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GAVIN T.

GAVIN T.

Joined on 01/02/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 16
Most Favorable Review

Great

Intel Celeron E3200 - Celeron Dual-Core Wolfdale Dual-Core 2.4 GHz LGA 775 65W Processor - BX80571E3200
Intel Celeron E3200 - Celeron Dual-Core Wolfdale Dual-Core 2.4 GHz LGA 775 65W Processor - BX80571E3200

Pros: This is basically the equivalent of the old E2220 Dual Core Pentium (which is now discontinued) except that it is a 45nm (not 65nm) chip. Plus it includes VT (virtualization) tech on the chip. This is more than a "Celeron" so don't be fooled, it has great overclocking potential. The chip is designed to run at 200Mhz (800Mhz effective) with a 12x multiplier to give 2.4Ghz. Most brand name motherboards allow you to change the front side bus (FSB) and you can easily turn that up to 266 or higher wihtout changing anything else. That puts you well over 3.2Ghz on a $50 chip. In fact there are several mentions of this chip reaching over 4Ghz on air cooling at a reasonable 333Mhz FSB (1333).

Cons: The stock cooler is minimalistic at best. Of course if you want to have a quiet, low power machine this may be great. If you are considering "playing" with this beauty then you'll need to purchase a better heatsink/cooler. The chip has limited L2 cache at 1Mb (but what do you expect for the money).

Overall Review: If you have a decent chipset such as P35 or P45 you will have a lot of fun with this chip. It's worth buying just to play with. I have it in a Shuttle G31 box running it at 3.2Ghz and it flies. I will defintely try to take it higher sometime in the future.

Most Critical Review

Only lasted 5 weeks with iPhone 11

RAVPower Fast Wireless Charger 10W Max with QC 3.0 Adapter, Station Compatible with iPhone 12 Pro Max mini/AirPods Pro/iPhone 8/XR/XS/iPhone 11/S9/S10
RAVPower Fast Wireless Charger 10W Max with QC 3.0 Adapter, Station Compatible with iPhone 12 Pro Max mini/AirPods Pro/iPhone 8/XR/XS/iPhone 11/S9/S10

Pros: This seemed like a great device and I had high hopes for it. Appeared well made and packaged.

Cons: Right at the 5 week mark the unit stopped charging my iPhone 11 and the red light on the device now just blinks constantly. I tried an alternate micro USB cables and charger but the pad appears to have failed. It won't charge anything.

Overall Review: In the past I've found RAVPower to be a good brand. Similar in my mind to Aukey and Anker. They produce useful and reliable products which don't break the bank. In this case it was a let down.

LED issues after 3 months

AUKEY Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Customizable RGB Backlight, Tactile & Clicky Blue Switches, 104-Key Anti-Ghosting Wired Keyboard with Surround Lighting, Steel Body for PC and Laptop KM-G12
AUKEY Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Customizable RGB Backlight, Tactile & Clicky Blue Switches, 104-Key Anti-Ghosting Wired Keyboard with Surround Lighting, Steel Body for PC and Laptop KM-G12

Pros: Compact keyboard Relatively Inexpensive Good keycap illumination Windows key lock

Cons: Some keys have an uneven feel when pressed Backlight blue LED on one key already has a failed (owned 3 months) Not a real con, but navigating the LED options is not intuitive.

Overall Review: I own two of these keyboards. One has been great and I am very happy with it. The second (newer) keyboard has issues. With previous mechanical keyboards the feel of the keys is general very similar. With this keyboard some of the longer keys, such as the Shift and 0 keys are a little sticky / tacky feeling. It isn't terrible but I do find it distracting. More annoying right now is that blue component of the M key backlight no longer works. Any color which uses blue looks wrong. As I use a white backlight at night the key looks yellow! Right now I'm worried about the longevity of this unit, otherwise I'd be really happy with it.

Can overclock G3258 - see notes

MSI H97 Guard-Pro LGA 1150 Intel H97 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
MSI H97 Guard-Pro LGA 1150 Intel H97 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Cheap, solidly built motherboard. Quality seems good. Feature rich UEFI although H97 chipset is limited in how to use these features. For a budget build it's been good, motherboard, CPU and memory for about one fifty. Re-used a case, PSU and had a spare cooler. The combination runs my World Community Grid units about 3 times faster than an old 2.8Ghz Core2Duo machine I had dedicated to it.

Cons: Don't be fooled by MSI's website, the manual or the BIOS about easy overclocking on a H97 motherboard. The H97 is not designed for it. It was originally designed for business use and stability. The manual is shared between the Z97 and H97 and lots of features (such as CPU overclocking) are not available. There is a work around (see other thoughts). Half the time the motherboard would not recognize my SSD when booting until I disabled 9 of the 12 boot options.

Overall Review: Back in July 2014 a hacked bios was released that allows this motherboard to overclock the multiplier. It's not available through MSI but several sites link to it (called E7923IMS.TK2). Owning a G3258 it allowed me to take the 3,2Ghz CPU up to 4.2GHz with minimal tweaking. It should go higher but I am learning the steps, currently I've hit a wall at the 43x multiplier :(

12/14/2014

Worked for 2 days

Mee audio N8-CR 45 degree 3.5mm stereo, gold plated Connector Binaural Noise Isolasion In Ear Headphones (Chrome)
Mee audio N8-CR 45 degree 3.5mm stereo, gold plated Connector Binaural Noise Isolasion In Ear Headphones (Chrome)

Pros: Cheap with promo code. Look pretty stylish.

Cons: One channel died after only 2 days of use. They weren't used in a harsh environment. Not sure I want to waste time and money organizing and RMA and shipping these back to Newegg.

Overall Review: I've purchased lots of MEE headphones over the past few years. They usually last a few months before something happens to them. I have always felt we were getting our moneys worth out of them. Unfortunatley it looks like I may have to look at a different brand in the future.

Follow up - Still Hopeless

D-Link DCS-940L 640 x 480 MAX Resolution RJ45 Wireless N H.264 Network Camera
D-Link DCS-940L 640 x 480 MAX Resolution RJ45 Wireless N H.264 Network Camera

Pros: I am struggling to find any. The camera appears to work pretty well in low light. I have hung on to this camera in the hope of firmware / support improvements... But they haven't come.

Cons: I've had this camera almost 2 months and even though D-Link has released two App updates for ios5 issues and the release of ios6 this camera still crashes the mydlinklite app. I also purchased the mydlink+ app and the app is unable to ever connect to this camera. Remote access appears only available on a Windows PC.

Overall Review: I purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment for my business, and currently D-Link is contacting me about becoming a VIP+ partner. I don't think I am interested if you are going to not support you products. I have now seen the more expensive Logitech cameras in action and viewed on an iPhone.... If you are looking for a remote camera solution, then maybe looks at those.