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Ken W.

Ken W.

Joined on 12/02/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 39
Most Favorable Review

Incredible performance at this price point.

PowerColor PCS+ AX7870 2GBD5-2DHPPV Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (Vortex II Edition) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
PowerColor PCS+ AX7870 2GBD5-2DHPPV Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (Vortex II Edition) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: The card has a slight factory overclock and significantly better cooling right out of the box. I've owned a PowerColor HD 4830 and two HD 4850 cards in the past and they were always reliable. Benchmarks are incredible on this card compared to the GTX 460 (256-bit) it replaced. Gaming is fluid on the highest settings at 1920x1080 for every game I have thrown at it thus far. This is the quietest ATI/AMD card I have ever owned. While not silent, even with high GPU utilization it's not much louder than my case fans. Power consumption at idle is extremely low and even at load it's fine considering the abilities of this card. Came with a free downloadable copy of Far Cry 3.

Cons: Certain benchmarks (such as CineBench) are barely higher than my similar work computer with an HD 5770. AMD's drivers can often be downright horrible. I have an i7-950 on an X58 board that has been running at 4.2 GHz for a few years completely stable. After downloading and installing my complimentary copy of Far Cry 3 upon its release, my system would encounter a complete system hang and Windows 8 would dump memory and reboot. Thinking this may have been a result of overclocking, I gradually reduced my settings until my CPU was back at stock and my 2133 MHz memory was clocked all the way down to official Intel-spec at 1066 MHz. Still memory dump and reboot. Quite irritating for a game that has a 5-minute opening cut scene that cannot be skipped! Turns out that there was a problem with the "latest" AMD drivers (12.10) when used with X58 chipsets and 7000-series cards. Updated to the newest beta drivers and the problem instantly went away and I was able to return to my usual overclock. I did not take an egg away for the buggy drivers since this is a problem with AMD, not PowerColor's card. I'm used to buying long cards, but this card is VERY long! Be sure to measure your case before purchasing. I had 6 drives (4 in RAID 5 for important data and 2 in RAID 0 for programs) in my roomy Antec case (plus my SSD for Windows) and the card made it impossible to keep all of my drives in. I actually ended up taking the two RAID 0 drives out of my computer since this was a fresh Windows 8 install.

Overall Review: I have not really played around with overclocking much on this card yet (not really much of a reason to since I can only game at 1080p), but look forward to doing so when I can upgrade to a 2560x1440 monitor.

Most Critical Review

Great price but quality control lacking.

Rosewill RTC-TN360 Black High Yield Toner Cartridge Replace Brother TN360, TN330
Rosewill RTC-TN360 Black High Yield Toner Cartridge Replace Brother TN360, TN330

Pros: Price is great and shipping is always fast.

Cons: My company goes through about 10-15 of these a year, so the cost savings versus actual Brother toner adds up. Unfortunately, 1 in every 3 or 4 we receive is unusable as our printers will refuse to reset the toner. I've tried putting them in other printers, using the Sharpie trick, putting in another cartridge to reset then putting the defective one back in... nothing works. Since they're so cheap, it's not worth the hassle of RMA, so we live with a dud now and then.

Works great for 2017 MacBook Pro and 4K Monitor

Coboc USBC2DPMM6FT USB-C Type C(Thunderbolt 3 Compatible) to DP DispayPort 4K@60Hz Cable,Compatible MacBook Pro 2018/2017, iPad Pro/MacBook Air 2018, Dell XPS 15/13, Yoga 910, Samsung S8 - 6 ft.
Coboc USBC2DPMM6FT USB-C Type C(Thunderbolt 3 Compatible) to DP DispayPort 4K@60Hz Cable,Compatible MacBook Pro 2018/2017, iPad Pro/MacBook Air 2018, Dell XPS 15/13, Yoga 910, Samsung S8 - 6 ft.

Pros: Easy plug-and-play to connect Thunderbolt 3 to my 32" 4K monitor. No issues whatsoever, and works much better than the previous USB-C to HDMI cable that I was using.

Cons: No cons at all for me. May not be able to output greater than 60 Hz refresh rate for those that are using this for gaming on monitors supporting higher refresh rates.

Overall Review: Would certainly suggest this cable for anyone needing to output USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 to DisplayPort.

11/14/2019

Perfect replacement

APG VPK-8K-542 2-Key Set with 542 Code for APG Cash Drawers
APG VPK-8K-542 2-Key Set with 542 Code for APG Cash Drawers

Pros: Needed replacement for a cash drawer used with Square Register and Star Micronics printer. Perfect replacement.

Cons: Always a little expensive for what these are, but Newegg's pricing is better than most and delivery time was fast!

Worked better than I could have imagined!

zBoost SOHO MAX, dual-band cell phone signal booster up to 3500 sq. ft. ZB545M
zBoost SOHO MAX, dual-band cell phone signal booster up to 3500 sq. ft. ZB545M

Pros: Very easy to install. No setup involved, just plug and play after finding out where the strongest cell signal is. Installed in an industrial kitchen environment where we recently lost a nearby cell tower due to a highway overpass bridge replacement. We were having issues with no service or only 1 bar inside the building. We now have 5 full 4G/LTE bars for every carrier our employees have (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) - which is actually better than the 3-4 we get outside! I like the simplicity of the flashing green lights after turning it on that shows you how many dB below optimum signal you are. Ours actually didn't even blink, just went solid green!

Cons: No clear directions on how to safely remove the back plate on the base for wall mounting. We didn't want to risk cracking it open, so it is sitting on a shelf.

Overall Review: I was hesitant to purchase this as many of these types of devices have very mixed reviews. We were missing vendor calls, so I took the chance hoping we would maybe get 2 or 3 bars. Never would I have imagined that this would actually make the inside of our building have better cell reception than standing outside in an open parking lot! I would buy another one of these without hesitation!

Good value.

MSI Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Low Profile Ready Video Card R6450-MD1GD3/LP-R
MSI Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Low Profile Ready Video Card R6450-MD1GD3/LP-R

Pros: No external power required. Perfect for my needs (basic office usage, but wanted to free up RAM resources used by on-chip Intel graphics) and quite cheap.

Cons: Box did not include small form factor (SFF) brackets shown in photos. I had to get creative and cut the full size bracket that shipped on the card in order to fit into a slim PC.

Overall Review: Be sure you don't need the SFF brackets if buying this refurbished. For such a cheap card, it was much easier for me to just mangle the full bracket and solder the pieces onto other PCI plates than to try to contact MSI or get an RMA.