Joined on 12/26/05
Nice card
Pros: Looks nice. Pretty quiet. Good upgrade from my HD6850.
Cons: LONG>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> With this 12" long card I have about 3mm clearance to the drive cage. It is what it is so no eggs off.
Overall Review: Was building my son a gaming desktop so I ordered this for myself and gave him my HD6850. Easy way to sneak the upgrade for myself under the radar of the wife. :) Running with an x6 [email protected] and was an OK upgrade from my HD6850 for my budget. Was a little worried that it would not be a worthwhile jump but I am pleased with the results. 3DMark11 went from P3401 up to P6337. Cloud Gate, 11739 up to 15058. Fire Strike, 2480 up to 4561. Either way it is noticeably faster in games. Couple things to note. Card length, this is just a hair under a foot long. Measure first or be prepared to dremel part of your drive cage. Inputs, has 1xDVI 1xHDMI and 2xMini DP. My active DP adapter was full size and this is mini. Didn't think to check so I was without a third monitor until I got the new adapter shipped. This PowerColor adapter (N82E16815309008) worked great and it will run you $23. Finally, I was able to OC this to 1050/1250 and bench. It was a quick couple tests but any higher would crash during the bench. Temps never broke 55C though so I don't think it was heat related. I will try again when I have the time to play with voltages and such.
Oddly slow
Pros: It works
Cons: Very slow on both 2.4 & 5, under 1MB/sec.
Overall Review: Grabbed this to replace a stubby USB adapter for my media server. Was getting 3MB/sec with that transferring large files. Was hoping to get better throughput with this on the 5GHz band. Installed fine but transfers dropped to 1MB/sec on 2.4GHz and even lower on the 5GHz. On both bands the software showed 100% signal and full 300 link. Router is in the same room about 20 feet away, no walls or anything. I just put the old adapter back in. Was transferring files to/from a wired PC on Gbit link to router. I may revisit this later but I am not sure what could be wrong since signal strength is showing full 100%. Weird.
Sleek and fast NAS ***UPDATED***
Pros: PROS: -Plenty small with a nice black glossy finish -Dual LAN -Browser based install and software is nice and works well -Good setup and monitoring tools (Temps, transfer speeds, fan speeds, etc.) -9.9 TB of available storage using their "SimplyRAID" mode which claims to allow one drive to fail -Faster real world reads/writes than my GBit LAN -DLNA worked great serving media
Cons: -Had one hiccup (software) when deleting a large folder via the File Manager. After some time the folder remained. When I tried to delete it again I received an error about certain child folders not being empty. I believe it was permissions based. I was able to enable the device's SSH service and run some commands with Putty to remove the folder. -At 16+ pounds it is not light. Just be aware when thinking about placement. -Could not get the Add-on camera app to find my cheap HooToo wireless IP cam.
Overall Review: I really like this NAS. I have been testing this for about a month. This thing is virtually silent even under load. I have had it sitting on the floor next to me about 3 feet away and have yet to hear it. Very sleek and seems to be well built. The browser based suite is well designed and easy to use. Install was all browser based and went smoothly. Took about 8 min total and that included a firmware upgrade. I went with the default "SimplyRAID" mode. This should allow a single drive failure without losing data. Replace the drive and rebuild. If a drive fails later I will add the experience. Plenty of real time refreshed data available in the software. File manager works well, no surprises. I also had no issues mapping this as a lettered drive to other PCs on the LAN. Transfers on my GBit LAN were about as fast as can be. During large image file transfers it was sustaining 110-120 MB/s. Same pulling off the NAS as well. I am sure it would do more as that is close to theoretical max for GBit. Under heavy load drives maxed out at 36C and CPU got up to 50C. The unit remained virtually silent even with fans all spun up. As stated in cons I could not get the "app" for camera monitoring to find my cheap HooToo wireless IP cam. Even knowing it's static IP and trying manual setup. Your mileage may vary with more mainstream units. Was able to connect fine via FTP and SSH once the services were enabled in the browser based settings. Enabling DLNA made the music files visible on the LAN. Great device and I would recommend it to anyone. UPDATE: The unit ran almost 24/7 and failed early 2023. So about 8 years. It just would not boot up one day after a power outage. Thought I had lost everything because while I was setup in SimplyRAID (like a RAID5 I think) I was prepared if a drive failed, but was kind of up the creek with the device failing. I was able to find a local repair shop that hooked all the drives (drives were fine) to a LINUX machine and pull my important data off. Just remember to prepare for the whole unit failing, not just a drive. ;)
Two thumbs up with one big caveat (for now).
Pros: -Fast memory. -Great value for your dollar -Very vibrant full RGB goodness -Supposed to work with iCue (see cons) -Works fine with another set of RAM
Cons: -iCue software would not recognize the sticks. This means there is no way to change the lighting....or even turn it off. There are times at night when the sticks are a just too darn bright.
Overall Review: I Installed this into and Asus based i7-7700k system. They defaulted to 1600MHz (DDR3200) but operated fine. I changed the XMP profile in the UEFI to a listed 1800MHz (DDR3600) and it booted up just fine at their rated speeds. The RAM ran great on the performance end and Corsair RAM has always been solid for me. The RGB lighting is amazing as usual. Very bright and vibrant colors with nice smooth switching. But here we run into the caveat, but for some it could be a big one. I could not get this to show up in iCue. This is a real issue because this means you can't even turn the lighting off. There are times when I need darkness and while it is great that these are vibrant, there needs to be a way to tone it down. I ran an update on iCue to no avail and when I add two other sticks, those show up but never these two. The RAM states it should work so I hope Corsair is working this issue out, but I had to take a star off for it, for now. So now I have these two running with two other sticks of Corsair Vengeance PRO RGB running at DDR3200 speeds and they are playing well together. If Corsair can fix this detection issue or I find a fix, I will be sure to come back and update. That would make this a five star all day. Thanks!
Good flow, great looks.
Pros: -Love the opaque frosted look on the blades. -Decent airflow -Very quiet
Cons: - No PWM
Overall Review: I received these for review and they are great. I love the frosted blades as they really radiate the light well and are not overpowering. They move as much air as you would expect from a 1,400 rpm fan so it is not a wind tunnel or anything. They are nearly silent which is nice. No doubt there will be louder components so you will never hear them. So these definitely earn a recommendation. The soft glow that the white textured blades provides is really nice.
Good Value
Pros: - high capacity - relativity quiet - as fast as any 7200 rpm drive
Cons: none
Overall Review: This has worked well for a little over a year with no issues. My son runs most of his Steam library from this. Plenty quiet still and all is well.