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Lance C.

Lance C.

Joined on 09/16/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Working well with no problems.

ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate AM4 AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPU Ready ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate AM4 AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPU Ready ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: I plugged everything in and it works. I flashed the latest beta BIOS and it didn't die. My R7 2700x seems to be working properly. My G.Skill F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR runs like it is supposed to. My HP EX920 M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD is working fine. The LEDs look better than the ones on the X370 Taichi. I have power and reset buttons on the board now. I have 10GBE now.

Cons: A couple more USB ports on the rear I/O would be nice. Some sort of BIOS failure recovery feature would be nice.

Overall Review: This board feels and acts exactly like my X370 Taichi. I don't really feel like I am getting anything over my X370 Taichi in performance, the CPU looks to be boosting the same. Maybe down the road that will change and this board will pull ahead. Right now unless you want integrated 10GBE I wouldn't recommend replacing an X370 Taichi with this. Overall it seems to be working well and if you are in the market for a new board I'd recommend it.

Most Critical Review

Nice but...

Transcend JetFlash 110 4GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) TS4GJF110
Transcend JetFlash 110 4GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) TS4GJF110

Pros: 4GB of space, Fast linear transfers, and retractable plug.

Cons: I ordered this drive for readyboost but upon receiving it vista tells me it is not fast enough. I checked the manufacturers website and saw a review here saying that this drive worked fine with readyboost but mine doesn't. There must be several different revisions in the pipeline. A coworker ordered one at the same time and his does work with readyboost and states so on the package whereas mine doesn't.

Overall Review: I gave it to my wife and I am sure she will be happy with it. If you are wanting a readyboost drive be aware if the different revisions.

Nice clean setup and no software required.

Fractal Design Celsius S36 360mm Silent High Performance Slim Expandable All-In-One CPU Liquid / Water Cooler, LGA 1700 Ready / AM5 Compatible
Fractal Design Celsius S36 360mm Silent High Performance Slim Expandable All-In-One CPU Liquid / Water Cooler, LGA 1700 Ready / AM5 Compatible

Pros: If you have used a Asetek based cooler you pretty much know what to expect as far as mounting and general performance. What sold me on this was the one wire connection to the motherboard and the onboard fan header and no software required to run it all properly. I don't have to worry about CAM frequently taking a dump on me like with my NZXT Kraken X62. I get good temperatures on my overclocked Ryzen 1700 and the AM4 bracket is in the box. I have this unit mounted in the front of a ENTHOO EVOLV ATX GLASS and all I had to do was remove the cover that opens up the front area to the bottom of the case.

Cons: It would have been cool if the snowflake logo lit up but I can live without it.

Overall Review: Overall a nice simple and clean unit that I would recommend if you dislike depending on extra software to run your cooler.

RGBEES!

G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR
G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR

Pros: The memory is very pretty while at the same time being very functional. It is like marrying a model who will go make you a sammich.

Cons: Although they are very pretty I cannot control them. They are wild and have minds of their own. I never know what color I'll see.

Overall Review: I am running this kit on an Asus Prime X370-Pro and Ryzen 7 1700. So we are in the early days here still on the launch UEFI and the fastest I am able to go is 2400 at the sticks rated timings and voltage. I am hopeful that AMD and ASUS will get the UEFI ironed out in the next few months and I will be able to go faster, maybe even up to the 3200 I want. I also can't control the RAM LEDs right now. I found some beta software in the G.SKILL forums but it just caused ASUS Aura to crash. Hopefully they get that ironed out soon too. Aaaah, life on the bleeding edge. Edit: I sucked it up and pulled out 2 sticks losing some RGB goodness but I am now able to run 2 sticks on my PRIME X370-PRO BIOS 0504 at their rated speeds / timing / voltage without issue. So from what I have been reading this might be single rank Samsung B die memory.

Follow-up Review

Patriot Torqx 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PFZ128GS25SSDR
Patriot Torqx 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PFZ128GS25SSDR

Pros: Fast, small, and quiet. It was great while it lasted.

Cons: I purchased my drive on 9/30/2009 and just today like most of the others mine just up and died. I turned my pc off one night and the next day the drive wasn't even detected by the bios at boot. I checked everything on my end, tried another regular drive that worked fine, tried moving the drive to other ports, switching between AHCI and Native IDE, and then even tried flashing the drive and that failed.

Overall Review: I have a request in for support so I will have to see how that ends up. One would think a solid state drive would be more reliable than a mechanical one but I guess that isn't always the case. I'm kind of mad about the sudden death. I thought these things were supposed to fail gracefully. Most of my stuff was on my NAS but I had some work files on the ssd, but I don't want to not RMA an expensive drive. Hopefully when they rework these failed drives their goons aren't siftng through our data.

12/11/2009

SSD Is The Future Now

Patriot Torqx 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PFZ128GS25SSDR
Patriot Torqx 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PFZ128GS25SSDR

Pros: This thing is fast. It makes the whole system feel more responsive. I about crapped my pants with how fast Win7RC installed from a thumb drive. Windows updates install like crazy. HDTune shows more than double the performance vs what I had. It has just been a great experience with this drive so far.

Cons: The ata trim support isn't there yet from what I have read. You can do trim manually with their program but the drive firmware doesn't yet support the ata trim command. Hopefully it comes soon and in a non destructive firmware update. The other thing is the mounting plate included doesn't work well with my Antec P180 case drive cages so I had to just sit the drive in the bottom of my case.

Overall Review: I can't wait until SSD drives come down in price and go up in size.