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Chris g.

Chris g.

Joined on 01/03/13

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 12
Most Favorable Review

Best mATX board I have ever used for a build

ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: 2 M2 slots Is great. One is NVME and one is SATA. Lots of fan connectors. Nothing is hard to hook up at all. The SATA ports point back instead of up so video card slot doesn’t block the ports. With a BIOS update this board supports GEN 3 Ryzen so I can upgrade from my little Ryzen 3 1200 later on down the road although this little CPU is a baby monster. This guy has a second PCIe 16 slot too for later expansion of sort.

Cons: The only con is I couldn’t read the front panel header labeling on the board so I had to look at the manual and it was specific enough which direction the 2 pin power button cable went.

Overall Review: Would buy and use again. This was my first ASRock board I’ve ever bought.

Most Critical Review

weak reception

Rosewill RNX-N150PCe - Wireless N150 Wi-Fi Adapter - IEEE 802.11b/11g/11n, (1T1R), Up to 150 Mbps Data Rates, PCIe 2.0 Interface, WPS Supported
Rosewill RNX-N150PCe - Wireless N150 Wi-Fi Adapter - IEEE 802.11b/11g/11n, (1T1R), Up to 150 Mbps Data Rates, PCIe 2.0 Interface, WPS Supported

Pros: easy to install

Cons: weak reception .. slow speed and drops connection

Overall Review: I bought this to replace a USB wifi adapter that overheats sometimes but I went back to the USB adapter because this one was so much slower and dropped connection too much. It was too inexpensive to send back or I would.

10/25/2013

difficult case to work in

GAMEMAX INFINITY MINI White Tempered Glass USB3.0 PC Case-Supports Flex-ATX/Mini-ITX - Fans Not Included
GAMEMAX INFINITY MINI White Tempered Glass USB3.0 PC Case-Supports Flex-ATX/Mini-ITX - Fans Not Included

Pros: pleasant to look at from the front

Cons: no cable management. the mount for a 2.5 sata drive is almost impossible to get cables to correctly because of power supply placement. no way to hide the solid black cables inside the white case from the top usb/audio jacks. nice looking case but a nightmare to build in. if you have a m-atx motherboard with 4 memory slots the right third of your board has no support as it hangs off the motherboard mounting area.

Overall Review: would return if it wasn't such a hassle. designed to be pretty not functional.

pretty weak CPU

Intel Core i3-14100F - Core i3 14th Gen Raptor Lake 4-Core (4P+0E) LGA 1700 58W None Integrated Graphics Processor - BX8071514100F
Intel Core i3-14100F - Core i3 14th Gen Raptor Lake 4-Core (4P+0E) LGA 1700 58W None Integrated Graphics Processor - BX8071514100F

Pros: price isn't bad

Cons: struggles even with basic e-sports and fortnite even paired with 32gb RAM. i paired it with a gen 3 nvme SSD, 32gb DDR4, rx 6400. 1080p fortnite on low struggled.

Overall Review: better choices on the ryzen side at this price point. my old 5600g was so much better.

fast for its class

Intel Core i3-10100 - Core i3 10th Gen Comet Lake Quad-Core 3.6 GHz LGA 1200 65W Intel UHD Graphics 630 Desktop CPU Processor - BX8070110100
Intel Core i3-10100 - Core i3 10th Gen Comet Lake Quad-Core 3.6 GHz LGA 1200 65W Intel UHD Graphics 630 Desktop CPU Processor - BX8070110100

Pros: 1. multi threaded 2. feels snappy even with only 8gb of ram

Cons: cheap and lame looking cooler. intel doesn't care about looks.

Overall Review: i needed a media server for my 4k tv. worked great. paired with: asrock 460m pro4 m/b barracuda 500gb sata ssd 2x4gb Patriot Viper 2666 RAM AMD RX 550 2gb i don't care about benchmarks. i care about real world performance i am just a casual gamer. i am minecrafting and wow'ing at 4k on lower settings. i am mostly using this to watch youtube, netflix, and other streaming services.

fan is way too loud

RAIDMAX XT Series RX-500XT 500 W Intel ATX12V V2.3 Power Supply
RAIDMAX XT Series RX-500XT 500 W Intel ATX12V V2.3 Power Supply

Pros: good price.

Cons: the fan in the description is listed as "quiet" but in reality it sounds like a jet engine as soon as you start to game. i should have stuck with a better brand name.

Overall Review: too loud unless you have headphones on