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mark w.

mark w.

Joined on 05/10/01

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 12
Most Favorable Review

Good clean board

MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: Very clean board with everything I need and little that I don't, well laid out for my case and has nice colors. Stable so far but not really pushing it.

Cons: Horrible overclocking ability, lost an egg for that. The bios is the most restrictive I have ever seen, it's pretty and a 6 year old can use it but it's almost useless do anything of importance in it. IMO if you can't work in a text based bios you really don't need to be messing in one anyway.

Overall Review: Would have easily been a 5 egg had not been so restrictive on timing and voltage changes. They also should have spent less time on a GUI and more time on a better user guide.

Most Critical Review

Decent case but check PS style

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: Looks good, like the front screen style. Great cooling but a bit loud if you fully populate with fans. Provided fans come with speed adjustment. Plenty of stand-offs and thumb style screws. Received from Newegg in a day.

Cons: Power supply sits on the bottom, this works well for a front to back "pull" cooling PS. If your PS has the newer style bottom to back "push" method of cooling you have to turn the power supply over which puts the cable bundle next to the door and the air draws from the hot air coming off of the video card (or blocked by any other PCI card). Case is very light (for steel) and the power-on button feels cheap and worn already.

Overall Review: Has some nice features but really should be a sub $50 case. I like the PS on the bottom which eliminates the top heavy feel but dont' like having the cables on the wrong side covering my access to everything. The case could have been a couple of inches taller and left any PS in the correct fashion.

Poor components

Razer DeathAdder 3500 PC Gaming Mouse - Black edition
Razer DeathAdder 3500 PC Gaming Mouse - Black edition

Pros: Good size, buttons work well and are responsive. Nice glide and tracking also.

Cons: Worst wheel components ever. I have never had so much issue with the wheel scrolling. Makes my FPS games unplayable (which is why I bought this mouse in the first place). Scrolling down = scroll up, scrolling up = jump all over. Garbage!!

Overall Review: Great mouse if you don't need or use the wheel scroll.

Works well

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

Pros: 24 hours of burn-in testing without a hitch. Very inexpensive compared to other memory (ddr1-ddr2).

Cons: none yet

Overall Review: not big on red but whatever.

Nice upgrade from 550Ti

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 01G-P3-1460-KR
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Support Graphics Card 01G-P3-1460-KR

Pros: Overclocked to 950/4400 with just a little extra juice. Clean burn-in without issues. Great to see what I was missing with lowered setting 550Ti card.

Cons: Fan can become annoying just when I don't want it to be. Card can get hot 80C+ during burn-in testing and tough games. Otherwise the card is almost silent.

Overall Review: Lost 1 egg due to combo of fan and rebate annoyances.

Great for the money

Cooler Master HAF 912 - Mid Tower Computer Case with High Airflow, Supporting up to Six 120mm Fans and USB 3.0
Cooler Master HAF 912 - Mid Tower Computer Case with High Airflow, Supporting up to Six 120mm Fans and USB 3.0

Pros: Nice layout, very easy drive installs, good cable management features, roomy and nice airflow. Good quality for the money.

Cons: Big: The motherboard standoff screw connectors came in different length sizes, 2 were on the board already and were cone shaped near the top and bent the motherboard during install, luckily nothing was damaged but still took me a while to figure out why I was having problems getting it scr&w&d down Small: SSD drive bay (in center of bottom) got in the way of my PS cables, I had to remove it. They did provide a SSD drive converter for the 3.5 drive bays, wish they sent 2 instead of the center metal one.

Overall Review: Better than my old Antec 300 although a little bigger. A lot of features that you usually see on much more expensive cases. Amazing you can't say the words "scr&w&d down" on a hardware sales sight. Really??