot drive in my desktop, would never bother with a mechanical hard drive ever again.

12/16/2012

Fantastic Card

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 670 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card GV-N670OC-2GD
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 670 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card GV-N670OC-2GD

Pros: Windforce Cooler, GTX 680 PCB, Cool, Quiet, Good Overclock out of the box.

Cons: Length, had to mod my drive cage to make room for the fan shroud as it extends past the PCB. Widened the notch I had already cut for the 8800GTXs PCB I had many years ago though :-P

Overall Review: Matches well with my i5-2500K @ 4.8GHz. Didn't add any extra noise to my PC, still only hear the slight whir of my case fans. Haven't tried OCing further yet but it crushes everything I've tried with it so far @ 1920x1200. Runs very cool under load.

Not a bad case

Cooler Master Sileo 500 RC-500-KKR3-GP Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Body ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply
Cooler Master Sileo 500 RC-500-KKR3-GP Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Body ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

Pros: Well built, looks nice, quiet, tool-free design works pretty well and makes installation easy, roomy.

Cons: Included PSU is decent but nothing to write home about. Included fans are weak but practically silent. No cable management options, hard drive cage blocks most of the intake fan's flow.

Overall Review: If building a quiet gaming machine you'll want to replace the fans and PSU that come with this case, otherwise they are fine for a budget/business/internet/HTPC/home server box. Trying to do a clean wiring job took me far too long but it turned out nicely in the end with some thought put into it. Mounting everything was a breeze, would have taken me 5 minutes to do a build inside this case if I didn't care about clean wiring. Also replaced the fans with the Aerocool sharks, which blow about 3 times as much air by feel and are still very quiet. All I can hear is the moving air from the intake/exhaust sharks. CPU fan and HD6950 IceQ Turbo X cannot be heard. Can faintly hear the 2x Spinpoint F3s if I pay attention for it.

Good little board for not so much $

BIOSTAR H61ML LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
BIOSTAR H61ML LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Runs stable and has a decent feature set for the money. Running 4GB G.skill value ram and core i3-2100 w/ graphics as a business machine.

Cons: none so far after 2 months.

Overall Review: Solid little board for the price, i3-2100 integrated graphics work perfectly through both the VGA and DVI on it. Great buy for a non-gaming machine.

Great product, it's a HIS!

HIS IceQ X Turbo Radeon HD 6950 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity H695QNT1G2M
HIS IceQ X Turbo Radeon HD 6950 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity H695QNT1G2M

Pros: Stable, pretty, quiet, overclocked, runs within acceptable temp range.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Heats up to about 85C under the furmark burn-in and the temp stays consistent, 77C-80C while benchmarking with 3DMark vantage and 3DMark11. Normal gaming temps it is around 75C as the benchmarks and burn-ins are meant to specifically stress the cards to their worst case scenario limits. I live in a tropical climate and don't run A/C to ambient temps are about 90F right now.