Soren S.
Joined on 08/28/12
- 85
Great Power Supply

Pros: PFC compatible. Pure sine wave. LCD display. Somewhat adjustable voltage sensitivity.
Cons: I wish I could adjust the voltage sensitivity to be tighter. Something along the lines of 110-130.
Overall Review: This is the best power supply on the market in this price range.
Runs slow due to bug in Microsoft Spectre patch

Pros: This is a decent laptop with a good SSD. One of my clients recently purchased 15 of these laptops.
Cons: There is a bug in the Microsoft Spectre that affects the AMD A6-9220 APU. Instead of the 5-15% slowdown that one might expect from installing the patch, the computer runs dozens of times slower than it should. Just moving the mouse rapidly can cause the Synaptic driver to consume 35% of the CPU and loading a normal website can take up to 2 minutes. Disabling the Spectre v2 mitigations makes the laptop function as expected. There are two registry keys that accomplish this task as described in the official Microsoft documentation. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073119/protect-against-speculative-execution-side-channel-vulnerabilities-in
Overall Review: A user shouldn't have to decide between security or having a functional laptop. Hopefully Microsoft figures out whatever their bug is and releases an updated patch. But it is uncertain when/if that will happen.
This is the FARA 312, even though the FARA 313 is picured

Pros: This is a great case, as long as you want the FARA 312 and not the FARA 313.
Cons: This is not the care that is pictured.
Overall Review: As long as you want the FARA 312 this is a good choice.
Good power supply

Pros: It is fully modular and quiet.
Cons: It took me a few minutes to figure out how to attach the main motherboard cable to the power supply. It attaches in two parts, and as the cables ship they can't stretch enough to both plug in. But if you separate the plastic connections on the cables a little bit then they work fine.
Overall Review: I use this power supply in all my current builds as an IT contractor. I have not had a problem with one yet.
Great Power Supply

Pros: Whisper quiet operation with optional ECO mode (fan is disabled unless needed).
Cons: None that I have found.
Overall Review: I like to use this power supply with client server builds.
Great DVD Drive

Pros: Works well. I have installed dozens with no problems.
Cons: None that I have found.
Overall Review: If you don't want it to ship from overseas, purchase it from one of the available US sources.
- 1
Extremely slow and deceptive to ship
This seller took over 15 days to deliver the item. During which time they issued three separate tracking numbers originating from distinct locations. My sense is that they didn't actually have the product in stock, but instead of admitting that they pretended to ship the product and kept rolling over the tracking number to keep the system from catching them.
