Joined on 05/29/07
Goodbye nVidia Quadro, Hello ATI Eyefinity5
Pros: I have built over 300 computers from scratch. I am a quad-display guy and have been for the last 6 years. I have gone through every under/sad-performing Matrox card there is and most recently the always-buggy Quadro PNY NVS-450 that sorely tested my patience with 3 or 4 boots every morning just to get it to work properly. If your monitors are DVI/VGA then you will only be able to run two with the 2 included DVI adapters. The other 3 monitors will need from Newegg the Sapphire ACTIVE DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter (max 1920x1200) for $25 ea or a full ACTIVE DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter for $125 ea. I am using the $25 Sapphire units and I am in heaven. THIS card is pure joy to you quad-display geeks who have waited years for multi-display perfection to arrive... along with superfast GDDR5 memory. Win7 64 bit Media Center movies play without pause and clear as a bell even whilst you have 8 other windows open.
Cons: I was upset that I had to spend two hours researching passive versus active displayport adapters to figure out what additional hardware I had to buy to see all 4 of my monitors fire-up and work. There were no buyer feedback recommendations/critiques/hints on this page when I bought my card. Remember, you will only see all five monitors light up if all 5 are DisplayPort models. If all you have are DVI monitors then you need to buy three ACTIVE DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters for $125 ea. If your five monitors are combo DVI/VGA then you also need to buy 3 Sapphire ACTIVE DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters (max 1920x1200 each monitor) for $25 ea.
Overall Review: This ATI card is a very good deal and performs in my Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR system with 4gb memory very well. I have a 2.83 Q9550 cranked up to run at 3.11 ghz. I have set my ATI card to run locked at 100 mhz in the MB bios which now eliminates all flicker. I have also added a nice VIZO VIZO-PCL-201 70mm Blue LED Propeller Dual Fan Card next to my ATI card. I am running Catalyst 10.6 but not Hydravision software as yet. My CCC manual set fan speed on the ATI card is 65%. The CCC overdrive speed is 810 mhz for the GPU clock and 1200 mhz for the memory clock as established by the auto-tune set-up. Overall, if you take my advice the set-up of this card will be a snap. ATI has indeed become the graphics card choice of 2010 for me. I will buy more of these cards for sure.
Avoid the SP online registration and SP downloads at all costs
Pros: Thin, well-constructed, nice press-fit brass screw receivers, works good for $50. Seq Read 428MB/s, Seq Write 143MB/s, 4K Random Read 7MB/s, 4K Random Write 5.24MB/s. Used Acronis to clone this SSD off my existing WD hard drive with no problem.
Cons: To prevent pulling your hair out by the roots I suggest completely ignoring the SP online warranty registration process. SP's over-designed webpage for simply entering your birthday (to prove your ID later) will drive you totally nuts after 15 minutes of trying to get it to work, it like trying to play the whack-a-mole game online. And whatever you do completely forget about downloading SP's chintzy 2-time-use NTI cloning software. You will never get it to work on your machine, NTI will never accept your SP SSD serial number to unlock its over rated prima donna software. It is amazing to me that SP still in this modern day & age requires its customers to jump through their backside booty for a half-hour just to register a little toy $50 SSD... they're still living in 2007, not 2017... no one wants to go through such painful registration/downloading online anyone just to get my email address for their future spamming.
Overall Review: Ahhhh, it's OK. I got it cheap on sale so I am happy, but I wouldn't pay full retail if I needed another SSD especially after i just lost a half of my life trying to simply register the warranty and download their crummy software from the OEM SP site. And, their SP firmware updating software won't even recognize this drive... geez.
Works good for me
Pros: It is a used CPU but after wiping some old thermal paste off of it I installed the chip in my new build and it worked perfect. The performance increase over my old i7-14700F is significant especially on graphic rendering work.
Overall Review: I would recommend this purchase
Houston... we have ignition
Pros: Once or twice a year I scoop up leftover parts and build an inexpensive simple spare computer for funzies to goof around (or practice new apps) on or give to some less-deserving computer-challenged friend as a surprise present. This time I had a 16gb of memory stick, a NVME 500gb memory SSD and a I5 12400 CPU in the misc parts bucket. I wanted a cheap motherboard but one with the near-latest Intel chipset and this Huananzhi with 64gb Ram maximum capacity and current slick USB 3.2 hook-ups looked very good price-wise and features-wise. The motherboard sent to me was the version 2 of the B760M-D4 even though it appears you are buying the version 1 model here. Shipping to me only took 3 days which was remarkable. The motherboard is sturdy and very well built, it comes with a standard radio-interference shield to surround the inputs. I received the 5.27 bios dated June 3, 2024 and downloaded the new bios from the Huananzhi easily enough off the OEM website which runs in real English. The bios boots right up in English and is super easy to navigate. The manual can be downloaded from the OEM website in China but it is a bit light on details, the graphic illustrations in the manual are quite good/accurate though. I partitioned my hard drive into 2 partitions of 240gb each set up as Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.10 for a dual boot machine which went surprisingly very easy. In the bios boot priority I can set Windows 11 or Ubuntu as the default OS which is a hard feature I like. In terms of the OEM drivers for the Windows installation I used their Intel chipset (includes USB code) and the LAN drivers. It is impossible to download the OEMs audio and VGA drivers from their website due to timing-out issues in China. I wouldn't bother with their audio driver and for the VGA driver I would instead recommend using the superior Intel download called Intel ARC Control for Graphics (onboard). The Intel ARC graphics driver on this Huananzhi machine produces absolutely stunning high-quality graphics using just the onboard system and my CPU's built-in Intel 730 graphics chip. FWIW, without the Intel ARC graphics driver you will be stuck in 1280 x 1024 resolution. Microsoft Windows 11 will install the 10.0.26100.1150 HdAudio.sys July 3, 2024 audio driver which is excellent on this machine. On Ubuntu 24.10 this motherboard absolutely sings.
Cons: The current Bios download on the OEM website in China is version 5.27 (on CPUZ) which reads 1.7 in the boot-up bios specifications. My motherboard came with 5.27 installed so I am good to go.
Overall Review: BIOS update procedure: 1. Format USB disk with MS-DOS "bootable" using Rufus (format as FAT32). 2. After de-compacting the zipped BIOS rar file, put the entire EFI folder in the root directory of the USB disk. 3. Press F11 during startup of the computer to select the USB disk option starting with UEFI. Press Enter. 4. You will automatically enter SHELL mode. Automatic refresh to complete. 5. After the BIOS is flashed, restart and press DEL key to enter the BIOS, press F9 (load optimization settings), press Enter, and press F10 (to save & exit), press Enter and restart. If you are not going over 64gb of DDR4 RAM memory then this board is more than sufficient for anyone. This is definitely a solid high-quality motherboard and easily a suitable less-expensive competitor to Gigabyte, Asrock and MSI by far.
This is a very high quality mouse
Pros: I initially bought one mouse at this spectacular sales price in order to test it to see for myself if this was the "real deal".... within an hour after the test mouse arrived at my house and I tested it on my fastest computer I ordered 2 more before everyone finds out this is a steal at fifteen bucks. This mouse is a good size for a large man like me and the 5 additional weights give it some serious heft if you need it, although I removed all the weights in my mouse to suit my preference. This mouse is mechanically and ergonomically well-designed... the defect in it which caused AOC to discount it so heavily is the button (#8) positioned in the sacred thumb resting nook. Any function assigned to button #8 is going to be accidentally triggered/misfired sure as heck no matter how soft you try to hold your thumb in this nook/rest. Button #8 defaults to DPI switch, but fortunately the excellent AOC G-Tools App will allow the user to switch this button #8 off permanently which solves the design mistake perfectly since the DPI functions and sensitivity (1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, and Smart) can be adjusted in the AOC G-Tools App and realtime reported in the 5-stage LED located just above the thumb rest, you will never have to guess what DPI sensitivity you are in again. LED status bar 3 is nicely lit on my mouse and physically tells me that my mouse is set to 6400 dpi. I have turned off buttons 6, 7, and 8 using the AOC App. The precision factor on this mouse is very good and easily beats any mouse I have owned over the last 25 years. Highlighting text for copying on screen (even the smallest text) works perfect and I am extremely happy with this mouse. And, the very nice high-quality fabric-covered USB cable is long just the way I like 'em.
Cons: After turning off button #8 I have no complaints with this mouse.
Overall Review: This mouse is Top Notch and unbeatable at this sale price... actually it is unbeatable at the full retail price also.
Ergometrics are poor. Too small for medium/large hands
Pros: I definitely like the USB charging cable and being able to choose between 2.4mhz & Bluetooth wireless. The mouse seems sturdy and capable. I bought 2 of these mice to try them out with hopes of buying 5 or 6 more at this low price, however I am scrapping that plan now.
Cons: This design of this mouse is uncomfortable and contorted for medium/large-handed people. The right and left buttons seem truncated and I can not comfortably use the sensitive "tips" of my fingers to activate the primary buttons which feels quite unnatural. The wheel is sunk so low into the body of the mouse that you have to deliberately double and triple roll it to get it to produce any result on the screen. The back/forward buttons on the side are so pronounced/prominent and unprotected that your thumb will be continually accidentally hitting them and sending your typewritten text on a webpage back one webpage forever losing all the typing you performed/entered... there is no place to rest your thumb safely without constantly impinging on the back/forward buttons accidentally. If you have medium or large size hands then this mouse will drive you absolutely mad within 5 minutes.
Overall Review: I would not recommend this mouse to anyone.
I wish all the sellers were this good
The first item in my last order with these guys was a USB cable which arrived in 3 days using free overseas mail service. Seller is quite "talky" and gives me updates to my email box on delivery changes/status for the 2nd item in my order.
I will give a few out to friends. Great stocking stuffers
Excellent quality. I placed 2 orders of 3 keyboards each.
Very good RAM. We probably buy more.
Ordered 12 sticks, they all worked fine, very stable.