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Alexander B.

Alexander B.

Joined on 09/03/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 20
Most Favorable Review
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ

Pros: Cheap. Great RMA process. Lifetime warranty. Fancy looking.

Cons: died after 2 years.

Overall Review: One of the two sticks died after 2 years. No surprise. RMA was effortless.

Most Critical Review

RMA is terrible.

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card 100245L
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card 100245L

Pros: Fairly cheap. Good performance.

Cons: 2 months after use the card would crash any games I played and show artifacts during POST. Sapphire does RMA through Althonmicro (dot) com. They also charge $35 and 4-6 weeks return *after* they recieve it.

Overall Review: If you buy this card and you have to RMA it, ask for cross ship from Sapphire. Do not pay a dime like I did. It's their lemon.

NETGEAR 8 Port Gigabit Business-Class Desktop Switch - Lifetime Warranty (GS108)
NETGEAR 8 Port Gigabit Business-Class Desktop Switch - Lifetime Warranty (GS108)

Pros: Cheap. Gigabit. Small foot print. Low temps.

Cons: Kind of difficult to get everything on Gigabit. Maybe because I'm running a mix of cables of dubious orginis. Some machines with gigabit NICs still only detect at 10/100. My end though, nothing wrong with this switch.

Overall Review: I have this sitting in the middle of my network. Transfer speeds were ~12MB/sec with my linksys. Now they peak at ~84MB/sec. A solid investment for any network.

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: seems to have a pretty good onboard cooling. tonnes of OC options. Pretty stable I suppose. I like all the options, onboard sound, Gigabit Ethernet, 1394 etc. Large amount of memory supported.

Cons: Insatlled in an Antec 300 case that puts the PSU on the bottom of the case, making the 8v connector to the top left of the board a stretch. Had to run the cable under teh video card all the way to the left, definitely not ideal but would not fit any other way.

Overall Review: Make sure to download all the new drivers from the manufacturer's site. LAN, chipset especially are not stable ont eh disc, at least not for me. I had several BSODs for the first week until I got all the drivers updated.

12/28/2008

Stable

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 430W ATX 12V 2.2  Power Supply
Thermaltake TR2 W0070 430W ATX 12V 2.2 Power Supply

Pros: Cheap, stable and quiet. On / Off switch

Cons: won't wash my dishes

Overall Review: Running on a a Gigabyte EP35-DS3R. 4 hard drives, a p4 2.8 and 1 GB memory running Windows Home Server. Has run flawlessly.

Good for WHS

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard

Pros: 8 x SATA ports, 8 x USB ports

Cons: no onboard video, no 1394

Overall Review: This replaced my Poweredge sc420 as my Windows Home Server because it has so many onboard SATA ports. In case I fill up all 8 SATA ports there are lots of USB ports for expanded external storage. I think it should be noted that 6 x SATA are Northbridge controlled and 2 x SATA have a Gigabyte chip to control them. I didn't install the power saver features.