cover
Ryan U.

Ryan U.

Joined on 10/03/11

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 3
Most Favorable Review

Great for gaming.

NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 Mbps Nano Adapter Kit (XAVB2101)
NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 Mbps Nano Adapter Kit (XAVB2101)

Pros: This is a great solution for those who want the fastest most solid connection, when direct wired connection is not possible or is inconvenient. If you don't have an easy way to route ethernet through your walls and you can't move your computer closer to your router, then go with this. Better than wireless in terms of raw speed and MUCH better than wireless for latency stability in gaming. Only 59.99 when I bought it.

Cons: The normal price is over twice what I paid, while this is a great product I cannot say that I would have bought it had it been $130. Netgear is generally pretty good but they might have been overestimating themselves on this item when initially priced.

Overall Review: I was using a Netgear N600 wireless router + adapter to connect before. The router is in a room almost directly above me but I was having all kinds of latency spikes and speed losses even though my connectivity was displaying as 4/5 bars. Until switching to this powerline adapter I had to put competitive gaming on hold.

Best Performance to Price Ratio

ZOTAC ZT-60901-10M G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
ZOTAC ZT-60901-10M G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Pros: My last GPU was the XFX 9800GT and this thing blows that out of the water. Awesome value, low temps, looks sick, has a slot for every cable you've got. I'm able to play Skyrim, Borderlands 2, SWTOR, GW2, SimCity and Far Cry 3 all on max settings with no hiccups and I'm not even using a fancy i7 like most gamers (Phenom II x 4 965BE, not yet OC'd). Some games like SC2: HOTS can get sluggish if I change the settings from high/ultra to extreme, but there is basically no visual difference so it's pointless to do (Blizzard likes to do that with their games just because they can).

Cons: I'm not sure why anyone would but the AMP! version of this card from Zotac, you can overclock it yourself to do the same thing for free using Zotac's very own firestorm tool, so if you're trying to decide between the two save yourself the $10 and get this one.

Overall Review: I was initially planning to go with the 660Ti because it's so great and has good overclocking potential but when I noticed I could get the GTX 660 for 100 bucks less and have it look just as awesome in my cougar challenger case (zotac's entire 600 series looks basically identical on the outside), I couldn't pass it up. I'll wait until the 760 comes out probably and then pick up a second of these cards for SLI when the price drops a little more. I don't think it will bottleneck my Phenom because by then I'll have even better cooling in my case and CPU for a massive processor overclock.

Awesome in conjunction w/ Arctic Silver 5!!

Arctic Silver Arcticlean Thermal material Remover & Surface Purifier ACN-60ML (2-PC-SET)
Arctic Silver Arcticlean Thermal material Remover & Surface Purifier ACN-60ML (2-PC-SET)

Pros: Cheap, quality product, easy to use.

Cons: Its enough for your average PC builder but may run out quickly for someone whose always building PCs. Not sure if they sell it for cheaper in larger bottles somewhere or not.

Overall Review: I've had my PC for 4-5 years, storebought and have upgraded the ram and GPU over the years. My computer had been locking up during games lately and I absolutely couldn't figure out why until I started checking my CPU heat which was getting up into the low to mid 70s in celsius. I bought this stuff and a small tube of Arctic Silver 5, used it and my temps dropped from 70-75C under load to 45-50C under load. AMAZING stuff. I will say that I did clean some dust out of my heatsink while I was doing this and since my computer was so old it looked like some of the stock thermal grease had maybe burnt off.