Pros: B550 chipset System booted right up after a few cycles to detect memory settings.
Cons: More RGB to coordinate / attempt to match colors with other RGB components (if present and visible)
Overall Review: I've had great experiences with the Trident Z Neo kits from G.Skill thus far.Every kit (minus one that I think was physically damaged by a client) works reliably and with no fuss other than the occasional resetting of RGB settings in the appropriate software.
Pros: System booted right upExtremely fast / improved Ryzen system performance when compared to slower memory.
Cons: Yet another device to try to coordinate (or turn off) with RGB control software.
Overall Review: I'm using this memory in a 3950X based system using an Asus Crosshair Hero VIII Wifi motherboard. My render workload performance improved by about 10% when compared to my previous kit of 3200mhz CL16 memory.Keeping the RGB color consistent/the assigned color is annoying and I wish there was a Ryzen specific kit with NO RGB like the previous Trident Z heatspreaders.
Pros: Seasonic Reliability Compact length Plenty of Connectors
Cons: None that I can think of
Overall Review: As another one of many Seasonic PSU's I've used in customer builds, I never have anything negative to say about these units. I've used their top tier offerings along with the OEM units with great success and have had outstanding reliability track records with them.
Pros: Strong all around performance.
Cons: Cost premium over previous generation 3600x.
Overall Review: This chip is fantastic for a great all-around use computer, if you don't need more than 6 cores, this chip is for you.
Pros: Inexpensive Very easy to install (Default AMD clip mount system) No-Interference design
Cons: The lever that locks the CPU cooler mount onto the default AMD clip mount system is fairly flimsy and seems like it will bend or break while locking down the cooler.
Overall Review: I installed 4 of these units on small light duty Architectural drafting workstations based around the Zen2 Ryzen 3400G APU's. During normal use, the cooler remains fairly quiet, ramping up to a very noticeable level. Unlike many small diameter fans, the fan unit supplied with the unit maintains a fairly low pitch noise, even at high speeds which makes the noise much more acceptable, often going unnoticed in a busy office environment.
Pros: Everything is working well so far. Using this K/M combo for a conference room PC works well. The wireless range seems to be as stated, easily operating a machine with no direct line of sight to the dongle from the K/M. Button function on the keyboard seems on par with other solid membrane based keyboards.
Cons: None so far.
Overall Review: Everything is working well so far. Using this K/M combo for a conference room PC works well. The wireless range seems to be as stated, easily operating a machine with no direct line of sight to the dongle from the K/M. Button function on the keyboard seems on par with other solid membrane based keyboards.
Pros: Great paint finish. Lots of mounting options on the frame. The two opening design makes it easy to mount foam gasket tape for improved fan efficiency and minimal air leakage on the frame to radiator side.
Cons: None
Overall Review: I'm using two of these with a 400mm Phobya radiator and (2) Bitfenix Spectre Pro fans for a silent watercooled HTPC (Node 605). The fan grill/frame made it incredibly easy to build a stand with some steel angle and flatstock to mount everything behind the HTPC case.
Pros: Very compact size, quiet operation and the usual rock-solid Seasonic reliability.
Cons: None that I've found so far.
Overall Review: I've used Seasonic PSU's for personal and customer builds for years now. I've only had maybe a 2-3% failure rate, generally due to customer negligence/clogged dust filters. I'll continue to use Seasonic products as they offer a fantastic reliability rate and come in at a very competitive price point. I'm not big on the 'Focus' logo being so emphasized, but that's down to extreme nitpicking.
Pros: Very straight forward, no-frills motherboard. Bios controls are easy, as always for any Asus product, with reliable outcomes.
Cons: The included documentation is a bit light. The front panel break-out pins are not shown graphically anywhere, instead forcing one to rely on the labels printed onto the motherboard; the printed labels are a bit offset, making it a bit of a guess and check for connector placement if you don't have another Asus board diagram to refer to. I'm sure my poor vision does not aid the situation.
Overall Review: I've never had any of these more 'basic' motherboards from Asus fail. Using 30+ such boards in customer builds, the reliability I've come to expect along with the ease of system configuration makes it an easy choice for light duty workstations.
Pros: High build quality and easy to access I/O and power/reset buttons. Very straight forward to build in, enabling a clean build of a light duty office machine. Very appropriate aesthetics for an office workstation, no obnoxious LED status lights, everything is very understated with plenty of flexibility.
Cons: None if you know what to expect with the case.
Overall Review: Don't expect to cram a high performance machine in this machine, there is very adequate airflow for a light duty office machine. These series of cases from InWin are definitely my favorite for a large number of office workstations for several law firm clients, not requiring high wattage components.
Pros: Excellent build quality with top notch finishes. Included fans and filters are very good as well. Easy disassembly / assembly and system building experience.
Cons: With a bit of an usual move, the water cooling specs are lacking. The use of dual 280mm radiators if very difficult, requiring some light cutting of the power supply chamber roof or use of radiators with extraordinarily short end tanks. The use of a radiator in the front position also will occlude a large portion of the removable PSU chamber panel and in turn, push up directly against the slotted water cooling pump mount area. pumps equipped with pump tops, at least the Alphacool VPP755 pump and eisdeck pump top combo are also too tall to use in conjunction with the included Phanteks pump bracket base, especially when giving clearance to the front radiator position. The PSU chamber removable panel is also narrow, not allowing for all 120mm width radiators. The top radiator support is quite adequate but the center position IO cabling and mounts extends over these areas, restricting the front area of the case for radiator / fan placement in terms of airflow as well as possible rad. port access.
Overall Review: Further dimensions given on the height of the PSU chamber, depth/width of the PSU chamber removable panel pass-through, radiator/fan combo thickness limitations and actual allowable lengths of each radiator type/position would have been very helpful. It's not like the information doesn't exist, why not present it?! It seemed like a lot of the fan / radiator issues from the original Evolv mATX were not rectified. I appreciate the 140mm based fan support in the front, allowing for a 280mm radiator, I'm just not sure why the removable PSU chamber panel / cutout doesn't allow for 140mm wide assemblies; I've cut that area of my case to allow for a radiator to extend into the PSU chamber and structural integrity doesn't seem affected in the slightest: no twisting, wobbling etc. Maintaining the side IO for the case would really free up the top fan/radiator compatibility. I've used many Phanteks cases for personal and customer builds and will continue to do so, I'm just a bit disappointed with the lack of dimensional information, especially considering that information was presented for the majority of the rest of the cases, even the previous Evolv mATX had much more robust clearance data. It seems like a lot of carry-overs from the previous internal layout were kept while focusing mostly to the exterior of the steel chassis. A few easy moves could have made a great case fantastic.
Pros: This memory kit is a great value. Solid transfer speeds for the price with relatively tight timings.
Cons: No cons yet.
Overall Review: I've used ballistix kits for years now. No failures or DOA sticks after over 30 kits used. The build quality is great with generally easily coordinated aesthetics.
Pros: Much better read performance than a Sata based SSD. Very affordable in terms of performance to storage amount to price, barely more than a quality Sata SSD.
Cons: none yet
Overall Review: Working great so far, very quick load times, write speeds seem to be much more in the realm of a Sata based SSD.
Pros: Always great quality from Gigabyte. This card was put into a mid-level architectural workstation that required some muscle for real-time rendering of landscape models in 'Lumion' (basically a GPU dependent video game engine for architectural/landscape viz). The card runs very quietly and at low temperatures. No frills included, this card came in at the lowest price at the time.
Cons: None yet
Overall Review: No other thoughts other than the listed Pros. Knowing what to expect in terms of performance, there is nothing to dislike about the card in the slightest.
Pros: stable, high overclocking ability, great fan control. built in features place this in a very high value vs other boards.
Cons: none so far through 4 boards in high performance workstations.
Overall Review: Ive built several workstations based around this board. high overclocking ability and stability can really stretch the legs of a 5820k for a beast of an architectural design, visualization and rendering mainstream single socket rig. havent tried the m.2 capabilities but the built in raid controller is reliable and manages fast high capacity local storage.
Pros: Great performance to price, extremely quiet, easy to install, great aesthetics, top notch build quality.
Cons: None that I can think of.
Overall Review: This cooler is fantastic. I've used it in several cases, Phanteks Enthoo Evolv, Fractal Design Define M, and Fractal Design Node 304. I've used it in single fan and dual fan configurations. The low profile fan moves a ton of air for it's size. Any workstation or gaming rig using this cooler remains very quiet while providing incredible cooling for mainstream/overclocked CPU's (4690K and 4790K chips). The cooler is very easy to install. The removable plastic shrouds look great and are easy to paint for a custom look. Build quality is top notch, easily compared to the likes of Phanteks and Noctua.
Pros: Price to performance, aesthetics, low noise output, ease of installation. This cooler represents fantastic performance to price. It is very easy to install, the footprint allows for plenty of clearance for high profile memory as well as not impeding on the first PCIe lane area.
Cons: None that I can think of.
Overall Review: I've used this cooler in a number of different builds for clients. A low price point combined with great performance keeps me coming back to this unit. The downdraft style lets me fit this into many slim cases while retaining very strong cooling capability. Air movement over heatsinks and nearby components in low profile cases is fantastic.
Pros: Seasonic build quality and dependability. This is a no-frills PSU. This PSU is extremely quiet, even under relatively high load.
Cons: None that I can think of.
Overall Review: Used for a medium duty workstation based on an i7-4790K and an AMD Firepro W4100 gpu, this PSU will easily supply the required power. Some have written the limited number of connectors as a con which is ridiculous, read the specs, no surprises. This unit is perfect for any build that doesn't make use of extensive mechanical hard drives or GPU's requiring more than 150W of supplemental power.
Pros: I ordered 6 of these to install into some light duty Zotac NUC computers being used for solar array monitoring boxes. All 6 worked out of the box. Ubuntu installed quickly, disk performance seems solid, startup and application installation runs smoothly.
Cons: None
Pros: None. Low cost completely offset by incredibly high failure rate.
Cons: Extremely unreliable, lots of controller failures. See other thoughts for small batch failure rate and terrible refurbished replacement units.
Overall Review: I bought a bunch of these at what I thought was a great price promo. Now I have 1 out of 10 that has not failed. ONE OUT OF TEN! The first few I sent back for RMA were replaced quickly by WD with refurbished models. Out of these refurbished models, 1 out of 3 is still operating. The other 2 died while loading OS files. JUNK! The price to ship these back to RMA has quickly replaced the price of getting a quality unit from another manufacturer. I really appreciated getting some flakey refurbished unit that was probably just tested to power on and not much past that. I know my customers see my computer builds as less reliable thanks to these junkers. Even my 11 year old Maxtors are still kicking while these can't even handle 1 day of a windows or linux install. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME TO SAVE A FEW DOLLARS ON THESE!
Pros: Fantastic board. I had no issues with the refurbished product. It worked out of the box, came with everything the retail box would have for $100 less! I was able to stably run my 4790K at 4.6ghz on all cores at near stock voltage, this thing delivers super smooth power! The onboard sound is amazing.
Cons: None that I have found thus far.
Pros: The wrong product information is displayed. The memory is listed as 204 pin DDR3 when it is actually 240pin DDR3.
Cons: The wrong product information is displayed. The memory is listed as 204 pin DDR3 when it is actually 240pin DDR3.
Overall Review: The wrong product information is displayed. The memory is listed as 204 pin DDR3 when it is actually 240pin DDR3.
Pros: Great range on RF receiver, very good battery life. Comfortable size for use by someone with larger hands.
Cons: The two main buttons on the mouse seem to click simultaneously due to the plastic of the mouse body top splitting fairly close to the end (front) of the mouse.
Overall Review: Other than the issues with hitting both left and right buttons on the mouse at once, there isn't anything undesirable about this mouse. The unit looked brand new. I've read many comments on logitechs RF wireless devices skipping out or dropping from the RF connection. This was happening to me as well at a range of 6 feet from the receiver until I installed the Logitech Setpoint software. After installing and configuring the Setpoint software, the mouse has yet to drop the connection while being used in conjunction with a logitech solar powered RF keyboard and other wireless logitech devices being used in nearby rooms.
Pros: Great performance per dollar. Decent GPU temperatures in a well ventilated case.
Cons: Low quality fan motor. Even at idle, I can hear the fan motor on this card. I've got a HTPC built in a fractal design node 605. The case has (2) 120mm fractal design fans that were included with the case and a 140mm Noctua case fan, a 140mm Noctua fan on a Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler, a 550W Seasonic Power supply and then this GPU. Even at idle, with all of the sound insulation in the case, I can hear the fan grinding along, it's easily the loudest component in my HTPC. I bought the reference design card to exhaust the heat out of the case since an open air cooler might have increased case temperatures significantly, resulting in higher case fan speeds.
Overall Review: When I purchased the card, MSI was running a $20 rebate that shows up every once in a while on this card. After sending in the rebate, I was contacted months later, after the rebate window had closed long ago, by the rebate company stating that I had not included multiple items required for the rebate. Logging into my online account provided to track the rebate, I found scanned images provided by them that showed EVERY SINGLE "MISSING" ITEM. Do not buy this card if you are depending on the rebate to make the deal, you can get a higher quality manufactured board from Asus, Gigabyte or Zotac that will not only have higher performance, but will probably be overall higher quality.
Pros: Good build quality.Solid airflow for the front face design sound dampening design.Good cable management space provided.
Overall Review: When removing the front intake filter, the face panel needs to be unsnapped from the main chassis; I wonder how many removals/installations the plastic snaps can take.Other than that small quibble, I really like this chassis and it's partner: the Meshify C Mini.I built an architectural/engineering workstation in it featuring a Ryzen 5800x cooled by a Noctua NH-C14s with a 2nd Noctua 2000rmp 140mm Industrial fan and then a Nvidia Quadro P2200 and the system is inaudible from the 2 feet away on the desk it is.