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David F.

David F.

Joined on 07/26/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Critical Review

Worst Purchase on my Build

Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Pros: Lots of things wrong with this case. I will use all three blocks to list them. 1. The air flow in this case is dismal. If you plan on over clocking or even ruining dual SLI, then you might as well plan on buying new case fans. 2. The holes for mounting brackets on the base board are very poorly drilled, and they WILL strip your brackets. 3. The accessory fixture on top has WAY to short of cords for the USB and Firewire ports. If you plan on running dual SLI, kiss using those ports good bye. The cords will not clear your cards. To add onto it, the actual ports are very flimsy and feel like they would break with to much use.

Cons: 4. The plastic "tooless" clasps that are meant to hold your optical drives in place do a very poor job. Unless you want a ton of rattle and the life of your drives to be cut in half, use screws to secure everything. 5. This is a GIANT case, and the people that are buying this case are most likely doing so to fit their GIANT parts inside. These GIANT parts require a large power supply. This case DOES NOT support large power supplies. If you are using a power supply that supports anything other than just your run of a mill mother board and single graphics card, then it will fit. But if you have a power supply that requires more than average space, then prepare to sacrifice the top fan and have to remove a few parts of the case just to get it in. 6. The "tool less" PCI slot holders are joke. Be prepared to either remove them permanently or at least to take them off, then jimmy them back on every time you install a new PCI card. They will NOT work with modern cards.

Overall Review: 7. The front side hinged things are.... useless. They will block the ejection of your optical drives and catch on them when they try to close. No point for them being there. 8. Out of all the fans that come with these case, only 2 have connectors do your motherboard. On top of that, all of the fans are bottom of the barrel and move very little air. 9. This is the BIGGEST issue. The leader holes drilled for the mother board do NOT align with the backplate. They are off by almost a quarter of an inch. I had to warp and bend my board and PCI cards just to get them to line up enough with the back plate to be able to plug in my moniter/speakers/USB components. This case is WAY over hyped. Please make sure you read the "bad" reviews and not just the fan boy ones. There is a ton wrong with this case that you will not find in others.

Unstable headache

Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 4400 (PC4 35200) Desktop Memory Model PVS416G440C9K
Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 4400 (PC4 35200) Desktop Memory Model PVS416G440C9K

Overall Review: This memory has been a headache and I'm suffering buyers remorse for the first time in 20+ years of PC building. Every time I think I have this memory stable, it works for a period of time, and then becomes unstable again. For starters, it does not work at advertised speeds out of the box. It's default is 2133 MHz. To get anything higher than that you have to manually overclock because XMP profiles cause the system to completely refuse to boot, requiring a BIOS reset to revert it back. I manually overclocked the RAM using specs another reviewer had left, and it was stable for about a week before just spontaneously becoming unstable again. I went from zero crashes, to a crash every couple of hours. Changing the OC settings made it stable for another couple of day, and then more crashes. Today, I expected my PC to boot since it worked fine all day yesterday, but like has happened time and time again, the RAM decided it's not going to boot today with the settings that WERE working before. Back into the BIOS I go, to set it to the settings that it refused to boot with last week, and lo-and-behold it boots just fine. I've never had so much trouble with RAM before and am extremely disappointed with this purchase.

No power adapter

Aposonic A-CDBIV07 1000 TV Lines 2.8-12mm Sony IMX238 Outdoor Weatherproof IR Varifocal Camera
Aposonic A-CDBIV07 1000 TV Lines 2.8-12mm Sony IMX238 Outdoor Weatherproof IR Varifocal Camera

Pros: I don't know.

Cons: This is the first camera I have ordered out of 7 that did not come with a power adapter.

Overall Review: I have not been able to use this camera because I'm not an electrician and uncomfortable just plugging in whatever adapters I have on hand and seeing if it works or not. I'm equally unsure of what to order since all the 12V adapters have different amperage ratings. I called customer service for more info but the rep had a hard time even understanding what I meant by power adapter so I ended up hanging up. If anyone knows what adapter I can order to make this camera work, then please let me know. No adapter has been a huge inconvenience.

Unused item

Western Digital WD RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital WD RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: I payed $79.99 for this drive 3 months ago.

Cons: I've seen others talk about how this HD is for "RAID only". I did not realize this when I ordered, but after reading some reviews I decided to not even bother using it in my PC. The drive now sits unused on my shelf.

Overall Review: I ordered this drive to replace a Western Digital Caviar Blue that was my "back-up" and crashed with 2 years still left on it's warranty. After being caught between the crashing hard drive and all that data lost (it was my back up), and then ordering this drive that is apparently for "RAID ONLY" (I'm still terribly confused about this), I decided to just go with a different hard drive manufacturer for my needs.

3 years, 5 months of use here...

Western Digital Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: The hard drive began showing signs of failure about one month before the 3 year warranty ended. I used it heavily so it is good to see a product last as long as the warranty, I suppose.

Cons: The hard drive ended up completely crashing at 3 years 5 months from purchase date. I say this is a con because for me to be loyal to a brand, I expect them to EXCEED my expectations.

Overall Review: I gave this hard drive 3 stars because, in my opinion, products that only last as long as their warranty are average, at best. Ford Motor Company's vehicle's power train warranty only lasts 60,000 miles, but if every Ford stopped working at 65,000 miles, no one would buy a Ford.