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Roland W.

Roland W.

Joined on 01/11/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 19
Most Favorable Review

Massive Overclock, nice a quiet and cool

MSI GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card N470GTX Twin Frozr II
MSI GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card N470GTX Twin Frozr II

Pros: Overclocks from base of 607 to 775Mhz. 800 failed, and I didn't bother finding anything between, because the difference in performance from 750 to 775 seems very limited - it's memory speed bottlenecked. I was able to increase memory speed from base of 1674 to 1800. This was with an overclocked voltage, up from 987mv to 1050mv. Temperature even under extreme loading of CPU, Memory, and using MSI's Kombustor to run the GPU at 99% only went to 77C, with the fan only reaching 60% speed. The card is VERY quiet under normal use. Best overclocking video card I've ever tried. Best overclocking software for video cards I've seen, MSI's Afterburner, and test tool Kombustor are awesome. Overclocking increased my Furmark average from 99 frames/sec to 121 frames/sec, this is 1920*1080 resolution with no anti-alising.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: You'll need a high end power supply, this card takes two 6-pin plugs, and along with my Core i7-980x overclocked to 4.3Ghz, my PC draws a peak of 650watts, actual power loading (without the monitor). I'm using a Corsair 850W single rail PSU and it works very well in this combination.

Most Critical Review

Doesn't live up to specs - no where close!

OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 115GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G
OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 115GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G

Pros: Assuming I ultimately get my $30 rebate, I got a decent price of $170 for this. For overall system performance it provides a big benefit versus a HDD. Windows 7 boot time is significantly improved versus HDD. Excluding the 30 seconds for my BIOS and RAID array loading time my OS boot and media center load time has halved vs HDD time. My Windows 7 & auto load of Media Center takes 55 seconds versus 85 seconds previously on HDD. Notably, the BIOS and RAID array takes 30 of this.

Cons: It fails to live up to specs by a wide margin. As measured by CDM, I get 211MB/s sequential read, and only 85MB/s sequential write. I have several Intel SSD's, and although the specs on the Intel SSDs are lower than this OCZ drive, the actual performance is faster. Generally I've found the Intel SSD's to slightly exceed their specs, this drive on the other hand isn't anywhere close, not even half. I've had the drive six weeks now, and suffered one major failure requiring a complete OS rebuild. I don't know for sure if it was the OCZ drive at fault, but I'm highly suspicious of it being the cause. As a comparison, I've never had any OS corruption or failures on the Intel SSDs. Final point: for copying large media files, given the 85MB/s write speed it's actually quicker for me to copy media files to the HDD in the same system, which can write at 144MB/s - over my GbE network I can copy at 105MB/s to the HDD (limited by the network) I'm limited to 85MB/s on the OCZ SSD.

Overall Review: Ignore the specs, they are disappointingly different from actual results. Concerned about reliability.

Rocks with Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon

Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini-ITX Computer Case with Mesh Front Panel and Water Cooling Support
Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini-ITX Computer Case with Mesh Front Panel and Water Cooling Support

Pros: Great chassis for a fully equipped Mini ITX build. I put in an AsRock Z97 board Z97E-ITX/ac, along with an Intel Devil's Canyon Core i7 4790K. Intel 530 240GB SSD, Asus full size DVD burner/reader. Intel closed-loop CPU water cooler from Aztec, and a MSI double wide nVidia full power graphics card, along with a RX-535AP modular PSU from RAIDMAX. It all works great, and there's space inside for additional HDD's or SSD's if you needed more.

Cons: Power and reset button are a little odd. They share the same elongated plastic switch - with two different mechanical switches behind the single plastic button, so pressing one end of the button is power, the other end is reset. It works fine and they are labeled, but if you're trying to press the button without looking at the label, i.e. tucked under a table, it's not intuitive.

Overall Review: Great chassis, my second Cooler Master case.

Nice monitor, useless DP port

Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" Full HD 1920 x 1200 60Hz 8ms DisplayPort VGA DVI-D 4xUSB 2.0 Pivot Swivel Height Adjustable LED Backlit IPS Widescreen LCD Monitor
Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" Full HD 1920 x 1200 60Hz 8ms DisplayPort VGA DVI-D 4xUSB 2.0 Pivot Swivel Height Adjustable LED Backlit IPS Widescreen LCD Monitor

Pros: Beautiful monitor, zero dead or bright pixels. Good menu control. Great image on DVI and even VGA. Fairly lightweight (less than my other 24" monitors) and also thinner too, also thinner bezel than other 24's I have.

Cons: The display port is much less value than I expected. Most digital ports (e.g. DVI and HDMI) can be connected to from any other digital PC output - e.g. if your PC has DVI, HDMI, or DP you can simply get a cable converter and connect it to the DVI or HDMI port on the monitor. However, not DP. You can connect a PC with a DP socket to any monitor socket. However, not the other way around! The DP socket on the monitor DOES NOT work with a DVI based graphics card. So beware. The port is effectively useless unless you have Displayport on your PC. To be fair and complete, I haven't tested HDMI to DP as I don't have that cable, it's just DVI (on the PC) to DP on the Monitor that I've tested and doesn't work. I also called Dell before buying the cable, and they were completely uncertain, ultimately making a guess and telling me it would work, although it doesn't.

Overall Review: Also lacks sound. I knew this coming in, but am already missing it for my kids computer. (I have both mine for multi monitor computing, and their computer attached for them)

Not as quiet as expected

XIGMATEK AOS (Aeronautical Oil System Bearing) XAF-F1452 140mm Case Fan Ultra Quiet Copper Bushing Axis Aeronautical Oil System Bearing
XIGMATEK AOS (Aeronautical Oil System Bearing) XAF-F1452 140mm Case Fan Ultra Quiet Copper Bushing Axis Aeronautical Oil System Bearing

Pros: Large, stylish, fairly quiet

Cons: At $25 I had expected more. Although the paper specs indicate that it should push huge volumes of air, I think it may only do so if totally unrestricted. Once it's put behind a chassis grille the static pressure is low, and the air flow much less than expected. It is also noiser than I had hoped for too.

Overall Review: Good product, but probably not very good value at $25 each.

Nice and quiet

ZALMAN ZM600-HP 600W Continuous @ 45°C ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Modular Active PFC Modular LED Heatpipe-Cooled SLI Power Supply
ZALMAN ZM600-HP 600W Continuous @ 45°C ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Modular Active PFC Modular LED Heatpipe-Cooled SLI Power Supply

Pros: Worked great for about 4 years. Quiet. Large fan.

Cons: After 4 years it became unreliable, sometimes causing boot problems. I wasn't sure whether to suspect the motherboard, CPU (which was overclocked) or the PSU. However, a month shy of 5 years it died, and it's definately the PSU at fault.

12/23/2011