Joined on 10/01/13
Great fan for the price
Pros: Quiet, very easy on the eyes, moves a good amount of air
Cons: None
Overall Review: I personally love this fan as a main intake for my PC. In the front mount it looks a bit like a swastika in blue, but this is something my own head sees. Cools the hdd's as it pulls a significant amount of air into the tower, and for the price you cannot go wrong.
Nice Case (to Mod)
Pros: -Nice Design -Bottom Mount PSU -Appears to have great cooling options for a mid case
Cons: -Appearance is deceiving -The front fans are odd... they click in to place w/o tools in the front, but at the cost of high impedance of airflow (what is the point of 2 nice size fans if half the air is blocked? -The top holes do not have mounting brackets of ANY kind. I cannot understand why a case would be made with a large "hear escape", yet no holes are drilled. -All fan mounting areas are highly blocked.(read notes/other)
Overall Review: Although the case is nice and sturdy, it has its flaws. All I can say is, if you do not mind planning and doing some modifications, you will be perfectly content with this case. Putting together an optimal setup with this case... I have used power tools to cut my own holes for mounts, air holes to stop impeding air from fans, and extra vents on the bottom of the case to take advantage of the cooler air. The mods were not difficult, but you need to measure, mark and use the right tools. You will need some strong cutting discs to make it through the front piece, but it makes roughly 10 deg Celsius drop in overall case temp. The rear fan hole being cut brought it down a little bit as well. The top mount part was a challenge though. Since I had chosen liquid cooling, I needed to mount the mobo, measure the room, and mount special holes with a small offset to ensure it did not touch the board in a push/pull setup. But as I said, if you do not mind modding the case, it is cheap, nice looking, and VERY nice once it is properly vented and setup. I would have tried a front mount cooler but I only had a 140mm rad version to use. I would LOVE to design cases, b/c there are SO many ugly ones out there, and others just don't include the features that newer builds really need. Yeah, looking nice is important, but it is dumb to block the airflow on smaller cases like this. Also, cheap side wall mounts for 2.5 drives would be able to hide a cheaper "backbone" rather than requiring all the extra drive bays. I'm SURE customers would go crazy for a cheaper case that has ACTUAL airflow, rather than a bunch of gimmicks that are cosmetic. The ones that are gonna cool well are also ridiculously priced. So a cheap case with a couple different features would really stand out in a market full of cases that are all the same... hot... full of stuff that most dont need... and are very generalized. Do we make cars so generally? No. Most other things in the world are customized to the users, and offer different options. So having a cheap case for one crowd (high airflow), might have different requirements prioritized than the ones who need a sturdier case. Or one that can hold a lot of drives. But who is building a mid-ATX PC with 8+ HDDs? Who needs all these slots? Those two blocked 120mm fans arent gonna cool all those drives too well. Using 4 HDD mounts, (esp sideways like the high-end Corsair 760 types), could dramatically improve airflow while also keeping that bulky junk metal out of the way so builders can actually hide their wires and make it look decent. The market REALLY needs some cases tailored to the customers, that are affordable. Not just custom tailored to the high-end systems, that can afford to drop 200-400$ on a case. Just for an extra option or two... that might cost a couple bucks to make. Cases have remained the same while every other component in PC's has changed drastically. It's about time for some manufacturers to take a step in to the unknown... and actually help extend the life of customer's parts. Not just make them look nice while they overheat and pffft.
Surprisingly nice! 3rd purchased so far-
Pros: Great price for the product. My first purchases are running strong as daily use. - GREAT for everyday usage (like watching movies or storing D/L's (like the dang 350+Gb Wiki file)) - Had ZERO problems plugging into USB3.0 caddy and SATA+Formatting to different file systems Windows/Linux - Its an Enterprise model - always a plus when they actually last (so far none have died on me and they play videos for hours everyday) - Nicely packaged (usually wouldn't even mention but the specialized bubble-HDD wrap with the specialized anti static bag sealed - it doesnt come with packing peanuts and a creased anti static wrapper like many other places w/ refurbs) - Price:Product = You seem to get something well worth the money (I haven't had a problem yet - will edit if any occur)
Cons: These are not truly Cons, buy more of concerns that I keep an eye on: - Gets warm (35C ish) in use when in USB caddy. I have purchased a cheap, clear "laptop cooler" for 8$ to remove the 3 lighted fans, then used Velcro tape to attach to caddy and blow air on the drives). W/o that it could go higher... but that is expected. Inside a PC was roughly the same results. Not anything out of the ordinary w/ magnetic drives. - Obviously anyone would be anxious when storing important data on them... Although they have not warranted that concern from actual usage yet.
Overall Review: For the price, they're great drives. I would not want to go storing massive crypto-wallets or other highly important data on them w/o contingency plans like RAID or the like. Using them as storage for side apps (if saving space on a primary OS SSD) that are not as "HDD-speed dependent", or for storing downloads (or simply isolating data), tends to work out well. Even using them in a NAS environment is highly beneficial. It simply comes down to - How important is the data you are storing? They've worked well for me, purchasing each one at a different sale (not all at once). But from my exp and what I've read each time, these drives have high hours and a handful of restarts... But still work very well for the majority of ppl. And with the indicators of low restarts and high hours (averaging between 15k-30k hours and usually less than 10 restarts), they were clearly in a NAS-type scenario for their lives. The SMART attributes all look good as well (though some drives might say Caution in apps like CrystalDiskInfo, but i haven't had a failure or change in attributes in months of light to medium use. Also, they average around 130MB/s w/ xfers too. Ive gotten higher and lower results before, but HDDs xferring varies based on how the target and destination interact ( kind other factors). What im saying is... These drives have worked well, and have been comparable to my WD Caviar Black drives of equivalent size and attributes (2TB, 6Gb/s SIII, etc.). $35 compared to 2x the price.. In other words - GREAT PURCHASE!
Wow - was on the fence but i now LOVE these fans.
Pros: - FINALLY, Noctua in BLACK! (still kept that ugly brown for rubber guards) - This version is a LIL loud at absolute full speed BUT, nowhere near what ppl made it out to be. Extremely manageable unless youre a silence nut (N in that case, go game at the library!) - Very strong static pressure esp with gaskets and a sealed environment channel. - Great solution to gain a bit extra speed/static pressure and get rid of push/pull w stock fans on liquid coolers. (since too many cases anymore do NOT consider PUSH/PULL rads with LGA mobos (top heat sink gets in the way of even most "pregapped" cases. These fans will ensure you can still move a LOT of air without paying TETRIS w your PC components trying to get them to fit juuuust right.
Cons: - none - SOME ppl might say noise, but it really is not THAT bad. Yes, 100% CAN and will get a tiny bit noisy if it is on the case perimeter. Under my push/pull (inside the case, w two original A14s on top), i barely hear the 2k rpm models rev up. But i also have a ton of fans. Still, inside a case, i don't see noise being an issue until you move PAST 2k rpms.
Overall Review: I personally did not think they were too loud compared to having 10+ other fans running in my Air 540 case. Then again, controlling the airflow is very important to me. I like to know i can run these to really boost the amount if air in whatever systems i install them into. These fans are amazing and help directional-ize the flow. For a rad, i would only go up to this 2k rpm model. The 3k DOES get a LITTLE loud, but to me... Even that one was bearable. I ran it as a main exhaust and it worked beautifully. I would suggest using these for your rad, and the 3k for exhausting air. On a rad, the 3k would absolutely need a fan profile highly tuned (or itll wind up and down during virus scans n anything that makes temps jump). You also do not want these fans without some form of speed controls. Full speed full time would get annoying. Near full speed is perfect tho. Unless buried in a case w sound deadening material to dampen. All you really hear is air getting forced... No whines or other noise issues. Overall, solid fans for the money and they don't rattle around. They move tons of air, and are completely worth the money to protect your expensive processors and liquid coolers. I have them on all CPU/GPU installs i liquid cool, just bc i trust them to work under the worst conditions and still shine. * Gigabyte mother board users beware - I know the 970 and 990 chipsets allowed Voltage or PWM control, but Intel versions do not seem to always have that option if at all. Due to their "behind the times" PWM controls, i have found that only the CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT headers are the only fans to work from the start at POST. When id plug a fan in any SYS_FAN header, itd stall until getting into Windows most times (unless i just restarted and the system is still warm). But just to note, the fan IS NOT dead. Use the Easytune software and youll have the fan working np. It just seems that the SYS_FAN headers do not provide enough ooopmphh, to start the fan initially. With a splitter, this problem was fixed (powered spliter via sata or molex). But from the headers i mentioned. The SYS ones don't work as great. But i can assure you the fans are not faulty or dead. Its good old Gigabyte.
Great Performance:Value
Pros: - Cheap on sale - Pretty snappy as NTFS or exFAT file systems. - I collect TF and regular SD cards for caneras, and i stick with UHS speeds. This card performs along the same line as the Sandisk and PNY equiv. The picture to picture reload time was very low with this card which i like to bring as a backup.
Cons: - Really, none. It does what it is advertised to do... I cannot complain about one thing. Price, speed compared to advertised, etc.
Overall Review: Beyond the use for cameras (IP and handheld), i like to have an assortment of fast cards to preload OS's to, for USB deployment wherever you go. This card has enough storage to get by for this use, is fast enough to not want to tear your hair out waiting (not the 10MB/s some cards average out at.). The price on sale made me want to pickup a few more actually. If you plan to stock up for pentesting or simply to take pictures at your next big event, these cards are worthwhile. Great performance for the price.
Great Product
Pros: -Amazing range -Solid connections -Creates more of a WiFi "bubble" compared to a beacon shape like a lighthouse light (as larger antennas do) -Fast connection @ 270 Mbps internally (on a constant basis - used driver only not entire suite) -Connects through old walls that other adapters typically do not - And is STILL much faster than others
Cons: -ONLY 2.4 GHz band -I prefer black, but the color of the green light bothers me more (green and white don't match any of my other pieces - but this was the only option) -I wish that I was able to secure an original v1 or older version that supports packet injection - as this would be an amazing adapter for pentesting *(the v1 can, although v2 and v3 do not - Not 100% sure.. v2 might support, but I have received the version that does not)
Overall Review: I like that this can be positioned in many different manners w/o affecting the signal much. As I mentioned, it is more of a bubble of broadcast, rather than a beacon from a lighthouse. So those who have the injection-capable version are lucky... it is a great adapter, but I purchased this over a year ago and received the non-injection model. So I doubt that the injection-capable version will be available on many sites that do not list it specifically. Overall, an amazing adapter for wireless N... I would definitely suggest others purchase this adapter if they are in the market for a strong, fast 2.4 GHz connection via WiFi. And just to mention, the version I received was capable of usage in Linux with a simple update command. In case anyone intends to use for Linux (Kali, Ubuntu, etc.)
Works for me
I have had no problems with this mouse and actually like it a lot. Honestly, 8200 DPI is a little too much sensitvity but the software allows for 4 settings of your choice. Some complain that the software resets after closing the app, but this is untrue. If you save your profile as you should, the main app setting may reset but your profile remains active. Lights work great, response is great and for someone with bigger hands, this mouse is great. It has stopped my bad habit of holding the mouse askew. The only issue I had with this was the shipping and that is not the seller's fault. Neither was the fact it was advertised as wireless but it not. Either way, great mouse, decent price and no issues so far. I will update if problems arise, but I personally love this mouse so far.