cover
Stephen A.

Stephen A.

Joined on 10/07/08

0
0

Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Excellent product so far

WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD100EFAX
WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD100EFAX

Pros: - Extreme amount of space (but not a full 10TB or course, more like 9.1 with the difference between 2^10 and 10^3 size) - Fairly quiet - Fastest spinning rust drive I've ever owned

Cons: - Vibrates a bit more than the 4TB Red it replaced; I may need to use rubber mounts or cradle, etc to eliminate the vibration

Overall Review: Would definitely recommend again, but I will be keeping track of the vibration over the next few months. Hopefully it's only the design, and not an indication of premature failure. I won't subtract an egg for it, since I've owned drives in the past that vibrated *much* worse, and never gave any problems.

Most Critical Review

Suspend to RAM not working

Intel BOXDP43TF LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel BOXDP43TF LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: None that I can comment on, since the board didn't really work for me.

Cons: Suspend to RAM (S3) caused reboots. Swapped out RAM, power supply, video card, but never fixed the issue.

11/11/2008

Absolute beast of a CPU

AMD Ryzen 7 1st Gen - RYZEN 7 1800X Summit Ridge (Zen)  8-Core 3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) Socket AM4 95W YD180XBCAEWOF Desktop Processor
AMD Ryzen 7 1st Gen - RYZEN 7 1800X Summit Ridge (Zen) 8-Core 3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) Socket AM4 95W YD180XBCAEWOF Desktop Processor

Pros: Very fast CPU for my main use (software development).

Cons: Price, obviously, but I guess you pay for near top of the line hardware. Initial teething problems in Linux, but I guess this is to be expected for such a new design.

Overall Review: My main use for this is a software development system using Linux, which loves extra cores. One of the apps I develop went from taking 2-3 minutes to compile to 24 seconds!! What more could I ask for (other than a ThreadRipper, of course).

Used for HTPC (4K/HEVC)

GIGABYTE GA-H270N-WIFI (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel H270 HDMI USB 3.1 Mini ITX Motherboards - Intel
GIGABYTE GA-H270N-WIFI (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel H270 HDMI USB 3.1 Mini ITX Motherboards - Intel

Pros: Lots of features, works great with an i7100 CPU. Ships with most recent BIOS for latest 7th gen CPU's.

Cons: There doesn't seem to be a way to disable certain features in the BIOS. BIOS seems a little basic.

Overall Review: It's being used in an HTPC, so I'd like to turn off stuff I don't need to save a little power. But I can't find a way to disable the second Ethernet port, the wireless or Bluetooth.

Bought for use in HTPC (4K and HEVC)

Intel Core i3 7th Gen - Core i3-7100 Kaby Lake Dual-Core 3.9 GHz LGA 1151 51W BX80677I37100 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 630
Intel Core i3 7th Gen - Core i3-7100 Kaby Lake Dual-Core 3.9 GHz LGA 1151 51W BX80677I37100 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 630

Pros: Extremely fast compared to my old system (Atom CPU and 400 series Nvidia graphics). Relatively low CPU usage (although I would have preferred one of the lower-watt models, they were way too expensive).

Cons: Fan is a bit noisy, but stock fans are almost always garbage anyway.

Overall Review: Bought this particular model specifically because of built-in HEVC support. Plays 120MBit 4K HEVC flawlessly with very low CPU utilization. Starts playing videos and skips to different sections almost instantaneously. Probably overkill for what I need, but I only upgrade this system every 5-6 years, so with this CPU I'm probably set for the next 10 years.

Very quiet/silent in most cases

SeaSonic SS-300TGW 300 W TFX12V (v2.31) 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Active PFC Power Supply
SeaSonic SS-300TGW 300 W TFX12V (v2.31) 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Pros: - Quiet PS, fan doesn't even turn on most of the time - Efficient power delivery

Cons: None.

Overall Review: My go-to power supply for mini-itx cases. Usually I just remove whatever supply that comes with such cases and get one of these, since the included PS is usually either noisy, not efficient, or both. I have this in 3 systems now, and it works perfectly for over 2 years now.