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Cody T.

Cody T.

Joined on 12/20/10

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 7
Most Favorable Review

Brutally fast card

SAPPHIRE FleX Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100352FLEX-2
SAPPHIRE FleX Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100352FLEX-2

Pros: Ok, this thing is AMAZING. Runs Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, Assassin's Creed 3, Bioshock Infinite, and Planetside 2 on MAX GRAPHICS with x2-x8 anti-aliasing. All games got over 60-80 FPS and it was stable. This card is quick, really quick. 3GB of memory means that any game that allows you to tweak things like how much memory a game uses (skyrim, GTA4, ArmA2) you'll really notice a brutal performance increase. 384-bit, you can really notice the speed with it Crossfire ready, comes with the hookup Has TONS of hookups. 2 DVI with 1 of them being DVI-A. HDMI, mini display ports. Comes with tons of cables and attachments. Fan is EXTREMELY quiet, unless it gets up to 70%, then it sounds like a turbine. But it never goes past 50% so I can barely hear it. Really nice cooling, my games keep it under 65c.

Cons: Can't increase or lower the voltages, card has them strictly set. This is a personal con really. I still have those horrid VGA monitor hookups, so I could only use one of mine because it only has 1 DVI-A port, not 2 (the other is DVI-D). Doesn't really matter, I've wanted to get a new monitor for a while anyways.

Overall Review: When I got this card, the 12.10 drivers had this issue where there would be graphical anomalies in DX9 programs. Occasional black artifacts every 10 minutes or so. At first I thought it was card, but then I remembered that I had been playing Far Cry 3 on DX11 for a few days prior to playing GTA4 and DX9 games. I did some researching for a few days and got the answer that a lot of other people had this same issue on the 7000 series. Anyways, it was fixed in the 13.1 driver update, and currently I'm using the 13.2 beta drivers. No black artifacts anymore, it seems to have been fixed. So if you have this card or any 7000 series card and think it might be broken, just update to the beta drivers. Overall this card is a BEAST. I don't plan on upgrading it for at least a few years. I think this might be one of the best "future-proofing" cards for your system. Highly recommended.

Most Critical Review

Its alright

ZALMAN CNPS5X Performa 92mm FSB (Fluid Shield Bearing) Powerful Cooling Performance CPU Cooler
ZALMAN CNPS5X Performa 92mm FSB (Fluid Shield Bearing) Powerful Cooling Performance CPU Cooler

Pros: Copper pipes Pretty nice design Can blow air directly into the back of your case, not into you which is nice Easy to install

Cons: Kinda loud when it goes around 1600 RPM or higher The plate on the heatsink doesn't fully cover the CPU, which can make it hard to apply paste for it properly Doesn't fully keep my CPU cool, around 45-50c temps on my Phenom X4 965 at stock. They give you a really small amount of paste, it might also be the reason why I'm getting high temps, I think I'll need to reapply with arctic silver. Fan is attached to the heatsink. You can't replace it, if it breaks you need to rebuy the entire thing.

Overall Review: Overall, its good I guess. I'll have to reapply my paste and see if my temps go down, since I don't think I should be getting 50c at stock with an aftermarket cooler. Like I said, it is KIND of loud, but only when it really starts revving up.

This thing is amazing.

MSI 970A-G46 AM3+/AM3 AMD 970 + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
MSI 970A-G46 AM3+/AM3 AMD 970 + SB950 USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: USB 3.0 ports Tons of USB 2.0 ports 7.1 surround sound Amazing bios, a lot of functions for overclocking and little nifty things like being able to use an INTERNET BROWER in the bios. Thats pretty cool, never seen that before. Comes with its own MSI control center which is amazing for handling the fan speeds of your CPU and monitoring temps and overclocking. I keep it on all the time. 2 PCI-express ports 4 RAM slots Pretty responsive if you accidentally overclock something. If you turn your voltages too low or too high, you're computer will almost instantly restart and set it back to default to avoid damage. No need to remove the CMOS battery. Amazing price I just want to say one more time how AMAZING this bios is. Its so easy to use and just has so many features. You can almost run windows from the bios with the functions it has. Supports RAM up to 1866 WITHOUT OVERCLOCKING. You don't really see that much anymore. A lot of motherboards at this range, only go to up to about 1666 and you need to OC, but this one supports it naturally. Very nice. Motherboard is completely unlocked, theres nothing you can't overclock (so be careful).

Cons: Mine came out of the box with 1 dead USB port. It was the 1st USB 2.0 port from the top on the left side. If I plugged anything into it, my computer would run like its having a seizure and wouldn't even boot into windows. Very strange, but since its only a USB port, and only affects one of them, I don't care enough to RMA it. Also theres like 10 other ports I can use, so I don't care. Doesn't come with a VGA monitor adapter like other motherboards do. Only get this one if you have a dedicated video card. Not really a con though. Made my phenom II 965 BE run its voltages a bit high. When I booted it up, it detected my voltage for my CPU to be at 1.51 which is literally .04 under the max voltage for the chip. I don't know if thats an AMD thing, or the motherboard, but I lowered it to 1.42 volts and its running a lot cooler now. So make sure you check all your voltages when you boot this up for the first time.

Overall Review: I was thinking about upgrading to an FX-8350 but upon reading some reviews here, it seems that this mobo doesn't have enough power for it? Very strange. But anyways, thats a lot ways away.

Epic PSU

APEVIA ICEBERG ATX-IB680W-GN 680 W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Power Supply With 3-Color LED Lights
APEVIA ICEBERG ATX-IB680W-GN 680 W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Power Supply With 3-Color LED Lights

Pros: Amazing look. Easily one of the best PSU's I've seen. Can change the LED colors at the back with a button. Blue, Red, Green and off. I like Blue. 680 watts of power so you don't need to worry too much about lack of it. Tons of cables and hookups, and the cables are long so you can fit them inside that NZXT phantom or any case with back-side cable management. Cables are covered in neon-green mesh. Looks really nice. 2 Fans and they're pretty quiet at around 40% or lower, but they can get noisy at higher RPMs. Luckily, theres a fan knob to turn it down if needed.

Cons: If you're installing this on a smaller case, you might run into issues of how big it is and how much cable they give you. Not 80 cert.

Overall Review: Haven't really ever heard of bought Apevia before, but it was a gamble and a good one. My computer runs amazingly well and no problems so far with anything power related. It powers my Phenom X4 965 and 7950 perfectly. Going on about 3 or 4 months now.

Works amazingly

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM

Pros: Pretty good timings, I have mine set to 7-7-7-22 and they work amazingly fine at 1T. 8 Gigs (2 sticks 4GB) Cheap Nice design

Cons: None that I can think of. Works great.

Overall Review: I might be buying another set of these to get 16 gigs of ram. I thought 8 would be enough, but I see the occasional windows is running out of memory error and I really want to enable the pagefile. They're cheap enough that its not really a dent in the wallet.

Decent Hard-drive for the price

Seagate Desktop HDD ST1000DM003 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate Desktop HDD ST1000DM003 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Worked day one, right out of the box (or... plastic wrap) No issues at all, no bad sectors, nothing Runs pretty quick, the 64 meg cache is a noticeable difference to me 1TB Pretty quiet, I can't hear it when it copies, pastes or loads any game. Its like I don't even have a harddrive

Cons: Not 2TB or 3TB Only 7200 RPM Bare drive, no cables Packaging could've been better, it was just literally covered in bubble wrap, no box or anything.

Overall Review: I should've gotten a 10000 RPM or at least a 2TB or 3TB. This was me thinking that 1TB would be enough for a while, but man does it ever fill up fast. I would recommend you get at least 2TB and if you want to game, get the 10000 RPM. Overall this drive is great, no issues, and works quietly.