Joined on 11/10/07
Update to previous review; timings etc.
Pros: I've settled on 15-15-15-38-2T (CL2) and it's running happily at 1.25v or at least what shows as 1.26 in the BIOS but measures closer to 1.25 in action. On my ASUS X99 board I also found it helpful to make use of another setting that gives them a slightly higher voltage just through POST and DRAM training then drops to the regular running level. I set this to 1.28v initial and 1.26 eventual and that eliminated some occasional weird or long POST sequences.
Cons: 1T is definitely not happening with 64GB of DDR4 at this time -- probably with any kit and cpu. After further testing it was probably just silly of me to even try. But I'm very happy with 2766 MHz (104 base clock x 133 x 20) and 15-15-15. Passed MemTest Pro overnight well past 1000% coverage of the full complement of memory and I've had no problems or need to reboot this system for ten days at a time.
Overall Review: Primary usage of this workstation is lots of work in Adobe Photoshop (and Lightroom) while multitasking. It's a joy to have zero wait for any program when switching windows while Photoshop also never has to slow down and reach for swap/scratch space.
Not ready for market; also an abandoned product.
Pros: Faster and much wider-radius connection on 2.4GHz band than the built-in wireless on our cable modem/gateway was able to provide.
Cons: *Linksys was bought by Belkin and this product (and who knows, maybe its original development team) seem to have gotten lost in that deal. That happened shortly after the EA6500 / AC 1750 came out, so it's never really been up to par. * sometimes drops connection for no good reason; android phones have difficulty connecting on WPA2/PSK even at short radius and sometimes won't connect at all unless you use the WPS method. * Occasionally link quality degrades, dropping from >25Mb/s to around 3Mb/s, and stays that way until you reset the unit. * Unit stops accepting administrative login either by wireless or (even worse) by direct Ethernet connection. Sometimes you can factory-reset the unit to fix this, but eventually even that stops working. Mine is now a brick unless I choose to run it at factory settings with no admin access, which means default password is still in place and wireless network is open and default security. * Even worse, the built-in "Cisco Cloud Connect" admin software, a.k.a. "linksyssmartwifi.com" is hardwired to hijack your request to 192.168.1.1. Supposed to be a great idea, you can connect to your router and its attached storage from anywhere on the internet in a (hopefully) secure way. Unfortunately this setup has a major bug that eventually prevents you from making a local admin login even by ethernet. It hijacks your request and sends it to the WAN side, whereupon linksys central reports that it can't reach your router "which is apparently offline". Thus no admin ability. * later firmware has this problem worse than earlier. Don't update if you don't have to.
Overall Review: PLEASE! Do yourself a real favor and read the customer support community feedback on this product, easy to find by a product name search on the linksys website. You will find multiple discussion threads, some running over two years and more than 40 pages of complaints. You will see the consensus in the user community is that this product got lost in the Belkin takeover of Linksys and it no longer seems to have active firmware development. You'll find essentially everyone agrees the firmware is buggy and will eventually lock you out of administrative access.
Flexible, compliant, robust
Pros: * noticeably more flexible than rubber jacketed cords. * woven casing won't eventually split at the strain relief area right after the plug, and this is where most rubber jacketed cords wear out and die. These woven ones probably won't die until the plugs wear out and that should be a much much longer lifetime.
Cons: * The extra flexibility means these can actually get tangled slightly more easily than naturally stiffer rubber jacketed cords, especially if you have a jumble of cords in a pocket or backpack. But I think the longevity and flex are more important.
Overall Review: Best USB-C cords I've had so far. The six-foot one is able to carry nearly 2A when charging, which is less than turbo charging on a C to C connection but it's still quite strong. See pros and cons: these are very nicely flexible and should outlast almost any other cord. Also the USB-C plug has no visible seam or weld, that's good.
Comfortable, good for pelvic tilt
Pros: The Tush Cush converts most computer or work chairs that originally cannot give you a good forward pelvic tilt for good back health, into a sitting surface that does assist you in sitting straight up with forward pelvic tilt. The wedge shape also helps reduce pressure on the hamstring and sciatic areas in the back of the leg, compared to using no such wedge and resting too much on the edge of the chair. This cushion combats the tendency to slump and slouch in your chair. The tailbone cutout removes all pressure from the coccyx area and keeps your weight mainly on your sit bones where it should be. I'm glad I purchased the sheepskin covered version for its wider range of temperature comfort.
Cons: not really a "con", but you do have to re-learn how to sit with one of these. It's there to help you tilt your pelvis forward for a better sitting position, but you're free to ignore its help and still slouch if you really are stubborn. If you refuse to go along with it and you still slouch a lot, you will still have some tailbone pressure just due to the pressure of your bone structure inside of your skin, even despite the shaped cutout in the cushion. If you misuse it that way you may not like it at all. But if you are ready to sit forward in your chair and sit up the way that will help your back much more in the long run, this cushion is here to make that much easier to do. One other "not really a con" is that once you're sitting on this and therefore tilting much more forward in your chair, you will no longer have the support of your chair's back rest except when you go out of your way to lean back against it. Ultimately that is OK and you will be stronger for improving your sit-up-straight habits. You'll be much healthier. But at first you may want to use one other pillow or cushion of some sort between your back and the chair back until your muscles readjust to the new sitting position.
Overall Review: I'm really glad they offer this pleasant "charcoal" color in sheepskin. I probably would have wanted, but not purchased, the sheepskin Tush Cush if it only came in natural.
Good, but can't use the included fans
Pros: I'm running this 4-channel 16GB kit in an ASUS X99-E WS board with an i7-5960X cpu. If you know this platform, you already understand that you cannot necessarily reach your maximum DRAM spec, even using a built-in XMP profile, or rather, you'll do better overall if you leave more headroom for your CPU overclock, which requires not going all the way with DRAM thanks to sharing power with the cpu's integrated memory controller. But with that having been said, this has been pretty good memory. The latency timings required to hit 3200Mhz fully stable are looser than the XMP profile suggests unless you leave your CPU at less of an overclock. At 3900 Mhz on the cpu you can get away with a lot more on the RAM. But at your typical Haswell-E overclock of 4.5Ghz, this DDR4 will most likely not do the rated 16-16-16-36-2T. You'll end up around 18-18-18 and 2T instead. Now once you test and compare some alternative scenarios you'll find that your benchmarks are actually better, or nearly the same, running the memory at 2666 because then you can hit 14-14-14-32-1T and keep it very stable *and* have no trouble overclocking both cpu and cache to 4.5Ghz. Your mileage may vary...
Cons: The cooling fans that come with this RAM use a bracket that really does not mount the little fan bars all that securely. It would be fine if your case was going to be set in one place and never touched, but it's not really secure enough for cases that see a fair amount of motion and things getting moved and reorganized inside or out. I am not confident that the little mem-coolers would actually stay in place and not eventually tilt to the side or fall into other areas. And that is a major issue because the mounting bracket is *metal* and would make electrical contact. Moreover, the end bracket that ends up on the graphics card side of the DRAM slots seems likely to make contact with the back of the graphics card if your PCI-E slot #1 is close. Warning, in at least some ASUS X99 boards the layout is close enough that the fan bracket will only have 1-2mm clearance from most graphics cards.
Overall Review: If you have an ASUS X99 motherboard, and you really wish to mount the included mini cooling fans, you may need to make your own brackets or get into zip ties or other means of keeping these little guys stable. Honestly I just skipped them, I have very good airflow to the area and my RAM does not get too hot even when stress testing.
Quick, Painless, Outstanding
Pros: My first liquid cooling rig in a beast of a new X99 workstation. The Liqtech 240 is installed on a brand new i7-5960X. Installation was very VERY easy. The only hard part was "hey, where am I going to put the radiator because I have no control over the fixed length of the closed-loop hoses". But I found a good spot by moving my power supply to a different position. The radiator now fires directly out through my 200mm oversized case-top fans in a big cooolermaster case and life is good. This unit looks awesome, though I don't care. But that was nice to see. The cooling capability is PERFECT. I'm not an extreme pusher, but I took this 8-core monster CPU from stock 3GHz to 4.6GHz with only multiplier and moderate voltage in a very short time. The CPU is idling around 35C, ordinary desktop use spends very little time above 40C without ever hearing the twin 120mm fans on the radiator. In order to cause any fan noise I have to get most or all of the 8 cores up above 80% for any length of time. I think the pump runs at a fixed rate while the radiator fans are variable (and PWM, I think? not 100% on that). Basically in order to get any loudness out of this rig I have to do things I normally wouldn't ever need to do, or I have to intentionally benchmark or burn-in. I have not gone into heavy gaming with this box yet so it remains to be seen whether I will ever hear the radiator over average game sound but I really doubt it. This is WAY quieter than my old air-cooled rigs with Noctua push/pull fan blocks. There's no way I will ever go back to air cooling if liquid cooling is this easy and successful. It's over. The overall build quality and solidity of the parts in this unit is just amazing.
Cons: The hose length is just short enough to slightly reduce the possibilities for various mounting locations. But users to whom that really matters are likely building their own cooling loops.
Overall Review: I look forward to a very long and enjoyable service life on this. I expected to be slightly scared and un-trusting of liquid cooling but this has been an unexpectedly solid first experience. Strongly recommended.
All good, no problem
Took a day longer than I would expect to process the initial order, but then the correct product was shipped on time and delivered on time.