Pros: Real 7.1 Sound quality, feel, and look.

Cons: I have heard the MIC does not work great (have not tried the built in MIC)

Overall Review: After reading some of the issues with these headsets failure was not an option for me so I did three things to prep before I got them. First I bought an external USB power source that could supply 2+ amps. Second I bought 4 ground loop isolators one for each 3.5mm jack. Third I bought an external USB MIC. After getting the headsets and using them for a few months I have never been happier with any computer part purchase period. These headsets are AWESOME they are completely silent of all buzzing or any noise I have read about. The sound quality is amazing. Some previous headsets I have tried include Psyko 5.1 first gen, Tritton ax360 5.1, Asus Vulcan ANC, Logitech G35, and Megalodon 7.1.

Pros: New drive?

Cons: I just purchased this hard drive because of a New Egg special advertised price. I have an older one of the exact “same” type model number plus two other SSD. All of my previous drives copy at a sustained 400+ mb a second transfer. I use the older Kingston drive as a backup tertiary online drive for some important files I have. I know the exact time it take for the backup. This new drive takes almost 70% longer. After doing some research I see some people said it was firmware change that caused this slowness. This does not appear to be the case but it looks like some lower quality NAND was used than what was in the past on the previous drive.

Overall Review: My question is Kingston going to come clean with this and replace these SSD with ones that match advertised specs or am I better off just sending this unit back to Newegg.

Pros: Solid hardware, small compact design, low power, and a simple GUI interface.

Cons: This WAP321 is the worst Cisco product I have had the displeasure to work on, and I have been working with various Cisco equipment sense early 1999. This Cisco WAP321 hardware is very solid, but Cisco’s total lack of responsibility to fix the software stability issues has me completely dumbfounded. Looking on the Cisco forums page this reliability issue has been going on for more than two years with no resolution. I normally do not buy small business grade Cisco gear even for home. However my wife has been gently encouraging me to lower our total carbon foot print. So I bought this WAP321. This was to replace my Cisco wireless LAN controller and five Cisco APs which is total overkill for my 2.5k sq ft house. The setup of the WAP321 was awesomely simple, in fact much easier than the enterprise counterpart. I was up and working in less than 10 minutes. However this was short lived about every 24 hours I would lose connectivity to both the wireless radio and wired administrative interface. To fix it I would simply reboot the device, I did this for two days before researching it. First I did just a googled search on it and was shock as to how many people are having similar if not the exact same issues. Many people suggested upgrading the firmware which would make sense if there was a memory leak of similar type of bug. The factory firmware on my WAP321 is 1.0.2.3 so I upgraded it to the next rev 1.0.3.4 but the problem still persisted. I thought it might be something in my environment so I have access to a testing lab with a separate set of switches very basic configuration within a Faraday cage. (For those of you that are unfamiliar with a Faraday cage it is an enclosed space that blocks all RF from leaving or entering.) When in the Faraday cage the problem still processed. I then took the device back home and tried firmware 1.0.4.2 the problem still persisted. Then I tried firmware 1.0.4.4 this rev I got a deferent reaction the problem went from having to reboot every 24 hours to having to do it every 4 hours. At this point I was almost ready to admit defeat and go with a deferent competitor product or continue to use my enterprise Cisco solution despite my effort to reduce my carbon foot print. I looked on Newegg site and most reports were 5 stars but looking at the date the people could have only had the firmware prior to 1.0.2.3 which is 1.0.1.10. I downgraded my firmware to the version prior to what mine was factory shipped on. It has been working on 1.0.1.10 for 30 days now no issue. I happy it is working and my carbon footprint has been reduced. I am however very concerned that as new security threats emerge that I will not be able to upgrade this until Cisco fixes this reliability issue.

Overall Review: I would hope Cisco fixes the firmware reliability issue.

Pros: I would like to say something good about this 9590 CPU, I know I should but it is very hard with its out of box default turbo speed instability. I will say the previous generation top of the line AMD desktop chip 8350 was very reliable both in turbo and normal modes.

Cons: Will not run stable a 100% usage at default out of the box turbo setting. To get this CPU stable I had to turn off turbo making it not exceed 4.7Ghz . I use a fairly high end custom water-cooling system that is valued at more than three times the current price of the CPU. In my opinion this is simple not acceptable and is false advertisement as far as I can determine. If you are only a gamer or just a causal user / tester this might be a great CPU. It will boot up show you 5Ghz make you feel good about yourself however it is really a “placebo extra strength.” This chip will work most of the time just don’t put it under sustain 100% load. I use three main computers in my home office extreme hobby / recreation. The three computers currently have the following three CPUs i7-990x, AMD 9590, and lastly a i7-4960x. I not an over-clocker anymore, I find as I get older both reliability and stability are more important to me than squeezing that extra 5 to 10% . This is why I buy the highest end manufacture certified clocked CPU at the time and live with it until I need to upgrade. Until recently in my AMD rig I used to have a 8350 CPU in a Asus Sabetooth 990FX GEN3 R2 and was very happy with the results of that CPU, it worked exactly as advertised. Other than enabling memory profile timings no other setting was required on the motherboard. When I got the 9590 back in March of 2014 I just turned it on ran very few tests and turned it off. Everything seemed to work great and I assumed this is the same modern quality from AMD that I have grown to respect. So no need to run a full battery of tests. One week ago I ran some compilation batch jobs for this first time on this 9590 and as a result I got to see some of the new blue screens of death in windows 8.1. The problem is when the CPU goes to 100% for any sustained length of time and my custom batch jobs will usually last for last 4 to 6 hours on the previous 8350 CPU. On the previous generation 8350 CPU after 6 hours the CPU would never get above 42C with my current CPU liquid cooling loop for this AMD system. The new 9590 idles at 40C and after 5 minutes of 100% use it then goes to 49C and after 7 minutes of use climbs to around 55C and about the 12 minute mark it starts to fail at 59C to 60C. I switched out three different water blocks in an attempt to reduce the temp but all three types seem to preform almost the same. I used 4 different types of TIM but settled back on Arctic Silver 5. I did a lot of research on this stability issue and many people report having temperatures much high than mine so then I thought it might be a power supply issue. However I have 2 higher end 1200 watt PSU used in parallel in this system and I hooked a multi-meter and oscilloscope to the power supply providing motherboard 12v just to see confirm that it was not a voltage, or ripple issue.

Overall Review: Then I thought I might have a bad motherboard, RAM, and or CPU issue. So I swapped components out with my buddy who has the same AMD 9590 purchased 3 months before mine. He uses it as his primary machine so I could not test with his computer for long. He uses a Gigabyte 990fx-ud7 motherboard and has a different brand of RAM as well. First before changing anything out I ran my batch job on his computer. Not a big surprise it too also failed but his went to 60C then blue screen and rebooted almost simultaneously to not build a crash file. Then for other test I moved my custom liquid cooling solution to his computer. I removed his all-in-one AMD OEM water cooler I think it is a Corsair rebranded, after moving my cooling system to his computer we got the same results. Lastly I turned off the ability for my computer to go into “turbo” mode making the CPU not exceed 4.7Ghz, success it works perfectly 100% reliable batch jobs run 6hours and the CPU never exceed 51C. This is great except I did not buy a 4.7Ghz CPU I bought a 5Ghz CPU under turbo core mod. The water cooling system for this AMD 9590 CPU has these components: HX-CU1320V radiator with 8x delta 192CFM fans in push and pull configuration 1 liter Danger Den reservoir Fluid = 80% distilled water, 18% propylene glycol, 1% Iodine, and 1% benzalkonium chloride Tygon R-3400 ½”ID ¾ OD Two pumps in push and pull configuration Swiftech MCP655-B CPU block XSPC RayStrom Copper Edition I believe my testing methods to be valid and this CPU cannot sustain 5Ghz for prolong lengths of time.

Pros: The software is very complete and well done. The looks of the mouse make it one of the most aesthetically pleasing ever. The lighting is very adjustable making it easily adaptable into anyone’s existing motif of color in their current gaming IO devices.

Cons: When I got my mouse box it was pre-opened (seal broken) inside the sealed Newegg package. I don’t believe this is Newegg’s fault as I have purchased EVGA products in the past as an earlier adopter from Newegg and they were pre-opened from EVGA’s distributors. (example: EVGA e762 4-way SLI) The instructions from EVGA are wrong on how to remove the top cover of this mouse to add weight. If you follow the instructions you could damage your mouse. Contrary to the instructions in the manual you will need to apply pressure first to the forward part of the mouse (the area closest to the cord) pushing back. This will release the catch and the top will pop right off. Replace or add the weights with whatever you like. How this got by QA is a mystery to me, I have to take off two stars for pre-opened package and documentation that could lead to damage.

Overall Review: I had high hopes for this mouse as a replacement for my current well used G9x. Unfortunately this mouse is too small for my large hands regardless of adjustments. I have used it for five days now and I am going to put it on the shelf with my RAT 7, Mamba, and G502. This is just a personal preference this is not the right mouse for me, however it may be perfect for others. So I went looking for another G9x today, and there seems to be many people in the exact same predicament as myself. Used G9x on a popular reseller site are going for two and half bills now. That is almost four times what they sold for new. This is not a review about the G9x I just wish somebody would build some replacement for this old out-of-production super gaming mouse.

Pros: This motherboard has a very strong UEFI BIOS with many options. Also, it is able to support one 16x native 3.0 PCIe, three 8x native 3.0 PCIe, two open ended 1x native 2.0 PCIe simultaneously. EK has a full coverage direct mount on water-block for the Southbridge and CPU MOSFETs. It also has a higher end Intel NIC and many SATA and USB ports. The aesthetics are bar none compared to any motherboard in its class.

Cons: My biggest concern with this board is the lack of adequate PCIe AUX power for Quad-SLI builds. While other motherboards in this class have many pins and or solid pins for AUX PCIe power, this motherboard only has hollow pins on the 24 pin ATX connect and one 4 pin molex connector on the PCIe bus. This is not enough power for people running Quad-SLI with higher end boards over long periods of time. Over long periods of time, if no other injection method of power is used either through an above board mod or PCIe injector, pins 10 and 11 of the ATX could burn off the motherboard. This is a well-known issue and to address this ASUS, on precursor to the BLACK X79 the Rampage IV x79 board was fitted with a 6pin AUX PCIe power. The competitor to this board, the EVGA Dark, has a 6pin AUX PCIe power and solid pins on the ATX connector. This seems odd as the board is designed for the enthusiast market and engineering it this way doesn’t appeal to that market. My second concern with this board is sound. ASUS has really touted how good the sound is on this board but there are three trouble areas. The first problem is that the chipset is Realtek, a brand not typically associated with high quality sound. Secondly, in order to save space, the line in and the last two pair of speakers for a 7.1 surround system share the same 1/8 jack. This is an issue if you’re planning to plug in a device that has a ground loop isolator as you will need to go into the Realtek/Asus software each and every reboot to set it to 5.1 and then back to 7.1 for it to work on the last speaker pair. Thirdly, there is a loud pop on reboots or resume of the computer. This is because there is no buffer stage for the DAC as it would take up too much real state on the motherboard. Lastly, this motherboard, is simply too small. Normal form factor should not be used when building an enthusiast board. This board needs to be larger, Extended ATX would be better. The way it is designed, it requires a considerable amount of modification to use memory fan coolers and still use PCIe slot one for a video card. Also, if the last slot on the board is used for a video card, it will cover all the connections such as TPM, USB, etc.

Overall Review: I really wanted to give this motherboard a rating higher than a two but with the listed issues above I cannot bring myself to do that. This is touted as an enthusiast board but its design is clearly more about aesthetics than function. This could have been so much better with balancing function over form.

Newegg has shifted to a model of order from us to we collect money from our marketplace resellers, but we accept no responsibility for actions. No marketplace site can be totally responsible for the actions of their resellers sites. However, the A reseller for repeat negative offenders will remove the offenders to avoid negatively impact their the A reseller brand. Also, the A reseller will refund they customers and go after the resellers on their own time. Newegg in contrast has some of the worst venders and their bad activity goes back to 2014, at the same time making you the customer do all the leg work to get reimbursed. This is bad for the customers but great for a shady dishonest resellers. I bought an EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G+ power supply from Day1 shopmall marketplace reseller that said shipping from the US in 5 to 9 days. In fact, it states that from all their listings shipping from the US in 5 to 9 days. However, when I purchase the item the waybill was created to ship from mainland China. When I contacted the reseller, they said via a simi-nasty gram form email letter due to availability of some items this would be coming directly from China. They did say I would have in the same shipping time frame. I waited a week and saw the weigh bill did not move and no package was received by the shipper. After many emails and many more days, I eventually got my funds refunded. This seem to be a reoccurring trend for Newegg marketplace resellers, and it makes me what to take my moneys elsewhere.