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Blake R.

Blake R.

Joined on 07/06/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 8
Most Favorable Review

Good Snd Card, Great Price

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350 5.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350 5.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

Pros: Great sound quality, esp. for the price. Even Makes my 2yr old $xx 5.1 ch speakers sound good. Plenty of equalizer options etc.

Cons: Driver installation wasn't as easy as it could have been, but the latest drivers from creative's website fixed the issues I was having.

Overall Review: Do not use the drivers that come with the card! Instead Get the latest drivers from creative's web site. Other than the bundled drivers the card is great. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Most Critical Review

Low quality BIOS makes this board a dud.

MSI ARSENAL GAMING B450 TOMAHAWK AM4 AMD B450 USB 3.1 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
MSI ARSENAL GAMING B450 TOMAHAWK AM4 AMD B450 USB 3.1 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: It was cheap. VRM's don't overheat.

Cons: Memory overclocking is pretty lackluster, but the real disappointment is the CPU boost behavior. This board seems to handle boost much worse even on a low power part like the r5-3600. It all comes back to the BIOS. It's buggy as can be. PPT doesn't work EDC doesn't work AMD Raid didn't work for some versions of the bios. I am aware that the Ryzen 3000 CPU's rarely hit their rated boost clocks, but this board is just downright worse in performance on any and all applications when I don't have a static OC at 4100mhz. On top of the many bugs and performance issues, I just found out it won't be getting AGESA 1.0.0.5 This is a slap in the face considering that this board still hasn't had a decent BIOS release to begin with, and it prompted me to actually write a review for once.

Overall Review: This would be a solid board if it wasn't for the BIOS, but I suspect updates are a dead end at this point.

Bought it 3 years ago. It's still working

GIGABYTE M6800 GM-M6800 Noble Black 4 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Gaming Mouse
GIGABYTE M6800 GM-M6800 Noble Black 4 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Gaming Mouse

Pros: Works pretty well, and was quite cheap. It's still working 3 years later I didn't work as nicely as my old deathadder, but it's passable.

Cons: The little rubber pads on the side game unglued. Common issue with cheap mice. Cleaned off the old glue, and I don't really notice.

Overall Review: Not the greatest mouse, but definitely one of the better cheap mice.

I've been using this stuff for about 15 years. It's great

Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G

Pros: It works very well. It's cheap. It's thermal paste

Cons: None

Overall Review: There are a few thermal goops out there these days that outperform Arctic Silver 5, but not by very much. There's liquid metal products, but they're tricky to apply and corrosive. The rest are within a couple degrees of Arctic Silver 5 so I just never had a good reason to try them.

This thing looks slick

NZXT H510i - Compact ATX Mid -Tower PC Gaming Case - Front I/O USB Type-C Port - Vertical GPU Mount - Tempered Glass Side Panel - Integrated RGB Lighting - Water-Cooling Ready - White/Black
NZXT H510i - Compact ATX Mid -Tower PC Gaming Case - Front I/O USB Type-C Port - Vertical GPU Mount - Tempered Glass Side Panel - Integrated RGB Lighting - Water-Cooling Ready - White/Black

Pros: Love the way it looks. Couldn't have been easier to assemble and cable management was a breeze. Just shove them in the back lol. Feels nice and solid. Included fans are quiet enough.

Cons: Cooling performance is not an issue at all with the r5-3600, but I could see something like the 16core cpu's getting pretty toasty with a radiator mounted in the front due to the limited airflow in front of it.

Overall Review: Really like this thing. It's nice and quiet. Looks great. Cooling performance is more than enough for my system.

My kit overclocks like a champ, but your mileage may vary

CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model CMK16GX4M2B3000C15W
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model CMK16GX4M2B3000C15W

Pros: Mine came with B-Die

Cons: None

Overall Review: Got mine to run stable at 1866mhz by loosening the timing way up using the ryzen dram calculator as a baseline and then tightening down every single timing one at a time. tCAS 18 tRCD 21 tRP 20 tRAS 38 tRC 66 tRFC 590 1.35v