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William B.

William B.

Joined on 05/03/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 13
Most Favorable Review

Not Bad

AZiO E300S-U31 Plastic 3.5" SATA USB 2.0 External Enclosure
AZiO E300S-U31 Plastic 3.5" SATA USB 2.0 External Enclosure

Pros: Good price, no problems, lots of ventilation holes.

Cons: Entire thing is plastic (as specified) so it doesn't provide much cooler which is good than that it does have lots of ventilation holes. There's about an inch of dead space at the front. Could have been made a little shorter by removing that.

Overall Review: I wasn't expecting much cooling from this thing which is why I paired it with a WD GP 500GB as they are probably the lowest power 3.5" drives out there. Even so, they get a little warm but nothing to get worried about. I don't know if I would trust it with a higher performance and hotter drive. Especially in hot environments.

Most Critical Review

It worked

ZALMAN ZM-RC1000 BL Aluminum / ABS / Steel Fans
ZALMAN ZM-RC1000 BL Aluminum / ABS / Steel Fans

Pros: Helped keep the FB DIMMs cool on our server which didn't have any good, direct airflow over the memory.

Cons: Not quiet.

Overall Review: Everyone's level of quiet is different. For me, these fans were anything but quiet. They spun slow enough that there wasn't much wind noise. But they had a terrible amount of clicking and bearing noise. I've heard people complain about similar things with Zalman fans before. I could have just got a bad sample. Maybe damaged in shipping at some point. Good news is that it's in a rack-mount server with a couple other servers nearby so the noise really isn't an issue. But I would never use this on a desktop PC that I would be sitting near. But then again, memory cooling really isn't necessary unless you're really pushing some high-voltages. Or if you have a server that uses fully buffered memory.

Genuine

LENOVO - OPEN SOURCE 0B47455 65W SLIM AC ADAPTER
LENOVO - OPEN SOURCE 0B47455 65W SLIM AC ADAPTER

Pros: Genuine Lenovo adapter. Slim and portable

Cons: None yet

Overall Review: The pictures need to be updated for this item. Only one shows the actual adapter. The two lower quality pictures are of a different model. I made a guess since the title exactly matches Lenovo's website title for this adapter. And the price isn't cheap like many 3rd party ones are. The cheaper ones might work fine. I've used plenty of 3rd party power adapters over the years that have been fine. But if you want a genuine one, this is it.

Works well

Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-1B | 2.5" to 3.5" Bay SATA HDD & SSD Converter / Mounting Kit /Bracket | EZConvert
Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-1B | 2.5" to 3.5" Bay SATA HDD & SSD Converter / Mounting Kit /Bracket | EZConvert

Pros: Works with our SuperMicro hot-swap caddies.

Cons: As others have noted, it can be a bit touchy on making a good connection with the drive. In the two I got, I had to make two attempts to get the drives in before they showed up. They haven't had any issues since.

Overall Review: You definitely need to check the connection after putting your drive in to make sure you have a secure connection before putting it into your system. Tool-less designs can be nice but only if they work well. I would rather take the time to manually screw something in and know it'll hold then have to deal with a tool-less design that might not hold. If I need another one of these in the future, I will pick up something like N82E16817998126 which is simple and manual but looks like it won't have any of these issues. Unlike other cheap adapters, this one does use the correct hold mounting and threading. So it works in hot-swap server racks and such.

Major flaws

AMS DS-111SSBK 2.5" SATA Removable Rack
AMS DS-111SSBK 2.5" SATA Removable Rack

Pros: Seems solid. Decent price.

Cons: The mounting hole pattern does not match normal desktop drives. The rear holes line up but the middle and front holes are offset. Who measured this? Makes it very difficult to use in places where you need a desktop drive but want to use a latop/SSD drive. Also, the mounting holes are for M3 screws that laptop drives use, not 6-32 that desktop drives use. So you can't use your normal hard drives screws. Especially bad for rack-mounting where the drive sleds may use custom or hard to find screws.

One good, one bad

BYTECC DVI-D10 Male to Male DVI-D Dual-Link Digital Cable w/Ferrites
BYTECC DVI-D10 Male to Male DVI-D Dual-Link Digital Cable w/Ferrites

Pros: Long, reasonably priced cables. Working fine. (now)

Cons: Ordered two, one was DVI-D and one was DVI-I. Not a big deal on the video card side which has DVI-I connectors. But the monitor has DVI-D and so the extra pins had no where to go. Had to break them off with a small screwdriver. Now it's working fine. Not a big deal but a little odd.