Joined on 10/13/20
Pretty good, with one complaint
Pros: -Good price.-Good quality.-Nice packaging with more cables than I could ever need.-Modular PSUs definitely help cut down on clutter.
Cons: -Cables are absurdly stiff, had to move a hard drive that was positioned behind my old power supply and swap two drive bays to insert SATA cables everywhere they were needed.
Overall Review: Other than the one complaint about cables being painfully stiff, I'd recommend this power supply. It worked out in the end, but was just a bit of a hassle to get everything plugged in properly. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade in preparation of a new GPU over the old bronze-rated 500W supply I had installed.
Great Cooling, Awful Instructions
Pros: -Great cooling compared to my previous front fans, keeps my CPU temp below 60 degrees at a high load. -Quieter than air cooling, though the radiator fans occasionally make quite a bit of noise. -Mostly easy and intuitive to install.
Cons: -Instructions consisted entirely of diagrams - not bad for the most part, but very unclear when mounting to heatsink to the CPU. The bracket already on there has to be pushed inward and twisted off to replace it with the other that fit my PC. Instructions for this simply show a picture of the bracket and say '1/8 turn'. Awful, and caused my CPU to overheat and my PC to shut off the first time I tried to power it on, despite seeming to fit snugly when done incorrectly. Ultimately no damage was done and I found the solution through a quick Google search, but a few words of explanation in the instructions would be nice.
Overall Review: All around a great cooling option. Fans that came with it are at least as decent as what I already had in there, and minus the small lapse in good instruction, it was a hassle free improvement for my PC.
The Best Case I've Ever Had
Pros: -Allows for excellent cable management -Lots of places to mount hard drives (near the PSU, behind the motherboard, etc) -Decent clearance on the bottom for a down-facing PSU -Seems highly durable, no parts seem to bend unexpectedly -PSU shroud hides extra cables if you want (likely in place of one of the drive mounting areas) -Visual design is vastly appealing to me. Goes very nicely with a simplistic build that isn't RGB-heavy (though the black case would probably look great with that, too)
Cons: -More than two included fans would be nice, but they're getting the job done until I can acquire a couple more
Overall Review: This is the second case I've bought by Fractal Design, and both have been excellent. I can't recommend this case enough, and Fractal is certainly my go-to when I build anything else in the future.
An excellent SSD that's served me well in several devices
Pros: -Was easy to migrate Windows from a smaller drive, via Samsung's SSD migration software.-Dramatically improved load times of games and the responsiveness of the Playstation 4 Pro's operating system.
Cons: -None, it's great!
Overall Review: I first used this drive in my PC for Windows and some Steam games I wanted decent loading times on, where it worked well. I eventually upgraded to an M.2 SSD for my PC, and put this drive in my PS4 Pro, where it drastically improved load times pretty much everywhere and made the console's usually-laggy OS work much, much better. Now it's in a USB drive enclosure plugged into my PS5 as external storage, and still works wonders.
An excellent monitor for both my PC and Playstation 5
Pros: -Is a substantial visual upgrade over either of my old ASUS 1080p monitors.-The mount is very sturdy, having less wobble than any other monitor I've used.-Some of the Gameplus features are neat, having onscreen timers and such.
Cons: -Takes awhile to come out of sleep - my PC is already at the login screen before the monitor finishes waking.
Overall Review: A very good monitor for anyone that doesn't want to drop the money on something 4k. The 144hz refresh rate has looked great in every game I've played that supports it. It's the only HDR capable monitor I've ever used, so while I can't compare it to others, the image quality is far, far better than any 1080p display I've used. Even when simply navigating Windows, the difference between this and my previous monitors is night and day.
Great controller, works well with Steam games with some hassle
Pros: -Was recognized by Windows right away when plugged in via USB.-Has enough buttons, and better analog sticks than a cheap Logitech controller I bought this to replace.-Looks sleek and appealing, for what that's worth.-Fits comfortably in my hands (but is a bit on the small side).
Cons: -Required manually binding buttons before Steam would recognize any inputs. (For the record, enable 'Generic Gamepad' support in Controller Settings, and bind it from there).-Feels very small in my hands, compared to every other controller I've used, but is otherwise ergonomic and fairly comfortable.-Having the equivalent to Start/Back buttons at the very bottom of the controller takes some getting used to.
Overall Review: Overall a great controller, only taking about ten minutes to work out all the kinks and have it working effectively. I don't own an Nvidia Shield, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness there, having only bought it for PC use in place of buying an Xbox One gamepad or some such. My only complaints are minor, namely that it feels small to me and the three buttons along the bottom are questionably placed, at least compared to what I'm used to.