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John D.

John D.

Joined on 04/10/10

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Great SSD card

Intel X25-M Mainstream 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSA2MH080G2R5
Intel X25-M Mainstream 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSA2MH080G2R5

Pros: Easy installation Great IOPS

Cons: You get accustom to the speed - and then its not fast enough for you LOL

Overall Review: Be sure to update the firmware - it helps The I/o controller hub ICH9/10 does not support Trim in RAID mode and your goin' ta want that. So while its fun to run them in Raid 0 - write amplification is going to kill your write performance.

Most Critical Review

Intel Raid not playing well with others

Intel RAID SAS/SATA 4 internal port w/ 512MB cache memory PCI-E 2.0 x8 Controller Card (RS2BL040)
Intel RAID SAS/SATA 4 internal port w/ 512MB cache memory PCI-E 2.0 x8 Controller Card (RS2BL040)

Pros: The 040 is a great Raid card. It has automated configuration wizard to help you setup your Raid array based on your needs. They also provide several pdfs on Raid design. Running 4 WD 1001FALS 1 TB drives in a Raid 0 read transfer rates of 450MegaBytes/sec. Writes were also fast with the Write Back 512 MB cache taking up the slack the O/S would otherwise see from the HDDs.

Cons: They show 6Mb/s but that is ONLY FOR SAS HDD. You will see 3Gb/s on your SATA HDDs. This card is doing nothing to future proof your machine. Intel support assumes that you are running on their server boards - and they test that way too. This means that incompatibilities across hardware are not picked up by them.

Overall Review: Solid ROC card. Troubling Drivers and configuration in Windows 7 x64 on non Intel brand Motherboard.

Slient Heat

CORSAIR AXi Series AX1200i Digital 1200W 80 PLUS PLATINUM Haswell Ready Full Modular ATX12V & EPS12V SLI and Crossfire Ready Power Supply with C-Link Monitoring and Control
CORSAIR AXi Series AX1200i Digital 1200W 80 PLUS PLATINUM Haswell Ready Full Modular ATX12V & EPS12V SLI and Crossfire Ready Power Supply with C-Link Monitoring and Control

Pros: This is a quiet PSU. If you sit next to you machine as I do you will be glad you bought it. The 12 volt rail reports 12.000v; 5 v rail reports 4.920v; and 3.3 reports 3.264v. It's temperature says near 38C under light to moderate loading. You pick the power cords you need so nothing left over in the case.

Cons: It gets to 38C and lets the case fans deal with its heat load. This is kind of lazy. The other components are working to pump their heat out of the case. It's quiet but not moving its share of the heat either - feels like they have dialed it down too far. It is attached to an ASUS MB - the integration software Link2 does not work as it should with the ASUS x79 MB. I have uninstalled it, which is aggravating and disappointing. I believe Corsair has not lived up to its promise. After all ASUS is a main stream MB manufacture. Consumers reasonably expect these two product lines to work together. When using the Link2 the temp reports were strange - -1C for example. The fan control was not right and I had other related problems with this software and driver. I'm afraid the software engineers (integration and test too) let the hardware engineers down here.

Overall Review: I really like Corsair product normally. I buy their PSU with out bothering to compare to other venders - because they have so often earned my trust and respect for the quality of their work. The PSU itself is great but for the money I spent - I expect them to get the software right too.

Loving this Monitor

Acer GD235HZbid Black / Orange 23.6" HDMI Widescreen 1080p NVIDIA LCD 120Hz 3D Monitor 300 cd/m2 ACM 80000:1
Acer GD235HZbid Black / Orange 23.6" HDMI Widescreen 1080p NVIDIA LCD 120Hz 3D Monitor 300 cd/m2 ACM 80000:1

Pros: Fast refresh - windows are solid. Nice depth of field with no glare Great game play

Cons: There is a flicker on start of Window 7 x64 - I think it may have to do with moving from 60 to 120Hz as the drivers load.

Overall Review: It was pick right up by Win 7 x64 plug and play.