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David k.

David k.

Joined on 08/12/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review

Love this CPU

Intel Xeon E3-1231V3 Haswell 3.4 GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W BX80646E31231V3 Server Processor
Intel Xeon E3-1231V3 Haswell 3.4 GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W BX80646E31231V3 Server Processor

Pros: -One of the best bargains out there. Picked this CPU up for $209 locally. As others have said its pretty much an i7 4770 without the iGPU, sign me up. -Plenty of power for all of my needs- gaming, photoshop etc. -Runs cool with stock cooler. Those who think it runs hot either did not properly install their cooler or apply their thermal grease (most likely, either too much or uneven) or got unlucky with their CPU (pretty unlikely). The stock cooler that comes with this xeon is actually better than normal i7's if you compare them. The blades are thicker, it moves more air and isn't quite as loud. Couple that with the fact that the iGPU is disabled and is clocked lower so it draws less power than a typical i7. My CPU idles at 32c and max temp under load/stress test is 58-62 depending on ambients with stock cooler. I received a hyper 212 evo cooler as a gift otherwise wouldnt have even needed one, but that brought my temps down another 5 degrees or so.

Cons: Nothing. Great bargain under the radar CPU, highly recommended over an i5 at similar pricing unless you are obsessed with overclocking.

Overall Review: -I have this CPU on an ASUS Z87 Pro motherboard. I was disappointed to learn after researching that some motherboard companies purposely took away a turbo boot feature (per intel's request) starting with non-K haswell CPUs that essentially controls your max turbo speed for all 4 cores. This is why some people are able to get a max speed of 3.8GHz on all 4 cores while others can only get 3.6GHz (myself included). I could probably find an older bios to load on and get around this but compatibility is a concern for Z87s and haswell so I am not going to bother, but this is something to be aware of, if you want the CPU's max speed of 3.8GHz, first do some research and pick a Z87 motherboard that for sure allows this. Also, make sure the motherboard's current bios revision supports this haswell as some older Z87 bios dont at all and in order to upgrade the bios you would either need a MB that supports USB flashing, or an older socket 1150 CPU to first connect with. The easier solution is to just buy a Z97 MB, but in going that route you likely wont find one that supports 3.8GHz turbo boost.

10/16/2015
Most Critical Review

Router is just okay

TP-LINK TL-WDR4300 Dual Band Wireless N750 Router, Gigabit, 2.4GHz 300Mbps+5GHz 450Mbps, 2 USB port, IP QoS, Wireless On/Off Switch
TP-LINK TL-WDR4300 Dual Band Wireless N750 Router, Gigabit, 2.4GHz 300Mbps+5GHz 450Mbps, 2 USB port, IP QoS, Wireless On/Off Switch

Pros: 2 USB Ports Dual Band Wireless N

Cons: Wifi signal strength is just ok USB is 2.0 Only supports external HD of 2TB or less I contacted TP-link via email about the support of 3 TB hard drives and to find out if there would be any future firmware updates/support but got an automated out of the office reply and no one ever contacted me back....

Overall Review: Coming from a linksys WRT54G that's been rock solid for the last 8 years, I only upgraded because I wanted usb support to set up network storage. The router absolutely would not recognize my hard drive and only after reading through reviews/complaints did I learn that it does not support a 3TB drive. This wasn't documented anywhere by TP-link and a firmware update didn't fix the issue. I find it hard to believe this hasn't been addressed yet as 3 TB drives have been out for a while now, I hope the firmware is updated soon. So I ended up returning the drive and getting a 2 TB one. Works fine, the USB2 is slow but not a huge deal for me. other remarks: signal strength is just ok, the old linksys was better but again not a deal breaker. so far in a month I have had to reset the router twice, i hope is does not become a trend as this is my biggest pet peeve about routers. again the wrt54g was rock solid and i find it so hard to believe that this can still be an issue with how far wireless technology has come over the years.

12/18/2012

Couldnt be happier

PowerColor PCS+ Radeon R9 390 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support ATX Graphics Card AXR9 390 8GBD5-PPDHE
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon R9 390 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support ATX Graphics Card AXR9 390 8GBD5-PPDHE

Pros: -Well designed Cooling system. Silent at idle/typical desktop usage. Mediocre noise while gaming but not as bad as my old GTS250. Temps are 39-41 idle and 66-68 during gaming. Very impressed with temps. -Includes backplate, keeps card very sturdy. Also setup for watercooling not that it needs it. -Card is powerful. Runs any and all games I want at 1920x1200. Will be stepping up to 1440p soon. -8gigs ram - Not necessary today but I am hoping it becomes more important next year. If it does, games will only be better for it and I will have a card already ready for that. I also wanted to start modding Skyrim which requires a ton of Vram so this will definitely help. -Price- Jumped in at the $225 after rebate deal a couple weeks ago. No brainer at this price

Cons: -Its too fast for older games (har har). I was getting some tearing in, for example Crysis 1. After setting a max frame rate equal to my monitor's refresh rate, issue fixed -Big (not really a con but a head's up. Just barely made it into my Antec 900 case.

Overall Review: -No idea what my power draw is but I am using an Antec NEO 620W and have no issues. I have also read that when you manually set your target frame rate (say for example to 60FPS) instead of letting the card unnecessarily run at max speed, power savings can be significant (75-115W) -I have no issues with drivers or game compatibility at all. Running the 15.7.1 released driver on Win7x64. --AMD is making strides with addressing their reputation for making hot power hungry cards. I hope more people support them and keep competition in the graphics card industry alive. This is my first AMD card and I couldn't be happier. -I always take negative reviews (especially the short ones) with a grain of salt. I'm fairly convinced most people with crashing or DOA claims have inadequate hardware (PSU) or are not doing a thorough job of removing old drivers/setting up the new card. -If you are considering this or a GTX 970, I wouldn't personally use DX12 support as a deciding factor. Even though AMD supports async compute, in reality both Nvidia and AMD currently only support parts of DX12 and it will be probably 2017 before we really wish we had a full DX12 card.

10/16/2015

Great Ram

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin PC RAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM

Pros: My second set of Gskill ram, so far no compliants. When I first installed it I ran a few passes of MemTest86 and found no errors. As I saw in other reviews, in order to get it to run at its 1600 speed I set an XMP profile in my BIOS and it worked no problem.

Cons: Only thing I can think of is that I keep seeing DDR3 prices dropping, I wish I would have waited another week or so and I could have paid even less. Oh well.

Great Entry Speaker

Polk Audio Monitor Series New Monitor 55T Two-Way Ported Floorstanding Loudspeaker (Black) Single
Polk Audio Monitor Series New Monitor 55T Two-Way Ported Floorstanding Loudspeaker (Black) Single

Pros: Great tweeter, very clear vocals, good sound with some tweaking, good for small rooms, price

Cons: The frequency response is not flat at all, requires tweaking to get a good sound, power hungry, not good for large rooms

Overall Review: I was in the market for a used pair of PSBs or similar for my office, but jumped on these the other day ($49 after rebate) as the price was too good to pass. I first set them up in my living room and swapped out my Paradigm mains to compare (I know not a fair comparison), but I couldn't get a good sound from them. I have a large room, tiled floor with carpet rug and wall sound treatments. The speakers sounded very small, clear vocals but no depth. I was a little disappointed at first. Then moved upstairs to my office (10x12 carpeted room) and set them up with an older Onkyo receiver and my PC via optical cable. Ok, speakers sounded a lot better up here but still not quite right. After fiddling a bit with the Windows Media Player equalizer they started sounding really nice. I gave them some boost at 62Hz and 125Hz, and brought them down at 250Hz and 500Hz. This made a dramatic difference and I am very happy. This is not possible on a typical receiver so I would not have been very happy with these speakers in a living room situation. I also do not recommend them for larger rooms, even with my sub they had no presence. Again I am accustomed to Paradigm Monitor 11s so if I had no basis for comparison or was coming from a HTIB setup I may have felt differently. But for the price I really can't complain, I am very happy with my purchase.

Awesome case for the price

hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC Steel 7K09BBA30FNRX Micro ATX Media Center 300W Power Supply / HTPC Case
hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC Steel 7K09BBA30FNRX Micro ATX Media Center 300W Power Supply / HTPC Case

Pros: Solid, quality construction Great size, design Power Supply powerful enough for most HTPC setups

Cons: -Power supply could use additional connectors, case supports room for 2 hard drives and 1 optical drive, but only has 1 SATA power connector. -If using an older optical drive (I had an old spare DVD-rw drive sitting around) it may have fitment issues. Older drives are physically longer than new ones by almost an inch, and the back IDE cable presses up against the CPU heatsink so the front of the dvd drive doesnt sit flush with the front of the case, it protrudes about 2mm.

Overall Review: Definitely satisfied with my purchase, for $50 i doubt you will find a better case overall. Just remember to get low profile PCI cards and cpu cooler as the case is thin. Also, to the reviewer that said he needed to remove the power supply to install the hard drive, the front of the case actually pops right off very easily and you can slide your drives in that way. No instructions included so had to figure that one out on my own though... Setup: Gigabyte 785G mobo, AMD 5200+, masscool ball cpu cooler, 2g ddr2-800, 320g hdd, dvdrw, win7 ult