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James S.

James S.

Joined on 08/25/09

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 27
Most Favorable Review

Beautiful Board Design

MSI NF980-G65 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
MSI NF980-G65 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Well designed board, very dependable, as well as durable. This board with the latest Phenom II x 4 processor and watch it breeze through applications like a tornado through a office building.

Cons: The memory supported by this board and processor has to be 1.5 volts, all other memory above that has been unstable, so I would highly recommend staying away from high voltage ram. The North bridge like most boards gets a little warm, and if you have a GTX 200 / GTS 200 Series NVIDIA Video Card you wont be able to modify the North Bridge with a Heatsink / Fan which is a great idea for keeping it cool.

Overall Review: I came from a MSI Board into another SLI board after Asus let me down yet again. This one seemed to suit all my needs as well as allowing me to upgrade later if nessisary.

10/28/2009
Most Critical Review

Do not use for AMD

OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1333LV4GK
OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1333LV4GK

Pros: Nice color, nice memory when its overclocked properly, and somewhat nice heatsink plating.

Cons: Does not stablize on an AMD System

Overall Review: Made a little mistake when picking out memory during my NF980-G65 Board build with a Phenom II X4, unforunately the voltage required by the RAM is not liked very much by my processor, thus I had a omega ton of crash problems with the memory no matter what voltages OCZ told me to run. Nearly had a meltdown with one of them ((thanks for that OCZ)). My friend is currently using them in his I7 machine and they work flawlessly for him. So I guess Intel / AMD are becoming like Apple and PC now... great one more thing that I have to pay attention to while building a new computer. Watch out for configuring with Motherboards, Processors, Power Supplies, and NOW Memory. Next ATI will only work with AMD and Nvidia with Intel ((Prays that this will never happen)).

11/25/2009

Very nice case

Sunbeam Transformer IC-TR-US-BA-WOPSU Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Sunbeam Transformer IC-TR-US-BA-WOPSU Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Pros: The symmetry of this case is very nice it gives me plenty of room to work with, and the way its designed to stack hard drives makes for increased cooling with the addition of a 120mm in the front of the Case. I've owned a lot of other Full Tower ATX Cases but this one has worked out the best.

Cons: Wish there was an additional fan on the parrelle side of the case for direct motherboard cooling. Front is a little flimsy but nothing a little jury-rigging cant fix.

Overall Review: The Sunbeam RHK-EX-BA Rheobus-Extreme Fan Controller Panel works great and matches a lot of the lighting and features of this case. Plus allows for control of the four fans already on it well enough, plus an additional two fans, one which can be integrated at the front of the case just in front of the hard drive bay. and the other I use for my FSB Cooler. All and all with the right tools this case has kept my beast of a system cool, sturdy, and well dust free oddly enough.

Unstable Drive

OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 100GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTX100G
OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 100GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTX100G

Pros: Worked for about 3 months having flawless resulting running by OS - Windows Vista 64-bit, I wanted a Solid State Drive for my primary operating system as well as all my Windows assets and use my Raptor drives for games. Worked great for 3 months without any flaws in boots, operations, or problems.

Cons: after 3 months the hard drive failed, returned it to manufacturer and waited a week for a replacement, got back the replacement and the drive was dead on arrival, did it a third time and got back my original hard drive... how do I know cause I saw the knic that was made in the lower right corner of it when I first got it and put it into my computer. I figured it was referbished, but I still found some of my old files embedded on it and attempted to reload Windows, failed a week later.

Overall Review: I've given up on SSD for the moment, Im running a 80GB Raptor for my OS that I normally use for backups. Maybe its just the brand, but I dont have the money to experiment around between OCZ and Intel. And I personally have a grudge with Intel Processors.

Sick Twisted Perfection

Dead Space 2 PC Game
Dead Space 2 PC Game

Pros: Wow, its too bad this site doesnt let you use profanity cause this game is worth every word in the book before a scary sub-phrase. Much better then the original on the creepyness, scary, and sick, twisted, crud. Enemies are smarter, uglier, and creepier then before. They've added scenes full of additional creepyness to give it that extra special umph that will have you jumping in your seat. Be aware you may want to go to the bathroom before starting this game, and dont drink too many fluids during the gameplay.

Cons: Its a bit buggy, if you have a G13/G15 Gameboard you'll need to disable it, as well as remove any Joysticks, or controller devices that are present on your computer if you want to play it on the keyboard. For some reason this game does not lock the G13/G15 configurations on the built in joystick and will constantly shift the screen to the left in the game menu, and cause your camera to spin a 360 around your character making it impossible to move. Once you've disabled those pieces of hardware it works fine, just be aware minor sound cutout glitches as well as freakish texture bugs do exist especially during vacuum scenes.

Overall Review: Despite the bugs this game rocks, I would highly recommend it to anyone that loves scary games like Doom. This game blows all the scary movies, scary games, and scary books away like the vacuum of space.

Mass Effect has a twin

Dragon Age 2 PC Game
Dragon Age 2 PC Game

Pros: Dragon Age 2 is a pretty decent game, nothing like the original as far as interface / cool-off points (aka. Camp). It has a bit more comedy over the original dragon age: origins, and makes a come back with some of the original cast from both DA:O / DA:OR. Very nice graphics, and they have added voice over for the main character, although there seems to be a larger limitation on classification / race in this game over the previous.

Cons: Graphically / Sound you need to have fully updated to enjoy the game. Very High Graphics on the game works but the gameplay is slow and choppy, with some of the tesselations being inaccurate in some areas. Some graphical / texture glitches are seem and persist through the game in Very High Settings, but still looks beautiful on High Graphics (As long as you can support DirectX11). No 16XAAS Antialiasing support, but that is alright. Again the DirectX11 Tesselation feature works great on High but sucks on Low for some reason. Story in the game was good, but there was a little bit of bad acting in some areas, it seems a little redundant in other areas, and kinda reminded me of a soapbox opera in some areas.

Overall Review: Dragon Age 2 is definately a great game, Bioware put a lot of great features from Mass Effect including the character voice-over, the beautiful terrains, and the outstanding visual effects, but Dragon Age 2 in terms of sequel quality did not come out as great as the 2nd Mass Effect, but is definately something to play until the next four major titles: Homefront, Crysis 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Diablo 3 come to our local market.