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Levi K.

Levi K.

Joined on 07/11/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review
BFG Tech GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Support OC Edition Video Card BFGE88768UOCE
BFG Tech GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Support OC Edition Video Card BFGE88768UOCE

Pros: Great performance, of course anything less would be a sin. I purchased this specifically to handle Bioshock on high settings and gameplay is now very smooth (upgrade from BFG 7590 GT OC).

Cons: This card is very long. Expect to be doing some hard drive re-arrangement unless you have an enormous case. Also, on my motherboard 3 of my 6 SATA connectors are too obstructed to use at all. Since I only have 2 SATA drives it was not a problem but something to keep in mind in a drive heavy system.

Overall Review: The card is essentially just a GTX with a new cooler and higher clocks. Although a GTX could have it's core and memory clocked up to the Ultra, the shader clock is locked, so the Ultra is the only way to raise that one.

Most Critical Review

Beware of pin-3 PWDIS feature

HGST Ultrastar He12 HUH721212ALE601 12TB 7.2K RPM 256MB SATA-6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard drive
HGST Ultrastar He12 HUH721212ALE601 12TB 7.2K RPM 256MB SATA-6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard drive

Pros: Massive 12TB size in a single disk Relatively fast (for a spinning drive) and lots of onboard cache Even reasonably quiet for enterprise storage solution

Cons: Has Pin-3 configured (permanently) as the PWDIS pin based on a new (and terrible) standard; basically if you have a normal SATA power cable that supplies 3.3V to Pin-3 on the power connector the drive will NOT turn on at all. If you happen to put it into a SAS enclosure it will probably work as is though.

Not Impressed with this kit

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14D-16GTZKW
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14D-16GTZKW

Pros: The one stick of memory that works.

Cons: The other stick of memory that does not work.

Overall Review: RMA submitted on G.Skill's website. Not sure if easier to deal with on there or via newegg.

Great mid-tower

Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Silent ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Silent ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: Cable management is simple and elegant along the back Plenty of drive bays, this case would be great for building a NAS Radiator mount on top easily fits a 240mm in Push/Pull 4 fan configuration without interference Sound deadening material all over the case Plenty of room to work with for large graphics cards

Cons: The top part looks somewhat ugly with the staggered panels removed, would be nice to have a dust filter component included to cover that part up again

Overall Review: I now regret getting a cooler master case for my file server since this would have been absolutely perfect design for it

10/31/2017

Great thermal compound, 10/10, would lower temps again

Noctua NT-H1 3.5g, Pro-Grade Thermal Compound Paste (3.5g)
Noctua NT-H1 3.5g, Pro-Grade Thermal Compound Paste (3.5g)

Pros: * Nice consistency, not too thick and not too thin, easy to squirt out of tube * Great temperatures, the best thermal compound I've used * No break in period, nice temps on first boot * Very reasonably priced, this tube will do a lot of CPU's

Cons: * Was a bit hard to actually get this stuff, shipping seems like it can take a while for it. You're set once you finally get a tube since it will last a long time, but if building a system would be nice to know this would get shipping sooner

10/18/2017

Not ideal for longer term use.

WD RE4 WD2003FYYS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
WD RE4 WD2003FYYS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Compared to any other drive vendor, none really jumps out.

Cons: When I originally ordered these I got 4 drives to setup a RAID-5, one of these drives had a damaged sata connector (literally split in half) so I ended up waiting a while for a replacement through Newegg. I also had to aggravatingly ask for them to pay shipping on the RMA label, not sure why that was even in question. Now I have another one of these drives reporting a physical disk failure to the RAID card so the array is in a degraded state. This occurred in less than 4 years under very light use.

Overall Review: This drive was purchased during the massive HD shortage so if you have one of these drives from around that time (after the issue with the factory) then beware of possible issues coming up with these.