Joined on 02/28/05
Great Value
Pros: Noticeable improvement over onboard audio (Realtek AC892). Definitely worth the money. Headphone amp is a major plus for this card.
Cons: I've been sitting here for like 10 minutes trying to think of a con but I can't = <
Overall Review: For music and movies the speakers I'm using are Klipsch THX ProMedia 2.1. Even on bad sound hardware they perform amazingly so I wasn't expecting to hear much of a difference. I was wrong. I immediately noticed way more accurate bass and crisper highs in music. Before the bass sounded good but it just sounded like it threw generic mud into the song to accent it. It's just what I was used to and I accepted it. Now the bass shakes things in my room that it didn't before and not because of volume but just because the overall bass range is larger now. The headset I use for gaming is the Corsair HS1A. It's a great set but they're not Sennheisers or anything so I felt like this value card would match well with it and so far I'm pretty pleased. At first I felt like the difference was small but then I was like, "oh right, the headphone amp... *click*... !!! =o !!!". The amp just gives all the frequencies a little more boost and of course boosts the volume a bit. Absolutely worth it!
Drive health continues to drop and boot failures rising.
Pros: Decent speeds for its price/class
Cons: It does in fact run extremely hot. I wouldn't care about heat except that I can't help but think that it's tied to this drive's failure rate. I see now that using this model as an OS drive is an absolute gamble. Listen to the critical reviews and they'll tell a similar story. M.2 drives are great in computers, but especially in laptops and other portables. Never would I expect this thing to survive in a laptop/notebook. As others have said, it will in fact burn your skin if you were to gently touch the heat sink on this thing, even while idling! First the drive was working without a problem, then I began to get "disk read errors" before boot, then began "orange screens", which are mentioned by another reviewer, and today I had my very first proper blue screen, all with lower drive health.
Overall Review: Would NOT recommend this drive (especially as an OS drive) Usually I would chop up drive failure to bad luck, you know, just me losing the silicon lottery. However, to see that my experience and particular symptoms are in line with so many other reviews, it really just makes me want to wash my hands of this and move onto another product.
Clean looking and good opportunities for cable management!
Pros: -Simple and not overly serious looking -With the right parts, you can make a very sterile looking rig (I did) -Build quality is not bad at all for this price range.
Cons: -Only 1 fan included (Be sure to factor this into your price when comparing with cases) -Dust filters on the front are potentially restrictive for airflow. Consider removing one or both.
Overall Review: -I went with a pack of 120mm Arctic PWM (I think F12). Pretty happy with that. -Watch the Gamers Nexus video review. They make an excellent point about airflow coming into the front of the case. -Assuming your PSU has a fan on top, be sure to mount it upside down. There's a square vent on the bottom of the case, allowing a PSU fan to breath. If you mount it fan up, it'll just be uselessly pressed against the PSU shroud inside the case. -I have a 2.5" SSD for games, and two 3.5" HDDs for general storage. They're both completely out of sight, mounted in back, with their cables just barely visible when they plug into the motherboard. I have my OS on an M.2 PCIe drive. -It's a snazzy clean looking interior! What I like about the different drive mounting points, is that if you'd prefer to actually see your drives, you can move them to one of the 2 mounting points right on top of the PSU shroud. The choice is yours. -While the removable front face is mostly plastic, the entire mesh screen is metal. Looks good in this price range -Thermaltake honored my MIR within a reasonable time. A great deal after all is said and done! Thermaltake Core G21 ASRock AB350 Pro4 Promonotory AMD Ryzen 1600X G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 8GB 3200MHz GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080
Works just fine, but this is for relatively light duty
Pros: -Running fine with no symptoms.
Cons: -None
Overall Review: I picked this up when there was a MIR for more than half off. I followed through and the rebate was processed in a very reasonable time. This has been my experience with all Rosewill products. I will try and remember to do a follow-up if I experience a failure or something unusual.
Ryzen 1600X at 3200!
Pros: -Worked immediately. Once I got my rig up and running, I set the XMP profile, and I was blessed with a hassle-free 3200MHz!
Cons: -None
Overall Review: I hope that more and more people are able to hit the 3200MHz mark with their Ryzen systems. I am running... Ryzen 1600X ASRock AB350 Pro4 Promontory Just these 8GB of RAM so far. I'll probably double that RAM down the road. I got these on sale and RAM prices aren't great so I settled with 8GB instead of 16. I'm actually really happy with this decision and have not run into any performance issues here.
I'm happy with it
Pros: -What you'd expect out of the 1080. There's no need for me to say how well it performs as it's consistent with benchmarks -Runs mostly quiet, read below. -Clean looking back plate with tasteful "GIGABYTE" in plain white text. Nothing obnoxious looking here. So, with typical mounting, fans downward, it has a nice standard non-kiddy look.
Cons: -My only minor gripe, if any, is that I do get some mild coil whine. (You know, that high pitched sound, almost like a quiet version of a dentist drill)
Overall Review: I would give this a 4.5 if I could, since the coil whine really doesn't bother me, but I know someone else might be more critical of that. It's the kind of thing that I notice as a game is starting, before any game audio starts to come through. Once anything comes out of the speakers, or through my headphones, I can't hear it at all and I completely forget about it. For all non-gaming use, the card is silent.