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Frederick B.

Frederick B.

Joined on 01/30/11

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Product Reviews
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Most Favorable Review

Get it before it's gone

EVGA 03G-P4-2664-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 660 3GB 192-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card
EVGA 03G-P4-2664-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 660 3GB 192-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card

Pros: +Quiet +Efficient +Good size; fits well in mid-tower +Runs @ 70C~ with fans at 50-55% (cannot hear fan until it reaches 60% or higher) +3GB of VRam to handle next gen games +1080p strong performer

Cons: none at this time

Overall Review: If you are considering a 2GB 660 instead of a 3GB, please Read: - all GTX660 and 660ti video cards have 3 memory controllers. - 660 with 2GB vram is 1.5GB vram @ 144GB/s (512MB per controller), and 512MB vram @ 48GB/s by itself. - 660 with 3GB vram is 3GB vram @ 144GB/s (1 GB per controller).

Most Critical Review

Died after 2 months

Rosewill PHOTON Series 750W Full Modular Gaming Power Supply, 80 PLUS Gold Certified, Single +12V Rail, SLI & Crossfire Ready - Photon-750
Rosewill PHOTON Series 750W Full Modular Gaming Power Supply, 80 PLUS Gold Certified, Single +12V Rail, SLI & Crossfire Ready - Photon-750

Pros: - cheap - gold 80 plus certified - modular

Cons: - you get what you pay for

Overall Review: Died after 2 months, probably never pushed even past 400 watts load (I buy PSU's to hit the 50-60% efficiency sweet spot at peak load). A capacitor must have blown inside at some point, not sure when as the computer was always on. When I flip the switch and try to power on, even with a 24pin self power on tester, there's a short and barely audible buzz/fizzle noise from inside the Power Supply, and then nothing. flip power back off and then back on, and same short noise again. My guess is cheap caps being used.

Stinking fast

ASUS ROG Strix NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card (PCIe 4.0, 12GB GDDR6X, LHR, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, Axial-tech Fan Design, 2.9-slot, Super Alloy Power II, GPU Tweak II)
ASUS ROG Strix NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card (PCIe 4.0, 12GB GDDR6X, LHR, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, Axial-tech Fan Design, 2.9-slot, Super Alloy Power II, GPU Tweak II)

Pros: - can be heavily undervolted with MSI Afterburner OC Scanner - very quiet for a card that can nearly pull 400 watts. - sits nicely between a 3080 10GB and a 3080 Ti - design and color of card suits just about any build with a big enough case - Full 384bit memory bus.

Cons: - 12GB of VRam will get tight in a couple years, but that's part of planned obsolescence. - its fairly big and chonky - some coil whine at high FPS on stock clocks.

Overall Review: I bought this on deep discount after the 4090 launched, so it was hard to pass up. The strix model in particular is beautiful, and probably one of the nicest looking PC components I've ever owned. The new 4000 series strix design is a step down in the looks department imo. Undervolting is very possible with these cards. I was able to get a stable undervolt of 1980Mhz @ 0.900V (backing down to 1950Mhz @ 0.900V to be confidently stable), but your mileage will definitely vary. Every chip has a sweet spot voltage. At stock settings and high FPS the coil whine was noticeable enough. Undervolting solves this problem, at least it does for me, and the power draw decreased by at least 50Watts under load as well, so big bonus there. (to make Ampere run at a constant voltage, you need to use the OC Scanner -youtube search if you don't know- and alt+mouse-click drag down one of the blocks on the graph so all the blocks are below the max clockspeed you want, then drag the block up at the voltage you're targeting to the frequency you want to test, then click the check box button in afterburners main window to apply, and all the blocks will auto-organize themselves perfectly to be at a constant voltage and frequency under load, while also stepping down during idle) In GPU-Z I noticed that the memory and the rest of the card probably make up 50-60% of the total power draw, making the GA102 a super efficient chip on it's own. I'm not an RGB fan per say, but the programmable light bar on the front of the card is pretty cool, and I can shut it off completely so that's cool too. The fans are very quiet. It's not until they get up past 1500RPM that you start to hear the air rushing, but the fans themselves don't hum or make any noise other than rushing air. All in all, a great purchase.

10/19/2022

Obnoxious PSU fan

Rosewill SMG Series, SMG850, 850W Fully Modular Power Supply, 80 PLUS GOLD Certified, Low Noise Fluid Dynamic Bearing Fan with Auto Speed Control, Japanese Capacitors, Black
Rosewill SMG Series, SMG850, 850W Fully Modular Power Supply, 80 PLUS GOLD Certified, Low Noise Fluid Dynamic Bearing Fan with Auto Speed Control, Japanese Capacitors, Black

Pros: Delivers power, product as described

Cons: The fan ramps up to full speed once load exceeds 400W, and it's loud. For an 850W Gold PSU, I'm surprised. When power load is fluctuating above and below 400W, the fan will speed up and slow down quickly, and the noise is really annoying.

Overall Review: If you're going for a silent build, Look elsewhere. I got this at a steal of a price, only now do I understand why. I'm betting the fan is going to burn itself out eventually, and the 5-year warranty is likely no coincidence. With this in mind, I'm going to buy another PSU that I know is good quality and save this one as a backup. It works, but I don't trust it to last long-term. As far as I'm aware, the fan speed in a power supply should be controlled with internal heat sensors, whereas this Power supply just ramps the fan up to full speed when power load exceeds 400W. I'm certain this is by design, since it is testable and repeatable, and the air coming out of the PSU under heavy load is still cool. Maybe the manufacturer was being paranoid, but Occam's razer would suggest they cut corners. I've had good success with past Rosewill PSU's, but I'd recommend looking elsewhere this time.

10/11/2022

A diamond in the rough

Aorus - 15.6" GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU - Intel Core i7-11800H  - 16GB Memory - 1 TB Gen4 SSD - Windows 11 Home 64-bit - Gaming Laptop - 240 Hz IPS (15P XD-73US224SO )
Aorus - 15.6" GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU - Intel Core i7-11800H - 16GB Memory - 1 TB Gen4 SSD - Windows 11 Home 64-bit - Gaming Laptop - 240 Hz IPS (15P XD-73US224SO )

Pros: -Crisp and accurate display -Plenty of horsepower -Lots of outputs (USBs, HDMI, DP, Fullsize SD Card Slot, headphone jack, USB C/Thunderbolt 4) -Runs like a dream on Windows 10

Cons: -Comes with Windows 11 preinstalled and it's a hot mess (quite literally) -reference BIOS is locked and so bare-bones as to be near useless as-is -Ram is rated for 3200mhz, but cpu-z confirms ram is only running at 2933mhz. luckily it's an intel CPU so not a big deal, but still a waste. If you're upgrading RAM to 32/64GB, it's worth taking this into consideration.

Overall Review: I'd not upgraded any machines at home or work to windows 11 before now (and still haven't), so when I got this laptop I decided "what the hey, I'll give it a shot since windows 11 is pre-installed." After a couple days of use, I was sure I had a lemon because I was getting crackling audio from the speakers and from both usb and 3.5mm headphones whenever I'd pause a game or stay in a game menu for too long, or just sometimes when a sound or song was playing. Something also had the fans screaming and going nuts - even just from watching a youtube video or installing software, unless I forced the laptop into low power mode in the control center. Even enabling core parking and downclocking the GPU didn't help with the overheating and sporadic high temperature readings. I then wiped the drive and installed a fresh copy of windows 10, and wouldn't you know it that solved the problems I was having. Activation happened automatically since windows was already licensed to this machine. the GPU is clocking higher now, with temperatures in the realm of sanity while gaming, which translates to quieter fans now. The sound crackling/hissing is gone as well. Overall I have to give this laptop a 5/5 rating - with the caveat that it has to be running windows 10. Windows 11 might be more stable on this particular machine in the future, but it's not as of the time I'm writing this. Out of the box this laptop was a hot mess. I'm a little disappointed in whoever decided to update these machines to windows 11, and didn't bother to test stability before shipping.

puts most (if not all) AIB air coolers to shame

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: - it's an air cooler with liquid cooling levels of performance

Cons: - not an easy install, requires time and patience - quite long, drive cages may get in the way - large backplate fins might hit system memory heatsinks, some "alterations" to the fins might be necessary to fit around memory heatsinks.

Overall Review: This must be the 5th or 6th Accelero cooler I've bought in more than a decade; there's no other air cooler out there that performs this well. Most AIB air coolers keep the GPU just below the thermal throttling temperature, and do so with fans ramped up and audible even while wearing good headphones. Not with this cooler. This time I've installed the accelero on my EVGA 2080 XC that I bought two years ago. It's always been a loud card under load, with temperatures easily breaking past 80C without any overclock. Now temps after hours under full load will peak at 60C, and as soon as I exit a game the temps drop to 30C instantly. I cannot hear the fans either. This kind of cooling is usually only obtained with water, I don't know what kind of sorcery Arctic employs here, but it's still jaw dropping for me after all these years. My first Accelero cooled an 8800 GTX many many years ago, but I'm glad version IV exists with the large backplate, it takes the worry out of cooling the memory chips and power delivery components of modern power-hungry cards. That being said I'm not sure this cooler will be adequate for the raging hot GDDR6X memory chips on Nvidia's 3080/3090 cards. My advice to anyone installing this for the first (or 20th) time is to take your time and methodically follow the instructions. It took me a couple hours to install this time and I've done it before. Just don't rush it and you'll be fine.