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Joel B.

Joel B.

Joined on 01/09/04

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Product Reviews
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product reviews
  • 22
Most Favorable Review

Theje's 5742G review

Acer Laptop Aspire Intel Core i5-480M 4GB Memory 500GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M w/ NVIDIA Optimus 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit AS5742G-6600
Acer Laptop Aspire Intel Core i5-480M 4GB Memory 500GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M w/ NVIDIA Optimus 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit AS5742G-6600

Pros: -Excellent system performance, great specs for the price. -Capable gaming performance, can play the latest games fluently with medium detail settings. -BIOS gets out of the way fast so that Windows can start its boot instantly. -Good battery life with Nvidia's Optimus technology. -Light weight for its class and runs cool under normal internet/work use. -Screen tilts back very far. -No glossy textures, keeping it clean takes little to no effort. -Compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision through an external monitor. -Keyboard recognizes all strokes easily, has a 10-key numpad.

Cons: -Cheap plastic case, flexes easily under pressure. -Only has one speaker, no right channel audio through built-in speaker system (easily remedied with external speakers or headphones). -You can feel the speed impact of the 5400 RPM hard drive during normal operation. -Unibutton on the touchpad has a large deadcenter and will take some getting used to. -Keyboard layout has some unique spacing and will take some getting used to (ie smaller tilde and left ctrl keys). -No slot for an internal 3G or 4G modem. -Limited connectivity with only 3 USB ports, no Firewire, eSATA or ExpressCard.

Overall Review: Gameplay stutters frequently in the first minute or so of a new map on Black Ops, even StarCraft 2. Could easily be a driver issue, or perhaps the fault of the slow hard drive. The reason for the 5-egg rating is the price. For productivity and games this is really all you need, nothing more. Because it runs cool, reliability is the name of the game.

Most Critical Review

Not enough for anti-ghosting

BenQ RL2455HM Black-Red 24" TN 1ms (GTG) Gaming Monitor, 250 cd/m2 DCR 12,000,000:1 (1,000:1), 2 Speakers, Black eQualizer, HDMI DVI-DL D-Sub
BenQ RL2455HM Black-Red 24" TN 1ms (GTG) Gaming Monitor, 250 cd/m2 DCR 12,000,000:1 (1,000:1), 2 Speakers, Black eQualizer, HDMI DVI-DL D-Sub

Pros: -Very nice built-in UI -Tilts good -Can customize just about everything -Light weight -Good color, higher-than-average motion

Cons: -Motion doesn't add up to advertised specs -Picture quality betrays the price tag

Overall Review: I bought this monitor thinking it would look closer to an old CRT monitor. Granted I wasn't expecting a miracle, but for as much as I spent I wasn't expecting to be this disappointed. After reading the reviews I thought that the motion would look superb, but what I perceive is too little improvement to anti-ghosting and noticeable but permissible artifacts. And yes I installed/uninstalled the drivers and tried all the settings in both DVI and HDMI. Nothing looked to my liking. I feel like I wasted $200. If you want my advice, this isn't enough improvement to justify the price tag. Save up a bit more and look for a 144Hz display.

Video Editor's Dream

AMD Ryzen 9 3rd Gen - RYZEN 9 3900X Matisse (Zen 2) 12-Core 3.8 GHz (4.6 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 105W 100-100000023BOX Desktop Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 3rd Gen - RYZEN 9 3900X Matisse (Zen 2) 12-Core 3.8 GHz (4.6 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 105W 100-100000023BOX Desktop Processor

Pros: This CPU conquers video editing. Performance doesn't even stutter if you add transitions or color correction. I'm typically five layers deep, this CPU doesn't even flinch. I record webcam, mic and gameplay footage at the same time to 2 separate SATA SSD's, don't even need to worry about a thing. Worked fine out of the box, no problems, totally stable.

Cons: Does suffer from a little gaming performance compared to even the Core i7 4770K that I upgraded from. In some games, at least. I know for sure in Dirt Rally 2.0 this Ryzen 9 absolutely SCREAMS (when you use Ryzen Master and put it in "Game Mode"). This CPU is flexible, but you have to tell it to game using Ryzen Master if you want it to have better all-around gaming performance. And even then, some games will be slower (like GTA V). I say if all you do is gaming and light work loads and you're still packing an Intel Core i7 Haswell (4770K) or younger, there's still no reason to upgrade yet.

Overall Review: Didn't even take the included Wraith Prism cooler out of the box. Re-used my Noctua NH-U12A air cooler. I've never touched the fan controls, idles at around 55 Celsius, loads at just over 80 but the fans haven't spun at 100 percent either. They automatically ramp up to keep it around 60 during medium loads. One of these days I'll tweak it to be louder at idle and more consistent. I installed Ryzen Master, allows you to switch between Creator Mode (all cores, stock clocks) and Game Mode (6/12 cores/threads, OC). I leave it in Creator Mode all the time. Works fine, never skips a beat. I also have to use Ryzen Master to set the memory speeds on my X570 mobo. Confirmed in CPU-Z the mobo doesn't clock the RAM to 1,600 MHz (DDR4 3200) by itself (1,200 by default... eww.). Your mileage may vary in that regard.

Theje's X555L Review

ASUS Laptop X555LB-NS51 Intel Core i5 5200U (2.20GHz) 8GB Memory 750GB HDD FHD NVIDIA GeForce GT 940M 15.6" Windows 8.1 64-Bit
ASUS Laptop X555LB-NS51 Intel Core i5 5200U (2.20GHz) 8GB Memory 750GB HDD FHD NVIDIA GeForce GT 940M 15.6" Windows 8.1 64-Bit

Pros: -Great battery life, over 4 hours of internet/work use, over 3 hours of steaming video, 1 hour of gaming -Good keyboard, despite the slight flex -1080p display is satisfactory -GDDR3 VRAM allows for high texture quality in games -Has a DVD-RW drive despite its thin dimensions -Fingerprint resistant on most surfaces -Light

Cons: -No backlit keyboard, a little disappointing for this MSRP -Touchpad -Power button placement, I tapped it accidentally twice during gameplay -No easy way to access internals, no upgrade path, hope nothing goes wrong! (minus one egg for this reason)

Overall Review: A steal of a deal if it's on sale, but if the GTX 850M can be had at only $100 more, then you'd be better off with the 850M. Students can take a look if they want the extra gaming kick, and home users can feel comfortable with this thanks to the battery life and smooth styling.

Great Card

ZOTAC ZT-70301-10P G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card
ZOTAC ZT-70301-10P G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

Pros: Runs the included Assassin's Creed game at ultra details at almost 40 fps on average in 1080p. Very impressive! Firestrike demo - 6740 with stock 4670K

Cons: Louder than my old HP Envy dv6 notebook. :P Not really a con I think.

Overall Review: I don't have much to offer as far as noise level or size comparison. I built my desktop to accommodate this card. I wish they would have given a Steam key for AC4 instead of a uPlay key haha oh well.

2nd Zalman

ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink

Pros: Installation was easy. Just had to screw in the backplate to the mobo, then screw in the CPU fan. A lot easier than Intel's OEM push-pin design, although I can see where users can get frustrated if they're trying to install it to a mobo that's already mounted and doesn't have access to the bottom. Fits perfectly in my mid-tower ATX case. My temps are higher than average because I don't increase the fan speed until the CPU goes over 60°C so my temps are worthless to post here. I will say that it only speeds up when I'm encoding video while I'm OC'd. Other than that it stays nice 'n quiet. :)

Cons: None

Overall Review: Dunno about this performance compared to stock fan. Never installed it on this build. Used this fan in another desktop I built about a year ago. When I decided to build another, I knew exactly what to use. The included thermal paste works well enough, but you may want to go with something a little bit higher-end if you're picky about your temps. Don't listen to anyone who says this isn't compatible with Haswell mobos. Working great for me! Using a cheapy ASRock Z87 mobo.

seller reviews
  • 1

Sent me 3 of the 4 movies I ordered and a duplicate that I didn't order. The packing slip was correct, what was sent was incorrect. The seller didn't respond to my inquiry.

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