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CHEBAR C.

CHEBAR C.

Joined on 07/23/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 64
Most Favorable Review

Silent performance, compatibility. Tall!

Asus GT640-DCSL-2GD3 GeForce GT 640 Graphic Card - 1 GPUs - 901 MHz Core - 2 GB GDDR3 SDRAM - PCI-Express 3.0 x16
Asus GT640-DCSL-2GD3 GeForce GT 640 Graphic Card - 1 GPUs - 901 MHz Core - 2 GB GDDR3 SDRAM - PCI-Express 3.0 x16

Pros: Silent. Great performance on par with much noisier cards. Plus NVidia famous interoperability and long term support for their hardware.

Cons: Tall heat pipes and large heat sink take up a lot of space. Needs to get some airflow around it if using for serious gaming.

Overall Review: Went with NVidia to get good Linux support+performance. Went with NewEgg because, well, you know.

12/18/2013
Most Critical Review

Updated review

StarTech HSB320SATBK 3 Drive 3.5in Trayless Hot Swap SATA Mobile Rack Backplane
StarTech HSB320SATBK 3 Drive 3.5in Trayless Hot Swap SATA Mobile Rack Backplane

Pros: Hot-swap works. Flexible indicator light hookup. Easy to install. Drives seem secure yet easy to pull.

Cons: Two 40mm x 10mm cooling fans are mounted to the back of each enclosure. They were a little noisy from day one. I have two of these enclosures, and after 6 months of continuous usage, 1 fan on each enclosure started getting really noisy (clattering, grinding). I'm replacing all 4 fans with Scythe fans.

Overall Review: I reviewed this before, adding to my other review. Adding a star for hot-swap working even though the fans blow (noisily).

Convenient and effective water cooling, stupid-looking light up logo

CORSAIR Hydro Series H105 Extreme Performance 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler, CW-9060016-WW
CORSAIR Hydro Series H105 Extreme Performance 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler, CW-9060016-WW

Pros: + Relatively easy to install + Pump and fans are pretty quiet, much quieter than equivalent performance air cooler + Adequate pre-installed thermal paste

Cons: - Awful ugly light-up CORSAIR logo needs to be covered up or modded - Logo/text looks even worse if you mount the block "sideways" or "upside down"

Overall Review: Come on, CORSAIR, the light up text on your logo looks horrible. Couldn't you just give me a sticker instead? It's sort of hard to tell if you are torquing down the thumbscrews equally, or to the correct tightness, have to do it by feel. Be patient and careful when tightening.

FAST

SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P512BW
SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P512BW

Pros: + Meets its rated specifications, what more can I say?

Cons: - Expensive (but pretty great)

Overall Review: Running a pair of these in Intel Z170 chipset RAID0 as boot drive. Out of this world performance.

Very nice, quiet power supply

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850W SLI/CrossFire Ready ATX 12V V2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified 7 Year Warranty Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply Haswell Ready PS-TPG-850FPCPUS-P
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850W SLI/CrossFire Ready ATX 12V V2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified 7 Year Warranty Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply Haswell Ready PS-TPG-850FPCPUS-P

Pros: + 80 PLUS PLATINUM - may I suggest you *only* buy power supplies with this rating + Fully modular, plenty of cables included and the standard little bag to keep them in + Cool and quiet

Cons: - Would be nice if they included a couple of shorter cables and/or cables with fewer connectors, but I guess if I care that much I can hack up the cables myself since plenty are included.

Overall Review: Not shown in the pictures, but there are little rubber molded thingies that you stick on the curved corners, so there won't be a gap between the power supply and the case. It's weird, but works fine. Maybe also provides some vibration dampening?

Well-designed motherboard for a nice fast PC

ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: + good quality documentation and online support resources from ASRock + useful diagnostic code display and power/reset/cmos buttons + modern fancy BIOS GUI, self-flash from Internet, A/B switch + USB 3.1 front panel included + three M.2 sockets, NVMe bootable etc! (note restrictions on SATA Express ports shared with M.2 and front panel USB 3.1)

Cons: - Don't like the RAM slots with one-sided clip. Seems flimsy. RAM didn't seat correctly on first try! - Few quirks in the BIOS like NVMe SSDs in M.2 slots show as "not detected" but they work fine - I didn't really care for the color scheme, but it doesn't look BAD or anything

Overall Review: Installed two Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSDs in chipset RAID0. Read and write speeds over 3000 MB/s, hitting the limits of the Z170 chipset.