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Mark B.

Mark B.

Joined on 03/30/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 11
Most Favorable Review

Works fine

ASUS P9X79 DELUXE LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
ASUS P9X79 DELUXE LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: USB bios flash was great for upgrading to the new bios before I put my proc and mem into the unit. Board is stable and it looks like I have a lot of options to choose from.

Cons: Asus support is THE WORST in the business so good luck if anything breaks. UEFI is new and way different. You'll be confused as hell trying to figure out how it interacts with the boot menu and what not but thats just an education issue.

Overall Review: Download all the drivers from the ASUS site and don't use the CD they give you. Put that stuff on a flash drive and use it to install your sata drivers at win setup then install the rest once you are into windows.

Most Critical Review
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (Perpendicular Recording) Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (Perpendicular Recording) Bare Drive

Pros: Its 500gb. Good warranty. Sata

Cons: Very loud clicking while accessing data. Runs hot.

Overall Review: Was overheating in my old case. Bought a cooler for it and its running fine now. Still need to run a DFT on it to make sure it isn't a defect.

Legit!

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (8 x 4GB) DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL9Q2-32GBZH
G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (8 x 4GB) DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL9Q2-32GBZH

Pros: All mem shows up in bios fine and XMP works great.

Cons: Packaging was a bit odd but nothing is the worse for it.

Overall Review: Research your board and Gskill's site to make sure you are getting something verified as compatible. For me, seeing my board on the approved list @ Gskill's site was very relieving. Thanks for putting info like that on your site Gskill.

Works fine

Intel BXRTS2011LC Liquid-cooled Thermal Solution For the LGA2011 Socket
Intel BXRTS2011LC Liquid-cooled Thermal Solution For the LGA2011 Socket

Pros: Its quiet and it cools my 3930k sufficiently.

Cons: Lack of thermal compound. Seriously, I wondered if the little packets they sent were empty. Instructions were in some sort of pictographic language that has yet to be deciphered by scientists today.

Overall Review: Buy some thermal compound because there is very little supplied. Watch the youtube video for installation. Basically for the socket 2011 just throw away 75% of the parts in the box.

Don't Buy This

OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" 90GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VTX3-25SAT3-90G
OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" 90GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VTX3-25SAT3-90G

Pros: Fast

Cons: This drive will not work as a boot drive for Windows 7 and new UEFI boards. I spent 4 hours trying to get win7 loaded on this and everytime after the first reboot it would claim another file was corrupt. I'm running the newest firmware as well (2.15) After that 4 hours I caved and installed Win7 on my old X25 intel SSD. Worked first time.

Overall Review: Pretty terrible implementation of a SATA6 drive from OCZ. I'm forced to use the drive as a storage device now and I should probably just return it. I'm sticking with Intel for SSD's.

Works well so far

SAPPHIRE 100281SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity
SAPPHIRE 100281SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity

Pros: Runs everything I throw at it beautifully Drivers appear solid and haven't caused any problems Haven't had any issues with nvidia branded games either Very noticeable upgrade from an EVGA 8800GT SSC Edition Card

Cons: Price is a little sky high. I wouldn't spend more than this on a graphics card.

Overall Review: Its pretty comically large. We were laughing about how much it weighed around the office. I was relatively sure someone had sent some textbooks along with the card but nope, the thing is just a beast. I dig the quality though. Puts me at ease to know my video card is surrounded by pounds of cooling tech. Prior to this I've only had an ATI card for 6 hours before returning it for an nvidia one. I was really nervous about making the switch to be frank. I'm happy to report that my fears were unfounded and I'd encourage anyone looking at a new card today to give ATI a shot again. The current nvidia cards are very expensive and perform worse than a lot of these ATI ones.