Joined on 02/19/04
Excellent product at any price
Pros: Does exactly what it says it does: - Low Price - Completely silent - Stays cool - Powers a USB device (1 Amp) and an AC device (15 Amps) simultaneously without issue - Fits perfectly in your cars cup holder, so it is never in the way
Cons: The blue power light is really bright and can be a little distracting when driving at night.
Overall Review: This is a really great product. I picked it up on sale at Newegg for $15 and it's worth every penny, even at full price.
Worked well, for about 6 months
Pros: Nice design? Its very pretty. It worked very, very well for gaming/streaming HD video over the past 6 months. The fans are also super, super quiet, which is probably the biggest selling point, because...
Cons: - Dual-display performance: It's very poor. As many others have noted, this chipset has a problem with flickering and tearing in dual-display setups. Be it, two DVI displays or a mixture of DVI and HDMI, I had problems with tearing when running a game or video in one display or the other that I could never find a resolution to. The only thing I can recommend for the tearing in videos/movies is to use VLC media player. This seemed to help a bit, although there was still the occasional horizontal tear/flicker. - Reliability: I've never had a video card just keel over after less than 6 months of use. I don't get to game much, and my gaming room is well-ventilated, I dust out my system regularly...sooo, I have no idea why, but today the card just keeled over. Started with the driver crashing every 10 minutes or so, until they finally locked up Windows 7. Rebooted the system aaaand...no video! Now using an backup EVGA Nvidia card. It's years old and won't play my games ...but it WORKS!
Overall Review: Gigabyte normally has a great track record for board durability/reliability. I can't see what happened to the card in this instance to make it just abruptly bomb like this. There's no bulged/blow capacitors that I can see, and no apparent heat damage anywhere on the board. I've got a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard that I've had for years now, and I've never had any issues with it. It's the best motherboard I've ever had. I thought I was making a safe bet when I went with a Gigabyte card...but yeah, you see what happened. Very disappointing, Gigabyte.
1 Star Because You Didn't Read the Item Description?
Pros: I don't know, haven't bought it yet. Thinking about purchasing to replace my roomies car charger that I accidentally burned out while playing Civ 5 on a road trip. Whoops!
Cons: See "Pros"
Overall Review: I'm only leaving a 5-egg review to counteract the person who left a 1-egg feedback because they failed to read the item description. If your device came with a micro USB cable, you got exactly what you paid for. If you were disappointed by what you received it's your own fault - the item description is very clear about what is included. It's not fair to punish the manufacturer with a bad review for something that was buyer error.
Solid machine with a few significant flaws
Pros: - Quiet as a mouse. Is this thing even on? - Excellent audio quality. - Beautiful, bright, hi-res display. - Keyboard is a dream to use. - No problems hitting the touchpad when typing, this has been an issue with other notebooks. Touchpad is also very large and responsive. - One of the easiest laptops to disassemble that I've ever encountered. The Hardware Maintenance Manual does a great job of walking you through replacing just about anything in the unit. - The dedicated video card is superb for this price range. Plays all my games perfectly. Solid 30 FPS in cities in Guild Wars 2 with auto-detected settings, and it looks great. I can't see any degradation in visual quality from my desktop machine.
Cons: There's really only two that I've found so far. - The laptop surface picks up prints and oil very easily. It's metal, though, so it's easy to clean. - The webcam is supposed to be 720p, but I found the image quality to be pretty lackluster. - The built-in microphone is absolutely terrible. - There are NO options for noise cancellation, echo control or anything of that nature for the built-in mic in Windows 7. Normally the audio chipset provides these extremely common features, but they don't seem to exist in this model.
Overall Review: I had to give this unit 3 stars just for how horrible the microphone and/or its software are. Everyone I Skype'd with could either barely hear me, or would hear me cut in and out, or would get awful feedback because Skype couldn't seem to figure out when I was talking or not (due to the mic cutting in and out). I have used Ventrilo and other voice chat programs for years, so I knew all the tricks to fix these issues, and none of them were working. The driver provides absolutely zero configuration options for noise/echo cancellation. All you get is line volume and microphone boost. Even with everything maxed out I tested the audio in Windows sound recorder just to make sure it wasn't a Skype issue. I could barely hear myself, even with mic boost maxed, speaking loud and clearly right in front of the unit. My voice was cutting in and out in the recording and the audio quality was poor. Since the mic is in the base of the unit, I thought maybe there was some dust or some object obstructing the mic hole, or something loose vibrating under the bezel and distorting the sound. I even broke down the unit, removed the keyboard and front bezel to check - nothing, clean as can be and no visible damage to the mic, nor any loose connections. I don't know if this is the intended working state of the mic or if my laptop just has a bad mic, but it's not acceptable. One of the main reasons I purchased this was for video chatting, and it can't do it because the mic is so bad. Now I'm going to have to carry around the $60 Logitech webcam I bought for my desktop everywhere I go, because it has a built in mic that is miles better than this. Not cool.
Horribly short power connections
Pros: I have no idea. Unable to even hook it up to see if it works.
Cons: Why the hell are these cables so short? The 4-pin CPU power connector won't reach the power connection on the motherboard in most cases. Somehow, the CPU power connector, which is usually one of the longest cables on a PSU because the CPU power connection is usually the farthest connection from the power supply. Not on this PSU. On this PSU, it is THE SHORTEST. Keep in mind this is in a standard mini-ITX case. There's < an inch of space between this PSU and my motherboard and the cable still doesn't reach. If they were any closer they'd be physically touching. And it doesn't stop there. The only two SATA power connectors the PSU has are on the same line, with only 3 inches of slack between them. This is dumb. What if you have two SATA devices (an optical drive and hard drive, perhaps?) whose power ports are more than 3 inches away from one another? You're fuxx0red, that's what. Make SURE you have molex-to-SATA power adapters. And an exceedingly tiny mini-ITX motherboard and case.
Overall Review: I've been shopping on Newegg.com for over 7 years and this is easily one of the most disappointing purchases I've made. I literally cannot use this PSU for anything because of these simple, short-sighted design flaws. I was going to grab a Seasonic PSU at first, and I'm kicking myself now because I thought I'd save $10 and grab this comparable unit that had 4 eggs. I'd love to see the cases this PSU is supposed to go in, they'd have to be the size of toasters for this to be of any use.
Great case overall, some defective parts
Pros: * Spacious - more than enough room for any motherboards/video card on the market * Well-organized - The placement of the PSU at the bottom of the tower plus the sideways configuration of the hard drive bays makes it easy to keep your cable runs clean and neat. They even include zip ties for your cables. I have a handful of ties left over after my build, so there should be more than enough for anyone. * Really, really good design - The front bezel w/ switchable front fan LED, the soft black paint, clean, blunted edges on all panels. The case is as solid as it is pretty. Nothing on this thing feels rickety or cheap, yet it's surprisingly light. It's no wonder CM has built their entire lineup around this design. * QUIET - WOW, is my computer even on? Seriously, I have to check. Every time I bring the computer out of sleep mode I have to look at the front LEDs to make sure it's powering up because I can't hear a thing. The Cooler Master fans in this case are dead silent. I love it
Cons: The one critical flaw that killed this review, and it's major: The front headers are prone to malfunction/break. On mine, just touching a USB cable or flash drive to the front USB header will cause the system to reboot. It seems the headers and cables that came with the case are not grounded or have some kind of short. I have multiple USB headers on my motherboard and have tried several (not all of them because I'm afraid of zapping them all from the static discharge) and experience the same issue. It even occurs when plugging in USB cables with no devices attached! Very annoying and a MAJOR flaw that renders the front headers near useless. I don't know if there is some flaw in manufacturing but it seems a lot of people are having issues with the front USB/Audio/SATA headers. I've only had the case for about two weeks, so I haven't tested the SATA or Audio
Overall Review: A great value at this price point. Best case I've ever built with, outside the malfunctioning USB headers.