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jonathan u.

jonathan u.

Joined on 09/29/12

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Satisfied with my purchase, but...

SilverStone Milo Series SST-ML09B Black Acrylic and plastic front panel, 0.8mm steel body Mini-ITX Computer Case
SilverStone Milo Series SST-ML09B Black Acrylic and plastic front panel, 0.8mm steel body Mini-ITX Computer Case

Pros: It looks like a DVD player from the front which I suppose it could be if desired. It has support for four 2.5 inch drives which I'd guess would be useful for multiple OS drives and a storage disk. Uses a Mini-ITX form factor motherboard. The case is not much deeper than the width of a Mini-ITX motherboard which is great for placing on wall mounted shelves.

Cons: I was confused by the full height PCI-e I/O slot. It looked like it was mounted backwards if one was to use a PCI_e riser cable to use a full height card. The 120MM fan holder has each side bent at a 90° angle. This helps with rigidity. Unfortunately I decided to mount a fan controller in the rear full height PCI_e I/O slot and the 120mm fan bracket interfered with the PCB on the fan controller so I had to get a hack saw and metal file to remove a portion of the bracket so it didn't touch the PCB when inserted. This makes me wonder why the slot is there at all if the bracket is going to interfere with any internal device installed in the slot. Installing 80MM fans using rubber fan screws was nearly impossible due to how compact the case was. If you buy the case don't even attempt to use rubber fan mounts unless you have needle nose pliers that bend at a 45° angle. If you install a 450W PSU be prepared to only install one or two drives in the catty because it's the only place to put all the cables and that's using a modular PSU.

Overall Review: Other than that it's a great little case. I like it. if I had more applications for it I would have bought more than one. With the way the fans are installed and the height of the rubber feet you could even stack the machines on top of each other. It works great as a Mini-ITX server chassis. I was able to build a windows server proxy inside this case to act as a medium for my bigger server.

Most Critical Review

I have concerns.

Athena Power AP-RRP4ATX6808 20+4Pin 800W Redundant 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATLAS 800 PLUS Server Power Supply with PM Bus
Athena Power AP-RRP4ATX6808 20+4Pin 800W Redundant 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATLAS 800 PLUS Server Power Supply with PM Bus

Pros: So far reliable stability wise. Does not mind being under a 475W continuous load. The unit's construction quality is very nice.

Cons: I have to warn you if you buy this product to throw away the included power cables. Each of the two PSU units can independently supply 800W (in the event the other fails). With both of them splitting a 475W load (about 235W/each) their power cables become concerningly warm. Almost uncomfortable to the touch. If I where to install a GPU pushing the PSU probably close to 700W and one PSU failed I have no doubt the active power cable would outright fail and cause a fire. Do not use them. They're thin, flimsy. They feel like they're made out of cheap rubber. Horrible.

Overall Review: Buy some 16AWG or 14AWG cables when you buy this. Seriously for how expensive this is it should have come with top quality cables but it comes with what feels like bargain bin.

Photograph REALLY Needs Updating

NORCO C-SFF8087-8643 SFF-8087 to SFF-8643 cable
NORCO C-SFF8087-8643 SFF-8087 to SFF-8643 cable

Pros: It'll perform the same which is the important thing. (See cons)

Cons: What will show up when it's delivered is not what's in the image. What you will receive is a non-sleeved stiff blue ribbon cable. You can bend it up, down, and that's it. Left/Right aren't an option. The whole reason I picked this item was for it's sleeved cable and every direction flexibility but it would appear that has been discontinued and this photo was never updated.

Overall Review: I would recommend to Newegg to update the photographs or discontinue the item because I'm not particularly happy. The item description doesn't yield any information as to the assembly style of the cable so I had no way of knowing what was going to show up other than the photographs. I gave 3 eggs because it will still do it's job but it won't be fun to install, cable manage, or work with.

Be cautious when used at high temp for a long time.

Arctic Silver Arctic Alumina 14g Premium Ceramic, Polysynthetic thermal compound  AA-14G
Arctic Silver Arctic Alumina 14g Premium Ceramic, Polysynthetic thermal compound AA-14G

Pros: Easy to apply and works well

Cons: If a GPU is standing upright I learned that this compound will start to breakdown if left at high temperatures causing gravity to displace the makeup of the compound. This caused my GPU to have a very hard crusty residue on the GPU die that required much effort to remove. The compound broke down into two substances. A dry putty like substance and a yellow oil. Ultimately the resulting change in state, the separation, and due to the GPU's orientation resulted in the death of my Sapphire R9 290. If you really push your GPU hard for long sessions and you operate it on something like a testbed/testbench. Don't use this compound.

Overall Review: Other than that I've been putting this on desktop CPU's laptop CPU's and other applications and it has worked great.

Surprisingly robust.

EVGA 550 N1 100-N1-0550-L1 550 W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
EVGA 550 N1 100-N1-0550-L1 550 W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

Pros: Despite the horrible condition it arrived in it still turned on and worked. Couldn't keep it though due the potential fire hazard it posed.

Cons: Some PC Rush warehouse employee over estimated how much weight they could put on top of the box before it slowly crushed the unit. The PCB inside the power supply was about as curricular as a persons smiling face and if not for the protective plastic sheet beneath the PCB the through hole components like the big beefy capacitors would have completely short circuited to the casing. That's how badly bent the power supply was when it arrived. Though all of this and against my better judgment powering it on wasn't an issue. It STILL worked. That's a well constructed PSU.

Overall Review: Would recommend. You can warp the PCB and bend the out outer casing till the PCB bottoms out and it'll still work. Don't buy it from PC Rush though. Their warehouse employees are careless.

Great motherboard except for one major bug.

AsRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 DDR3 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 R / LR ECC and UDIMM
AsRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 DDR3 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 R / LR ECC and UDIMM

Pros: 16 Full sized dimm slots. dual LGA2011 socket quad 1Gbit ports Many SATA ports IPMI for remote management Many PCI_e slots for expansion Internal USB port Lots of fan headers all of which can be monitored through the IPMI

Cons: I was having an issue where the IPMI was claiming CPU_BSP1 was skyrocketing to 110°C for 5 seconds then going back to normal. I ruled out the CPU by swamping the two out but the issue persisted. I RMA'd the motherboard after contacting ASRock support of whom told me to check the pins under the socket and when I explained that all was fine in the socket they said just RMA it. So I did. Waited over a week. Got the replacement and I'm having the same exact issue except now CPU_BSP1 claims it's shooting up to 172°C over the course of 12 seconds before going back to normal. It just does this again and again and again at random times and it's always 11 to 13 second intervals. I can only assume the issue is faulty programming in the motherboard. A bad version of the BMC(IPMI). I have doubts ASRock will release an update but other than this persisting issue and the fact the board doesn't support Windows 10 as others have mentioned the board works fine. I would have liked to see a built in 10Gbit NIC. Particularly a SFP+ port.

Overall Review: In case anybody is wondering I found the system will work with 128GB of DDR3 Kingston ECC UDIMM Memory 16x8GB modules @ 1600MHz 2x Intel Zeon E5 2670's work without issue and I found that provided the chassis is wide enough you can install two Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Coolers without them interfering with anything on the board or each other.