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Thomas Q.

Thomas Q.

Joined on 08/21/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

It works.

ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme IV Enthusiast VGA Cooler-nVidia/AMD, Triple 92mm PWM Fans, Patented Back-Side Heatsink, SLI/CrossFire
ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme IV Enthusiast VGA Cooler-nVidia/AMD, Triple 92mm PWM Fans, Patented Back-Side Heatsink, SLI/CrossFire

Pros: I installed the Arctic Accelero Extreme IV on a Visiontek R9 290x with revised heatsink, and it works great. Essentially if you have a R9 290x with a "2nd gen heatsink" like on my card, there will already be heatsinks on VRM chips and Ram and a passive cooling backplate from the factory. This allows you to skip installing the backplate from Arctic, and the factory installed heatsinks will work in with the Arctic Accelero. Load temps in low 60's with fan set at 75%. I would strongly advise manually adjusting the fan speed to the highest percentage your ears will allow. 100% is a little noisy - 60% is quiet, and somewhere in between works great when your gaming with sound to cover the fan noise.

Cons: One of the gpu mount screws stripped, but still worked enough to mount cooler. Metal bracket surrounding the coolers "cold plate" the part that touches the gpu, flexes under very little screw tension. Essentially I think the cooler and screws are made from junk metal. All different grades of steel are available, and it seems Arctic has saved some pennies here. Really not a surprise, and doesn't present much of a problem, but the cooler might not fare well from multiple installations/ switching cards down the road.

Overall Review: If you have a reference cooled R9 290x, pick up some heatsinks for the VRM and Ram chips, for a little extra headroom. Cooler will probably work without them, but overclocking the Ram etc. could present problems.

EVGA GTX 980 TI SC, so far so good

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB SC+ GAMING w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB SC+ GAMING w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card

Pros: Quiet: The ACX cooler is quiet enough to not disturb the gaming ambiance with fan noise. Also the card I received has no perceptible coil whine. Coming from a R9 290X which audibly buzzed during gaming and squealed on menus with no V-SYNC this is awesome. During gaming cooler is Sub 40 decibels, maybe mid to high 30's which with headphones or speakers during gaming is almost imperceptible.

Cons: Lit up logo on the side of the card - option to turn off please.

Overall Review: Coil whine is not inherent to high end graphics cards - it is either your PSU, GPU, or a combination of the two together. Don't live with it if you don't want to! Really like this card, good job Nvidia.

Silent, Cool running

CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200 W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200 W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Pros: This power supply is relatively silent when supplying power to 3X GTX 580 in tri sli, plus an i7 950 under load the fan does not stand too far out from my other case fans. Stays relatively cool All reviews point towards this supply having wonderful power delivery. Compared to Cooler Master silent pro gold 1200 (returned) Quieter, Cooler, 2yr extra warranty, Lower power ripple

Cons: None really, it meets every criteria I set out for.

Overall Review: I hear that anything over 750 watts on a single 12V rail is pushing it. This supply seems to have few drawbacks, but i'm no engineer.

12/22/2010

Great card

VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 900250
VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 900250

Pros: Smoking fast, current king as of this review. I would highly reccomend this card to anyone not wanting to dump the cash on an GTX 280 sli setup. I'm running it on an SLI board thats how much I know one is enough.

Cons: It's a really hot card that idles at 80c unless you play with fan settings. It will burn your hand under load... don't try it. Also the drivers from ATI seem a little buggy, but these things seems pretty normal these days.

Overall Review: Unless you have a 1920X1200 monitor don't buy it. Don't buy 2 for CFX unless you have a 2560X1600 monitor. Though you should already know this.

10/28/2008

topped out at 1135mhz

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AL1065
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AL1065

Pros: These sticks run easily at 1066 5-5-5-12-2 at 2.1 volts, and topped out for me at 1135 5-5-5-15-2 at 2.1 volts, on and xfx 780i setup.

Cons: I realised quickly 2gbs doesn't really cut it anymore and buying it was a mistake, I just wanted the pretty lights. which are actually really helpful for detecting system lockups.

Overall Review: Even though these sticks are rated at 2.2volts, watch it I have heard of people burning these out. Make sure any ram you have run isn't burning to the touch.

10/28/2008