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Matthew J.

Matthew J.

Joined on 06/02/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 149
Most Favorable Review

Working like a charm

Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX 280mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX 280mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Pros: Keeping a stock 4790k at 27-31c idle, doesn't hit 50c after 6 hours of P95 in a closed room. Pump is quiet, which helps since this was for someone who didn't want a loud computer. Setup was quick and easy, took less than 5 mins.

Cons: The fans - Corsair makes SP140's now and this does not come with them. What it DOES come with are, I am left to believe, are fans from a leaf blower modified to fit a 140mm fan body. They move very little air under 35% fan speed, and quickly go from silent to loud climbing 5% at a time until you go full-leaf-blower at 100%.

Overall Review: Built a computer for my cousin, and he wanted this for his CPU. Overkill by no short order because his CPU is stock, but since he's paying for it, I'm not going to argue. The stock fans are horrible and even using them as exhaust fans out of the top of his Corsair 450D, they're annoyingly loud and we'll be making a 2nd order for a few parts, including 3 AF 120 Silent Editions to replace his leaf blowers. Using two Corsair AF120's with the AIO mounted to the front(yes, I know I should us SP's, this wasn't the original idea) but it's working like a charm due to the negative pressure in the case from all the exhaust fans. For the $120 he paid for it, I'm not complaining.

12/14/2015
Most Critical Review

DOA

GENERIC TC- 8CAS-BL 80mm 4 Blue LEDs LED Case Cooling Fan
GENERIC TC- 8CAS-BL 80mm 4 Blue LEDs LED Case Cooling Fan

Pros: um, blue?

Cons: DOA, gotta love it.

Overall Review: Didn't end up having a use for it for 6 months, but when i plugged it in, nothing, oh well.

Awesome concept, needs a Rev.2 with some tweaks

AZZA CSAZ-103 Black SECC Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
AZZA CSAZ-103 Black SECC Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case

Pros: - ATX power supply support out of the box - this was basically THE reason I chose this over the Silverstone RVZ01B. - Mini ITX sized system able to (kind of) fit even my MSI R9 380 into it. - I was able to fit all the hardware from my NZXT M59 into it save for the motherboard, cpu cooler, and dvd drive. - Enough room that a bulky, non-modular Corsair GS600 fit and still managed to make everything breathe. - Awesome balance of performance and aesthetics - Not too much where things become irritating, but enough to know this isn't an MS Office computer.

Cons: I really like this case, and I'm going to say that now before going onto the cons, as there are a handful. Azza, I hope you're reading this, because this case could be a lot better with just a few minor fixes. - First thing's first. This thing needs to be taller. Not by much, perhaps another .5" will do, I know most cards fit, but I have the MSI R9 380 and it is an obnoxiously huge card, and I had to bend it in very unnerving and unnatural ways to get it to fit. An extra half inch in height would allow this card to fit in without bending at all. - The rear cutout for the CPU needs to be raised or widened - in every review I've seen of this just about, the CPU bracket was covered at least a little, and always enough to prevent this cut-out's intended function. - The rear cutout for the GPU air intake needs to be made larger, half of my GPU's fans are covered by a useless sheet of metal, and would breathe much better if this cutout was maybe another 1" larger. - The PSU cable needs some work on both ends. It's in an awkward spot in the back, and for PSU's like mine that have the main power plug on the 'right' assuming the fan is flipped up, there is cringe-worthy amounts of pressure put on this cable to bend it enough to fit. A simple fix to both of these, is to lower the rear plug hole down to the bottom of the case and out of the center, and then simply make a cut-out for the wire to pass through on the PSU side up front where the other wires pass through. - There is room for another hard drive in the HDD cage, but no holes are drilled for this - I'd like to see this cage be allowed to hold all three rows of hard drives for those of us who run several HDDs/SSDs. - Why only one USB 2.0 on the front? There's clearly room for another for 4 USBs on the front, why not add a 2nd? Or just have 2 USB 3.0's and one USB 2.0?

Overall Review: I know this may seem like an overall negative review, but it's not. I really like this case, and the single biggest fault it's got for me is due to my own selection of the GPU. This case is clearly meant for reference design cards and ones that aren't quite as wide as MSI's R9 series cards. If Azza came out with a Rev.2 with most/all of these changes, and even made an option that came with the front bezel like on the CyberPower Zeus Mini's that use this case, I'd be swiping my card buying at least 2 more for other builds the day they became available.

Lasted almost 5 years to the day

Western Digital WD Green WD15EARS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital WD Green WD15EARS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: 1.5Tb, respectably quick, stored everything I ever threw at it and never went over 1Tb used up.

Cons: - Started slowing down ~4.5 years into use, kept getting slower until entire folders stopped reading correctly. - Games stopped installing due to drive write errors - that's when I backed up the important data. - Came home last week to a Drive Read Error message on my computer, within 30 days of the 5-year mark. - Booted up the computer yesterday and computer wouldn't go past post, kept giving me a S.M.A.R.T. error until I disconnected it.

Overall Review: I've still got an old 500Gb WD drive that this replaced that has no problems and is getting upwards of 10 years old. Pretty surprised that this one died a handful of years sooner than the older one. Pretty disappointed but then again, it lasted 5 years. I can only hope I get the rest of it backed up onto another disk before it completely dies.

Simple, Reliable, Good Price for Size When I Bought it

ADATA 32GB UV128 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Flash Drive (AUV128-32G-RBE)
ADATA 32GB UV128 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Flash Drive (AUV128-32G-RBE)

Pros: - Got it for pretty cheap during Black Friday last year. - Great price for its size back then, still pretty good now - Reliable, hasn't failed me yet, and I don't see it failing any time soon either. - Great for combining a little file storage + Win7 installer

Cons: None, it works exactly as intended and has given me no issues from day one.

Overall Review: Backing up some of my most important smaller files off my secondary hard drive onto this after the mechanical began having issues with access times and a ChkDisk wasn't able to complete for 15+ hours. I'd rather keep those files on non-mechanical memory until I get a new HDD in my computer and this is perfectly suited for that. Going to get the 128Gb version with my next order to keep most of my personal files on it as a backup to my backup in case of major catastrophic failure of the drive.

Issues at first - seems to work fine now

Crucial MX100 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT256MX100SSD1
Crucial MX100 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT256MX100SSD1

Pros: Decent capacity SSD for the money at the time it was on sale.

Cons: At first it wasn't much faster than the 7200RPM drive it replaced, and left both me and my brother who I was building the computer for at a loss (and also very angry) Browsed/Researched forums for a few hours and saw that this wasn't an issue with just me, but it was pretty common with this particular brand/drive. Fortunately common problems tend to come with resolutions, and after updating the drive's firmware and all related software, it sped up again to a passable amount. Was going to RMA the thing but we didn't realize this wasn't shipped by Newegg (our mistake) and could not get a refund, so we had to just stick with it, which bothered me to no end.

Overall Review: It still doesn't match the speed of my 120Gb Intel 530 Series SSD which can load windows before the four colors on the loading screen come close to touch. This drive is a good ~5s slower, which really bummed me out and made me wish we had just forked over the bit of extra money for the 180 or 240 Gb Intel 530's instead, because outside of windows, all of our comparable programs load faster on my computer. i5 2500k(not OC'd) 8Gb GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 Intel 120Gb 530 Series SSD ASUS H61M-A vs i7 4790k (also stock, no OC) 16Gb GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 Crucial MX100 256Gb SSD ASUS Z97-A Yet my computer, which is 4 years older, is able to load Windows 7 faster than his. I won't deny there may be more settings for me to adjust, but the load times of his computer vs mine left me irritated and at a loss.