cover
Paul T.

Paul T.

Joined on 10/04/06

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 8
Most Favorable Review

Good PSU But...

Rosewill LIGHTNING-1300 - 1300-Watt Modular, Active PFC Power Supply - Continuous @ 122 Degrees F (50C), 80 PLUS Gold, ATX 12V v2.31 & EPS 12V v2.92, Intel Haswell, SLI & CrossFire-Ready
Rosewill LIGHTNING-1300 - 1300-Watt Modular, Active PFC Power Supply - Continuous @ 122 Degrees F (50C), 80 PLUS Gold, ATX 12V v2.31 & EPS 12V v2.92, Intel Haswell, SLI & CrossFire-Ready

Pros: Obscene amount of power and a huge single 12v rail.

Cons: First one died a year and a half after purchase.

Overall Review: This PSU is great, it'll power whatever you have in mind guaranteed. It did die on me right before the big snow. I was all set to work from home and when I powered the machine on i heard a pop and that was it. RMA took 3 weeks but they were accommodating because i didn't have the box or some of the accessories. I haven't stress tested the replacement yet but so far so good. I'd buy it again if I had to.

Most Critical Review

No way to remove drive without damaging case

Tek Republic TUE-300 Aluminum Brash 2.5" Black USB 3.0 Hard Drive External Enclosure for 9.5mm 7mm HDD and SSD (Optimized for SSD, Support UASP)
Tek Republic TUE-300 Aluminum Brash 2.5" Black USB 3.0 Hard Drive External Enclosure for 9.5mm 7mm HDD and SSD (Optimized for SSD, Support UASP)

Pros: It's a pretty sleek looking drive and I liked it at first.

Cons: Didn't work with my 64GB SSD so when I went to remove it I discovered it was impossible to do so without destroying the case. I was gently working my spudger along the edges and even with that all the tabs that lock into place snapped off which makes it impossible to put another drive in without the sides falling off the cheap plastic bezel.

Overall Review: Only buy if you're sure that the drive works in this case and only if you never want to remove it afterward.

11/20/2014

Good laptop but not without its flaws.

ASUS ROG - 17.3" NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M - Intel Core i7-4710HQ  - 16GB Memory - - Windows 8.1 64-Bit - Gaming Laptop - (G751JT-CH71 )
ASUS ROG - 17.3" NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M - Intel Core i7-4710HQ - 16GB Memory - - Windows 8.1 64-Bit - Gaming Laptop - (G751JT-CH71 )

Pros: Two bays multiple drive options (mSATA or 2.5inch form factor.) Two user accessible open ram slots. (The other two are on the other side of the motherboard and require disassembly to access.) Excellent cooling and quite operation, no need for additional cooling pads. Bright screen visible from all angles. Decent webcam for chatting and pretty rich sound for a laptop. Plays games very well, I was thinking of ditching my 8 core desktop and slapping the 3 port display port adapter onto this baby and running it as my main machine from now until It's obsolete.

Cons: Laptop hinges are positioned near the center of the screen not on the sides which makes me worry about long term durability and snapping them if something pushes against the frame of the lid while it's closed up in a bag. The disk drive pops open every time I grip the side of the laptop because the button protrudes enough for my palm to activate it. The charger that comes with the laptop has a 90 degree angle bend and tends to slip out frequently when moving around or getting comfortable. The touchpad is so big that the edges of my palms frequently activate the windows 8.1 gestures and bring up the side bar or put me into the start screen while i'm typing. Internal battery non user replaceable of course and in high performance mode or when gaming it only lasts two hours. That said it lasts nearly six hours when placed in power saving and when doing usual browsing and watching netflix. I've taken this thing on a plane from DC to LA on a single charge.

Overall Review: I upgraded from 16 gigs of ram to 24 with two sticks of DDR3 I had laying around. In addition to that I added a Samsung EVO 840 and windows allowed me to use the restore partition on the original drive to then install a new copy of windows onto the new SSD. (I now use the 1TB it came with as a data drive, it also houses the original restore partition in case I ever need to revert back or if my C drive fails and needs replacement.) It has worked flawlessly so far, the only problem I had was with a bluetooth driver but that's more the fault of Windows 8.1 than it is with the laptop. For all its minor flaws it's still a good laptop, I don't think I'll need to replace the battery till it's out of warranty anyway and by then i'm sure there'll be a tutorial and parts for that sort of thing somewhere on the net.

Good but...

SYBA SD-PEX40054 PCI-Express 2.0 x2 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) HyperDuo 4-port RAID Controller Card
SYBA SD-PEX40054 PCI-Express 2.0 x2 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) HyperDuo 4-port RAID Controller Card

Pros: Easy to use interface, works fine in raid 10, cheap.

Cons: Takes forever to rebuild a failed disk, doesn't like rebuilding encrypted disks.

Overall Review: Using a raid 10 with four 4tb Seagate drives. Recently started to encrypt the array. One of the drives failed or lost its partition data and as such the array became degraded. Tried to rebuild and it kept failing, past rebuilds have taken forever which is typical. I'm probably going to get a card that does raid 6 since my array is limping right now. I may use this card in my main desktop to raid 4 SSDs together. Otherwise I wouldn't use it for a serious application.

wow.

Nippon Labs DVI 5 HDMI 15 ft. HDMI Male to DVI-D Adapter Cable with Gold-plated Connector, Black
Nippon Labs DVI 5 HDMI 15 ft. HDMI Male to DVI-D Adapter Cable with Gold-plated Connector, Black

Pros: Long

Cons: All 3 defective.

Overall Review: Out of the three cables I received today, one didn't display at all, one made my screen all sorts of colorful with red pixels dotting everything, The other just didn't want to stay in the connector. Jiggled, the cables swapped them into different monitors. Checked the HDMI and DVI ports with a similar cable and everything else checks out. Either I'm very lucky to of gotten three defective cables or they are very poorly made. I tend to lean twords the latter. Buy at your own risk.

Piece of Cake

LINKSYS WAP300N Dual Band N300 Wireless AP
LINKSYS WAP300N Dual Band N300 Wireless AP

Pros: Easy to Use setup, upgradeable antennas.

Cons: No custom Roms, cheap and dumb so you have to tell it what to do. You can't set these up automatically and expect it to magically work 10 times out of 10.

Overall Review: I too have a high degree of networking/IT experience, CCNA certified and such. These access points are not junk if you know what you're doing. I have 4 of these configured with a roaming management controller. Upgraded 3 of them with 9db omni antennas and one with panel antennas pointed at a friends house. I can see my network from anywhere on my block. Amazing what you can do with cheap equipment. If yours isn't working chances are it's a ID10T error or your hardware is faulty.