cover
Aaron B.

Aaron B.

Joined on 03/26/05

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Great value and Quiet!

ZEROtherm CORE92 Socket 1156/1366 HDT Cooler
ZEROtherm CORE92 Socket 1156/1366 HDT Cooler

Pros: Virtually silent at normal load, a soothing whisper at higher loads. No clicks or other annoying sounds of the fan. Just pure airflow. Easy to install once you figure out that the pins slide to allow for different size CPU sockets. Fan LEDs are a nice soft blue.

Cons: none

10/30/2010
Most Critical Review

I was sold, but don't perform

ENERMAX UC-12EB Case Fan
ENERMAX UC-12EB Case Fan

Pros: Most of them were initially quiet. cleanable

Cons: Not reliable and don't maintain the silence. Some are only quiet if mounted horizontally. When mounted vertically they can click and make sounds like parts are rubbing against each other. Once you remove the fan blades to clean them the first time, they lose their alignment and again, sound like they are rubbing. Have to re-adjust them often so they don't drive me insane.

Overall Review: Bought about 7 of these. Sometimes they are quiet, but I need to pull them out a lot to reseat the actual moving fan portion.

10/30/2010

Doesn't do much for me. It is not bootable

OCZ RALLY2 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive OCZUSBR2DC-8GB
OCZ RALLY2 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive OCZUSBR2DC-8GB

Pros: They said it was fast?

Cons: I got this to do OS installs. I've not once been able to boot from it, no matter what kind of imaging process I try. Even the official MSFT tool for Win7 won't boot. I get errors. I haven't been able to use this other than for random file transfers between Windows systems which will not speak SMB to eachother or only have 100mb NICs. Happens all the time between XP and/or W2K.

Overall Review: I don't know if mine is defective or what??

10/30/2010

It works.. better than USB for booting!

SYBA SD-CF-2IDE-U Dual Ultra IDE to Compact Flash Adapter
SYBA SD-CF-2IDE-U Dual Ultra IDE to Compact Flash Adapter

Pros: Using as a boot disk for FreeNAS is great!

Cons: Easy to short out.. Oops! I originally had one of these secure to a spare motherboard standoff and worked great. I put in a new motherboard and just used the IDE ribbon cable to shield it. Well, I moved it while the system was on. Once the smoke comes out, you can't put it back in!

Overall Review: These are a simple passthrough device. If your CF doesn't support higher ATA modes and DMA, it won't be supported. My old MoBo would only support USB1.1 until the OS loads USB2.0 drivers so it took 5+ minutes to boot! This basically gives you a cheap SSD to boot from using much more reliable and universal ATA compared poor or random support of USB for boot devices.

10/30/2010

Great value and performance!

Intel EXPI9400PTBLK Gigabit Copper Connection for Servers 10/100/1000Mbps PCI-Express 1 x RJ45
Intel EXPI9400PTBLK Gigabit Copper Connection for Servers 10/100/1000Mbps PCI-Express 1 x RJ45

Pros: This thing is able to saturate a gigabit link to over 110MB/s! My previous NICs in the same server maxed out at 70 MB/s. (Realtek and Marvell cheapos). Lower CPU utilization as well!

Cons: Adds a few watts to my low power build, but worth it!

10/30/2010