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Jacob C.

Jacob C.

Joined on 02/09/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 16
Most Favorable Review

Says no crossfire... APU/XFX allows enabling of Xfire

XFX Radeon HD 6670 2GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Graphics Card HD-667X-CNF3
XFX Radeon HD 6670 2GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Graphics Card HD-667X-CNF3

Pros: The card specs say you cannot crossfire, and I can't say it can for sure, however, after tinkering with my bios, I can enable crossfire with the A8 APU. I purchased this card primarily for 3+ display setup, as I work from home, and after some tinkering, it absolutely works for that.

Cons: I can't think of any. Under 100 for 2gbs of Vram, and it looks great in portal 2, so I have absolutely no complaints.

Overall Review: Card is a steal at this price, performs really well. Great card at a great price! XFX's doorknob tag they include with the model and make is pretty convenient in the chance you ever need to look up info about the card and don't have internet access and don't want to pop open your case.

Most Critical Review

Would be amazing if archos had some QA to speak of

Archos 5 120GB 4.8" WiFi Touch Screen Internet Media Tablet and MP3/MP4 Player
Archos 5 120GB 4.8" WiFi Touch Screen Internet Media Tablet and MP3/MP4 Player

Pros: BEAUTIFUL screen - a hidef 5inch screen is a great thing. The accessories are wonderful. The internal speaker would be wonderful. Really powerful device, and great price right now on newegg. The OSK is amazing. On the fly playlisting is a good effort, if not perfectly managed at this point - no way to throw entire directories into it. The file browser/networking support is great. I love being able to stream directly from my pc! List of supported filetypes is huge - this thing has saved me the trouble of looking up game guides, I just toss them on and open them up.

Cons: Don't know where to start. I bought the unit and it heated up right out of the box when I browsed the internet, until it froze and restarted itself. Repeatedly. I mailed archos asking of the speaker vent was also a heat vent, because I'm left handed so it was usually covered, they replied with an rma form and nothing else. I emailed them 2 more times and they failed to get back to me at all. It was disturbing how poor their customer service was to me. The problem seemed to vanish when I tried to keep my hands off the vent, but soon after, the speaker failed. I'm hoping I can RMA the device in time, at great inconvenience to me. I'd hate for the speaker to have failed say at, 2 months. I don't want to bugger with archos for warranty stuff. That's just asking for trouble, I'm betting.

Overall Review: Be careful. Archos products aren't known for really picking up they're own slack. Don't buy the device for "future funtionality" buy it if you like what it does now. And be careful. These devices seem to have a very high fail rate. if they worked? 100x better than an iphone.

Won't post with fx9370 out of the box.

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 AM3+ AMD 990FX USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 AM3+ AMD 990FX USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: None; unusable.

Cons: -Completely unusable for FX9370 build.

Overall Review: I assumed that because the board is compatible with a number of visheras out of the box that it would at least post, or allow me to update the bios. Not only is this not the case, it also doesn't generate any beeps or any information whatsoever. it also fails to post with no CPU, which I know is a longshot, but was worth a shot. I don't even know if it's DOA or not. Fans spin up, lights go on, board gets power, but absolutely nothing happens. I tested multiple for sure working RAM modules and several different GPUs in several different slots. I have spent hours testing the blasted thing with multiple configurations but I'm up the river because I don't have a spare AM3 processor to upgrade my bios. I don't understand how they can advertise that it supports these gpus without mentioning that it requires not only a bios upgrade but that this upgrade is impossible without an older CPU. upgrading from an APU machine, I do not, and I am furious. AVOID this board if you are going with a 9370 or similar, check the compatibility list on gigabytes website and make sure if you need a bios upgrade you have something that works!

as a gamer and heavy multi-tasker, this thing is amazing.

AMD FX-9370 Vishera 4.4GHz Socket AM3+ 220W 8-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition FD9370FHHKWOX with Liquid Cooling Kit
AMD FX-9370 Vishera 4.4GHz Socket AM3+ 220W 8-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition FD9370FHHKWOX with Liquid Cooling Kit

Pros: free water cooling, outperforms my Cooler Master Hyper N520 Extreme performance for my needs.

Cons: doesn't grant wishes does not taste very good

Overall Review: I run six displays over 3 GPUs. Rather than an ultra-wide setup or eyefinity thing, I just use a 55in screen for gaming/primary, and the rest host chat/monitoring/email/browser/etc. In a work from home enviroment this makes it very easy for me to jump from gaming to research to working to chat and back... I do not like alt tabbing. My previous architecture was an APU as I was on a budget. While this performed very well and even gamed decently for the price, I had waited some time to upgrade as it meant a new mobo, new socket type, new cooler, and no onboard video backup. But... the second I fired my system up, the difference between this and a 4 core setup was just mind blowing. Nothing I threw at it could slow it down. It was a great buy and I'm super happy with the performance vs the cost.

Failed within 12 hours.

ECS A990FXM-A AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
ECS A990FXM-A AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Cheap for a 990FX board. Good layout of PCIE x16 slots, none of that three right next to each other and can't fit a double sized card and use all of them that you see sometimes.

Cons: Exploded, belched reaking smoke, ceased working within a day.

Overall Review: Exploded in less than a day. I had set up and used my machine normally with zero issue. Gaming performance was real good, even CPU intense stuff went great. A few hours before work, I thought I'd fire up prime95 while monitoring the temps, to see how quickly it spikes and how the water block that came with the fx-9370 performs. Not 5 minutes in, my computer started wretching pink smoke and shut itself off. Horrified, but curious, I popped off the panel and powered it up for just a second to see the source; northbridge. I pulled the board, wasting all the time I'd spent getting the water cooler situated which of course had to be removed to get the board out, and take a look; I didn't have any loose metal, or an accidentally unneeded motherboard stand. Nothing near the problem spot... it simply overheated, melted the plastic pin holding down the northbridge heatsink, and destroyed itself from there. For me, that's horrible. I know a single incident of failure isn't proof of a low quality product, but what if this had happened a month from now, when I couldn't RMA with newegg? DOA, that happens. But quick failure scares me and leads me to fear a company does not use high enough quality parts for me to want to purchase from them. I want something that will likely outlive it's warranty.... and in the future, I will not be going with ECS. Fortunately, my components otherwise appear to be undamaged, but the jury is out on the FX processor.... I'm really, REALLY hoping that's undamaged.

One lasted less than two years.

Famous Brand 25" 60Hz Active Matrix, TFT LCD LCD Monitor 5ms (on-off), 3ms (Gray to Gray) D-Sub, DVI, HDMI TSS-25B9
Famous Brand 25" 60Hz Active Matrix, TFT LCD LCD Monitor 5ms (on-off), 3ms (Gray to Gray) D-Sub, DVI, HDMI TSS-25B9

Pros: The price was right, 1080p

Cons: Heavy Out of 2, one failed in 18 months.

Overall Review: I bought two of these in early 2012. One is still working good (I'm typing on it!) but the other started making horrible sounds from the back a couple weeks ago. I turned it off disconnected the power and used canned air to blow it out, the noise stopped. Today I got up and it was flickering rapidly as soon as I turned it on.