cover
James Y.

James Y.

Joined on 03/21/02

0
0

Gallery
Product Reviews
Gallery
  • 0
  •  
  • 3
  •  
product reviews
  • 25
Most Favorable Review

Excellent Router

EnGenius ESR9855G Multimedia Enhanced Wireless N Gigabit Router up to 300Mbps
EnGenius ESR9855G Multimedia Enhanced Wireless N Gigabit Router up to 300Mbps

Pros: Fast, stable, doesn't need to be rebooted as often as the other commercially available routers

Cons: A bit cumbersome if you don't know what you're doing.

Overall Review: This router received rave reviews on Small Net Builder. They definitely were on the ball on this one.

Most Critical Review

Not worth the money

OCZ Petrol 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PTL1-25SAT3-128G
OCZ Petrol 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PTL1-25SAT3-128G

Pros: Fast

Cons: Fails in a very short amount of time

Overall Review: I purchased this drive in January and everything was working fine. Now I get boot errors and such. You can't update the firmware unless you're running Windows and it's connected as the "secondary" drive. All well and good, but I now have to repartition one of my mechanical drives JUST to update the firmware which is a bunch of baloney! OCZ USED to be known for quality. After this experience, I will NEVER buy another OCZ SSD again.

Great product, except

Fractal Design Pop XL Air RGB Black TG ATX High-Airflow Clear Tempered Glass Window Full Tower Computer Case
Fractal Design Pop XL Air RGB Black TG ATX High-Airflow Clear Tempered Glass Window Full Tower Computer Case

Pros: Low cost for a Full ATX case Easy cable management. Plenty of room to work. Plenty of room for storage of SSDs and hard drives. Can install 5 1/4 drives or devices if needed. Can fit tower CPU coolers. Can support long video cards

Cons: The power supply shroud has screws, but not very easy to remove. It requires a very odd hex size. Being able to remove the power supply shroud would make things a lot easier The USB 3.2 doesn't come with the case. You have to buy it separately.

Overall Review: It's big which is a good thing. It's overall easy to work with except the power supply shroud. The USB cable for the case was difficult to get because Fractal underestimated the demand. I managed to get one from Japan. I would have paid more money for the case to have the cable included. I replaced the rear fan and added 2 on the top for more airflow because I prefer to air cool my PC opposed to water. I used the Fractal ARGB fans to match the 4 stock fans. I've rebuilt the computer 3 times since the initial build due to the board failing and using a backup board and it was easy every time. Overall, I'm pleased with the case outside the 2 issues.

10/12/2022

I said this about the HXi1000 I bought a number of years ago

CORSAIR HX Series HX1200 CP-9020140-NA 1200 W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS12V 2.92 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply
CORSAIR HX Series HX1200 CP-9020140-NA 1200 W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS12V 2.92 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Power Supply

Pros: Provides excellent power and offer plenty of connectors. Well designed, well engineered.

Cons: The stiffness of the cables due to the capacitors makes it a difficult to make tight bends resulting in greater cable management. It's not a deal breaker, so it still gets the full 5 eggs.

Overall Review: BIG! This is a beefy power supply. The power supply fit well into my case. Fully modular power supplies are simply the best. It powers and AMD R9 5900X with 64 GB RAM 2 m.2 SSDs and a PowerColor Red Devil 5900 XT. It leaves me enough headroom for an nVidia card if the price ever comes down and for any future storage needs.

10/12/2022

Memory worked, with a catch

Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model TLZGD464G3200HC16CDC01
Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model TLZGD464G3200HC16CDC01

Pros: It works well when you don't enable the XMP/DOCP profile. Nice low price.

Cons: Enabling XMP/DOCP causes Windows 10 to crash and crash often. Stick to QVL memory or memory that's well known to work if you want the full performance you paid for.

Overall Review: I have this memory installed in an ASUS TUF Gaming Wifi II (X570) board. I swapped this into a Gigabyte Aorus X570 because the ASUS board failed and had to be replaced The same exact issue happened when I enable the XMP profile except worse. If you have a system and don't care too much about the XMP profile, this is good cheap memory. If you care about getting the full performance you paid for, go with another brand that's on the board's QVL list instead. I bought G.Skill memory in the end, which I should have done in the first place. The memory is good for budget oriented people who don't care about performance. As I always say, cheaper isn't always better.

10/12/2022

Excellent card, but...

ASUS GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Graphics Card STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Graphics Card STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5

Pros: The card is new per description and delivered as promised.

Cons: The driver included was not only a burned CD, it was for a eVGA card! Check the software before you label a CD and stick it into a box. See pictures. I grabbed the drivers from ASUS, so I'm good in that regard.

Overall Review: The card was a replacement for 2 AMD R370 cards. I switched to nVidia because AMD refuses to support Windows 8.1. The board that's in this particular system can't be upgraded to 10 because it's not supported. In any event, the card is excellent, despite the con noted above. I'm not thrilled with the price because of the lack of demand. I needed a card and I had to bite the bullet and pay for it. I've done my homework and checked the initial retail prices on the card when it first became available. For what I paid, I could have built most of a new system. All things considered, the markup could have been much worse. It still doesn't make me thrilled that I spent too much for old technology.