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Jeffrey C.

Jeffrey C.

Joined on 07/08/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Pretty Good So Far

Intel Core i5-4570 - Core i5 4th Gen Haswell Quad-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 1150 84W Intel HD Graphics Desktop Processor - BX80646I54570
Intel Core i5-4570 - Core i5 4th Gen Haswell Quad-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 1150 84W Intel HD Graphics Desktop Processor - BX80646I54570

Pros: Pretty Fast, stable processor. Low Power consumption when not being taxed.

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: I bought this for my new gaming rig to save some money because my last system had an i7 that never stressed itself out on performance. It works great so far, and I can even run some of my games on it with medium settings (i am still waiting for my video card to get shipped out).

Most Critical Review

One of the worst fans I ever worked with

Phanteks PH-TC12DX_BK Dual 120mm PWM CPU Cooler, AM4 Compatible
Phanteks PH-TC12DX_BK Dual 120mm PWM CPU Cooler, AM4 Compatible

Pros: The Am4 mounting mechanism isn't horrible compared to other fans

Cons: Poor design quality. The fan mounting bars are beyond flimsy and will distort when you remove the fan off the heatsink, which you need to do in order tighten it to the Am4 brackets. This made it nigh impossible to remount the fans tightly. Additionally even though the Am4 brackets are included, the instruction sets are not updated to reflect it and the instructions themselves are subpar. Customer support is really hit or miss. Since it's outside of return policy I wound up just trashing it. Sadly this isn't the first bad product from phanteks I've had but it will be the last

Overall Review: 0 eggs if possible.. if given a choice between this and letting my cpu fry I would choose frying the cpu

Does what it needs too

GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 Super WINDFORCE OC 8G Graphics Card, 3 x WINDFORCE Fans, 8GB 256-Bit GDDR6, GV-N207SWF3OC-8GC Video Card
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 Super WINDFORCE OC 8G Graphics Card, 3 x WINDFORCE Fans, 8GB 256-Bit GDDR6, GV-N207SWF3OC-8GC Video Card

Pros: A decent card at MSRP which is rare for a 2070 Super plays games at 1440p at mostly max settings with decent framerates

Cons: As a general user I don't think there will be any As an avid overclocker/liquid cooling enthusiast, this particular model seems to be voltage locked. Sadly I cant get over a 40Mhz OC and I cant do anything to up the voltage for adjustments

Overall Review: If you plan on just installing and playing some games, its a good card If you are into overclocking I would recommend spending a little extra on a card that isn't voltage locked.

Love this board

ASUS MAXIMUS VI FORMULA LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX gaming board with double-sided ROG Armor, 23C-degrees cooler CrossChill and 120dB SNR, 600ohm audio
ASUS MAXIMUS VI FORMULA LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX gaming board with double-sided ROG Armor, 23C-degrees cooler CrossChill and 120dB SNR, 600ohm audio

Pros: The UEFI on this board is easy to navigate and adjust, there are preset Overclock settings on the uefi as well as ai suite 3 for anyone that is new to OC. The armor on the front looks amazing and gives the board a slick look to it. As far as I can do it does little for heat, the armor on the back however is made of metal and used to provide resistance against board bends when screwing the board to the chassis or trying to implement one of those cheap intel cpu fans (who'd do that).

Cons: Crosschill: This isn't a bad con, and after research its not a huge worry but I do not like that the crosschill block was made using aluminum and not copper, so i have to remove an egg

Overall Review: Anyone who wants to watercool using a custom loop should look into the series 7 of this board which has the copper block, if that is not the case, and this board is cheaper I highly recommend the M6F

Not What I expected

Lenovo IdeaPad - 15.6" Dual NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M SLI - Intel Core i7-3630QM  - 12GB Memory - 16 GB SSD - Windows 8 - Gaming Laptop - (Y500 (59359554) )
Lenovo IdeaPad - 15.6" Dual NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M SLI - Intel Core i7-3630QM - 12GB Memory - 16 GB SSD - Windows 8 - Gaming Laptop - (Y500 (59359554) )

Pros: Light weight, Powerful for its size, great resolution, LED back lit keyboard,

Cons: minimal I/O options, optical drive is replaced with secondary video card (forgivable but not the best design idea), can't really do too much while on battery power which defeats the purpose of having a portable system. I read great reviews on this system which drove me to purchase it and at first it was great until I got to playing games. The New tomb raider would only play on medium settings without any major framerate drops but was still laggy. I then tried some less visually intensive games such as SWTOR and the First Mass Effect and both had low frame rates on high settings. I then tested a game that I know isn't graphically intensive, and booted up a stock WoW account and that even was running slow. I boosted the system power settings and O/C'ed the GPU and adjusted the drivers but received little improvements. Too my surprise though, the system could handle a high Overclocking with little increase to its temperature or system performance. Only the primary GPU is set to run while on battery which makes running games on battery a mute point (id rather have the choice to play a game on the battery and have it run dead as opposed to feeling like i'm locked into having a slimmer smaller desktop).

Overall Review: This is more powerful than your average notebook, and probably a great system for the average gamer or somebody who wants to set up a portable media center, but for High end gaming i would not recommend this system.