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Erik Z.

Erik Z.

Joined on 03/31/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 22
Most Favorable Review

Big Bang for the Buck - A Great Air Cooling Solution

ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

Pros: Top-notch efficiency. It whisks the heat away from your CPU effortlessly, and the attached fan moves a lot of air. It also includes a manual fan controller, so you can turn down the fan speed if you find it to be more noisy than necessary. I have it on my E6600 overclocked to 3.2GHz (800MHz gain) with AC MX-1 compound, and it idles at near room temp, and only gets to 51 C on a full load.

Cons: It's big... very big. Make sure you have a big case to hold it, and also be sure there are no oversized heatsinks already on your motherboard northbridge that may interfere with it. If you can't hold a 120mm fan at least half an inch off your CPU, then you might not have enough room to fit it. It also has a Blue LED light on the fan... I don't like blue... I wanted red.

Overall Review: It's pretty heavy. Make sure you use the included support behind the motherboard when mounting, so you won't risk putting too much pressure on the mobo. It tends to get dusty, and is difficult to clean due to the shape (you have to blow the dust out from behind the cooler). The included Zalman thermal grease is ok, but doesn't do the cooler justice - I recommend picking up a tube of something better, such as AC MX-2 compound, to keep the temp down.

11/24/2007
Most Critical Review

What's with all these 3 and 4-star "doesn't work, but at least it's free" reviews?

NVIDIA Gift PC Game Assassin's Creed 3
NVIDIA Gift PC Game Assassin's Creed 3

Pros: Free (unless the game was a selling point for the video card which you used to justify the cost, and if so, tough luck.)

Cons: You get what you pay for (or less, if you consider your time valuable.)

Overall Review: It's a slip of paper with a lengthy redeem code printed on it. The redeem code is not, in fact, a game license key, but rather a code that starts you on a headache-inducing but ultimately fruitless wild goose chase to obtain your game. Once you type in the URL of the page to redeem the code, and the code itself, (and several irritating captchas, and personal info), it spits out a coupon code and instructs you to use the coupon code to redeem your game from Ubisoft's store by first adding the game to your cart, then checking out with the coupon code. When you go to Ubisoft's store, probably the first thing you'll notice is it's broken. Nothing works here. Some people reported being able to input the coupon code and then being told it's invalid, but I couldn't even get that far. I tried it in 3 different browsers, and every time I add the game to my cart, the cart comes up empty. I even tried the workaround another reviewer provided here, which was to add the game AND the optional paid DLC "season pass" to the cart, then remove the DLC at checkout, but the cart STILL comes up empty. After wasting almost an hour of my time, I've given up. The video card is still worth the money, and I wasn't really expecting this to work anyway knowing Ubisoft. I guess I was right. If you take a lesson from this: Don't buy Ubisoft titles, and never trust Ubisoft not to cheat you out of even free stuff.

11/29/2012

Ecellent product design, poor execution

K1S - 1080p Dual Car Dash Camera
K1S - 1080p Dual Car Dash Camera

Pros: A very well thought out product with a great feature set. Mount the cameras right side up or upside down, view front back or both on the LCD, 'oh sh!t' button to save the current clip, constant closed loop recording, small discrete cameras.

Cons: Arrived defective. Every time I toggled on or off any electronics on the vehicle, the device crashed. At first I thought it was the V Reg MOSFET being inadequate to provide clean power, so I replaced the power converter unit with an upgraded voltage stabilizer. This unfortunately voided the warranty and didn't fix the issue. After more extensive testing, I discovered the rear camera USB port on the DVR unit was a tad loose, and if it wasn't perfectly aligned when a chassis power fluctuation occurred, the device crashed. I think this may have been due to inductive power pulses on the camera's USB line due to its close proximity to other wiring, but it doesn't explain why it only happened when the plug wasn't in perfect unless the PCB itself was defective in some way. I'm ordering a second one from another retailer that can get it here faster now, and hoping the replacement doesn't have that issue.

Overall Review: I ordered the product without the GPS unit, yet I received the GPS module with it anyway. I really hope a v2 of this unit will come waterproof for external mounting. I'm using mine on a motorcycle so I had to improvise weatherproof housings for it. I know better than to expect construction quality to improve however. These things are made cheap to poor tolerances. It doesn't take much to break them.

12/20/2015

Great Deal, Good Card, OK Design.

PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card VCGGTX660TXPB-C
PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card VCGGTX660TXPB-C

Pros: Card works well, runs quiet, and so far not too hot. It was a great deal for the price, and is a good upgrade from my old GTX260-C216.

Cons: Lightweight, feels cheap, flexes easily. You can tell they saved you a lot of cost by cutting corners on materials and construction.

Overall Review: If it works, it works. I just hope it lasts, since it didn't strike me as overly durable. If you're concerned about construction quality or want to do a lot of overclocking on it, I recommend seeking another card, or going full aftermarket on brackets and cooling. I will update this review later if my impressions of the card change after breaking it in.

11/29/2012

Killed my motherboard.

CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10

Pros: Looks nice.

Cons: heat spreaders just for show, don't seem to be made out of quality materials. When I put these in my machine, it wouldn't POST. One of the modules shorted, and the short fried my memory controller. Now it won't post with my old RAM in that channel either. Smells like ozone.

Overall Review: I went to Corsair directly with this problem because of the Collateral damages, and I'm holding out further judgment until I hear back. Hopefully they're willing to work with me to resolve this, and I'll re-review then.

What happened to standardization?

Rosewill RK-100 - Standard Keyboard - Black, 107 Normal Keys, USB
Rosewill RK-100 - Standard Keyboard - Black, 107 Normal Keys, USB

Pros: Cheap, Works, has number pad, fast shipping as always.

Cons: non-standard keyboard layout is aggravating to use. It uses the big L-shaped "return" key design, which offsets the backslash key, and you'll end up hitting return when you want to hit backslash. It's also a design flaw such that it's difficult to press the return key properly due to the way it's mounted in that shape, and it will sometimes stick in the down stroke. ALSO, they shifted the feature keys such as DELETE and everything down, to accommodate Power, Wake and Sleep keys (which no one will ever use as much as delete) in the top row, adding to frustration.

Overall Review: NewEgg could have made a better keyboard and even saved a little money in the process just by following widely-accepted convention, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel for some gimmicky features. A lot of users won't be bothered by this, but if you're a power user like me, who knows where the backslash and delete keys should be without looking at them, stay away.