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Timothy S.

Timothy S.

Joined on 02/23/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 22
Most Favorable Review

Great Power Supply

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply

Pros: Quiet , High Quality internals , 5 year warranty , Plenty long cables for bottom mounted cases , 4 -8pin PCI-e connectors , 8 pin CPU connector ,comes with a nice bag to put your odds and ends in . Single 12volt rail @62 amps ,so no wondering which cable to hook to what to spead your power out over multiple 12 volt rails .Stable power 12v-5v-3.3v never fluctuates under any load my system can put on it !

Cons: Maybe ....the price ! (see other thoughts)

Overall Review: You get what you pay for in a power supply ! And if there is 2 places you should never skimp or cheap out on when building a PC it's your Power supply and your Motherboard , the two are the very most important things for a reliable machine . If your building a computer that gonna need some juice to run than buy this thing and your off to a solid foundation for your build ! My Build : Motherboard: ASRock 890FX Deluxe 3 Proccesor: AMD Phenom II X4 3.4GHz 125W @4.0GHz Heatsink and Fan: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus VideoCard:SAPPHIRE 100314-2SR Radeon HD 6870 1GB RAM:(2x) G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB 2 x 2GB 1600 (PC3 12800) F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 4 dimms for 8GB total Hard Drives: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB (Raid 0) Power Supply: (THIS ONE)CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W Bottom line is this , buy this and get the peace of mind of having a high quality power supply with added security of the 5 year warranty !

Most Critical Review

duk ,,,don't bash a excellent motherboard vendor for your ignorance

ABIT AN52 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520 MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
ABIT AN52 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520 MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: First of all Abit is an eggcellent manufacture of motherboards and you'd be hard pressed to find better for less if you even could,,no emails from Abit support or no reply to request for support means you did'nt contact them or you got problems with ''YOUR'' ISP and the mail was'nt recieved ,call their support phone # during normal business hours and you'll get through ! if not leave a message they WILL get in touch with you !

Cons: New motherboard ,sooooo,its gonna have growing pains ,,ABIT is good at BIOS updates and most likely will fix any real issuse

Overall Review: TO: duk, 1st ,this is a budget based board .2nd the 2600 videocards are fairly new and may not work all that well with any motherboard til BIOS updates make them more compatible,for best compatablity you'd been better off with a AMD based chipset motherboard ,3rd read th manual ,it clearly states ,that a MINIMUM 400 watt power supply is required and with that 2600xt your gonna need more than the minimum ! ABIT is a TOP NOTCH mainboard provider with great support ! I own 4 ABIT boards ,1 died after a year and a half,but RMA thru Abit was painless and was back up and running in short period, Foxconn(winfast) is also a great motherboard manufacture,,but unlike ABIT,,you will get 0 and I do mean 0 support other than BIOS updates

HEY BIOSTAR (Give me a free board and I'll do your proof reading)

BIOSTAR A780L3L AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
BIOSTAR A780L3L AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Wondering ?

Cons: Go to YOUR WEBSITES page for the motherboard http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/content.php?S_ID=495 Click on the "Manual" link ( which is this URL ) http://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Manual/A78LC-M3S_100607_B.zip It clearly states that this is ( A780L3L Setup Manual ) Now on page 4 of the PDF which is "MOTHERBOARD FEATURES" it CLEARLY states CPU Socket AM3 AMD Sempron / Athlon II / Phenom II processors (Maximum Watt: 125W) AMD 64 Architecture enables 32 and 64 bit computing Supports Hyper Transport 3.0

Overall Review: Any smart PC builder such as myself ,knows that resellers often will have WRONG INFORMATION about the product their selling ! And always does A LITTLE RESEARCH and reads the manual (if available) before purchasing a product for a build , to make sure there's NO SURPRISES ! If you'd like me to do your PROOF READING for you , I'd like to be paid for it ! Since obviously whomever your paying to do it isn't doing their job ! A FREE "TOP of the LINE" AMD socket AM3 AMD chipset board would suffice as payment (this time) Makes me a little weary of buying any of your products that are critical components (like a motherboard) if you can't find something this simple . AWAITING that FREE BOARD !

Good Speedy Drives

Western Digital Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Fast drives when configured in Raid 0 . Faster than alot of the cheaper SSD's and you get 931GB's of storage after format , using 2 in Raid 0 on Windows 7 ultimate 64bit . Windows 7 ultimate 64bit screams with these in Raid 0 ,load times are blazing fast and just tooling around in Windows programs like Windows Live Mail 2011 and Internet explorer and Adobe open instantly! I get 210 to 220 mb/s sustained reads off these with burst reads of 300mb/s or higher in Raid 0 with 128kb stripe , using the onboard raid controller on my ASRock 890FX Deluxe 3 with its SB850, AMD ROM BIOS version 3.2.1540.15 and the latest available Windows 7 64bit driver 3.2.1540.75 dated (6/22/2010)

Cons: Samsung F3 series 500GB sata 3.0 drives are faster as single drive , and Cheaper :>(

Overall Review: I've seen other reviewers here say Raid 0 kills these drives , well I can tell you that I've ran these drives on a MSI 790GX-G65 with its SB750 Raid controller in Raid 0 , with absolutley no issues ,and when that board died I formatted the drives individually and then set them up as Raid 0 on a MSI 770-G45 with its SB710 Raid controller and then formatted them again and am now using them in Raid 0 on a SB850 controller , all without any drop outs or crashs , lost data or any glitches ! I bought 2 of these on 3/2/2010 .So maybe the firmware has changed or they got bad drives ? Although if your going with just a single drive instead of Raid 0 , the Samsung F3 500GB is faster . When running Raid 0 with 2 of these , they blow to of the F3's out of the water ! When they start selling SSD' that can provide more than 210-220mb/s sustained reads with near 300mb/s burst that are 1.TB in size for the price of 2 of these , I may consider switching to SSD . But until then I'm sticking with thes

Good stuff

ARCTIC MX-4 Thermal Paste, Carbon Based High Performance Thermal Compound for All Coolers, Thermal Interface Material, 4 Grams
ARCTIC MX-4 Thermal Paste, Carbon Based High Performance Thermal Compound for All Coolers, Thermal Interface Material, 4 Grams

Pros: Works better than any goop or pad that comes on any stock heatsink Intel or AMD provides with their CPU's . Also works great for video card heatsinks and after market CPU heatsinks . Plenty for a dozen or so CPU's or GPU's . A little dab (about a BB size) is plenty for a larger CPU like a newer AMD .Long life cycle compared to my experiences with AS-5 .

Cons: No cure time ? (see other thoughts) A little pricey ?

Overall Review: Even though this is supposed to be a non curing TIM it does work better after a few heat cycles ( 1 or 2 ) . Here is what I have found with my experience with this product ! 1. Apply the MX-4 and then run a program like Prime95 for a 1hr or so to get your CPU good and toasty , then let it cool completely back to room temp . 2. Repeat # 1. After doing the heat cycles of 1. and 2. above , my temps dropped aprox. 5-6 degees C idle and load and hold steady from then on . Over all a great product and I would recommend to anyone looking for a good TIM !

BEST VALUE

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100314-2SR
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100314-2SR

Pros: For a 200 dollar videocard none can compare without spending atleast 50 or more bucks ! Runs ANY GAME at max AA and AF at 1280x1024 on my non widescreen ACER 19" 5ms LCD with no lag or ghosting quiet fan when set to 60% or lower in CCC and never goes over 75C on load and stays at 38-40C at idle or just surfing net with fan at 50% . Accelerates Adobe Flash Player for fantastic looking internet videos and webpage flash objects . Physics processing built in so less pull on your CPU for physics demanding games !

Cons: takes 2, 6 pin PCI-e power connectors , but I knew that before purchasing so not problem , but something others may need to consider before purchasing !

Overall Review: Great card for the $$$ ! I never buy a Videocard for over 200 dollars , so I broke my own rules when I spent 209 for this 1 ,but I'm not dissappointed with the performance . This absolutely slaughters the 4870 1Gb that it replaced . This is also DX11 compared to the 4870's DX10.1 Buy this if it's in your price range and you'll be very impressed and not disappointed . Again there is no 200 dollar or less card that can even compare to this !