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Victor W.

Victor W.

Joined on 11/16/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 61
Most Favorable Review

quiet, cool

Cavalry CAXM Series 1TB USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive - CAXM3701T0
Cavalry CAXM Series 1TB USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive - CAXM3701T0

Pros: I chose this drive because I thought it was 5400rpm and so would operate cooler+quieter. It looks like I got quiet+cool+7200rpm! I love the eSata support. It's 2x faster then USB20 (4x on burst).

Cons: Of course you have to plug it the eSata data cable prior to booting. And if you don't like it, you probably also gripe about shutting down to upgrade RAM. When I ordered this I saw good newegg reviews, and now I only see one the guy with 1 star. (I must be going crazy). It's been 1 week for me and all is great, but if this thing dies like it did for the other guy then I'll be bashing this product in a followup review.

Overall Review: I benched this drive verses an internal 500gb seagate using HDTach 3.0.4.0. I used the "8mb zone quick bench": Cavalry, USB 2.0: Random access: 15.2ms CPU util 10% (+/- 2%) Burst read: 35.36 MB/s Sequential read (linear drop from 0GB to 1TB): 32.1MB/s (Beginning of drive) 32.1MB/s (End of drive) 32.1MB/s (avg) Cavalry, eSata 3.0 (WD10EACS-00ZJB0 01.01B01): Random access: 14.9ms CPU util 4% (+/- 2%) Burst read: 126.6 MB/s (slower then UltraDMA and SATA 150) Sequential read (linear drop from 0GB to 1TB): 80.0MB/s (Beginning of drive) 40.0MB/s (End of drive) 61.9MB/s (avg) Seagate SATA30 500GB (ST3500630AS 3.AAK) Random access: 13.2ms CPU util 4% (+/- 2%) Burst read: 201.0 MB/s (faster then SATA 150) Sequential read (linear drop from 250GB to 500GB): 70.0MB/s (Beginning of drive) 40.0MB/s (End of drive) 63.5MB/s (avg)

Most Critical Review

it's amazing a tiny STX case + Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 will silently cool 65w TDP

ASRock DESKMINI X300W AMD X300 mini PC Barebone AMD AM4 Socket W/O CPU  HDMI,DisplayPort, D-Sub Gigabit LAN 155 x 155 x 80 mm (1.92L)
ASRock DESKMINI X300W AMD X300 mini PC Barebone AMD AM4 Socket W/O CPU HDMI,DisplayPort, D-Sub Gigabit LAN 155 x 155 x 80 mm (1.92L)

Pros: Two NVMe slots. There's enough clearance on the bottom for a NVMe with a slim heat sink.

Cons: To run Zen3 (5700G) you have to mail it to Asrock to get flashed, but first you need to fill out all their RMA forms. Hopefully their next model will have the button for CPU-less flashing. AMD would only send me their loaner CPU if I could prove that Asrock refused to service my mobo. When I got the case back, it had white thermal compound smeared on several surfaces.

Overall Review: I have to say, I love this thing w/ 5700G + Win11

10/29/2021

youtube bluescreens using Brave

MINISFORUM Elitemini X500 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 5700G Desktop Computer, DDR4 16G RAM+512G SSD, HDMI/DP 4K@60Hz Output, 2X RJ45 Port, 4X USB3.1 Port, BT5.1, Radeon Graphics Tower PC
MINISFORUM Elitemini X500 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 5700G Desktop Computer, DDR4 16G RAM+512G SSD, HDMI/DP 4K@60Hz Output, 2X RJ45 Port, 4X USB3.1 Port, BT5.1, Radeon Graphics Tower PC

Pros: 5700G Great job with cooling (it's as quite as a Noctua) Win10 Pro (not home) I paid only $600 -- when I do builds like this I usually end up spending over $700

Cons: It only does 60hz over HDMI. I wish my TV had DP because I suspect it will go higher with that. It's bluescreening after between 5..20min watching youtube using Brave (no browser extensions enabled). I tried reducing resolution from 4k to 2k and it still happens. Switched to MS Edge and so far no issue (even at 4k). VLC is also running like a champ. I didn't install chrome. It's a noname motherboard with a very plane bios (nothing like what you get from Asus and Asrock).

Overall Review: The ram is Kingston. The system was imaged about 10mo ago so the updates took a long time (much longer than a fresh install). Was surprised it didn't have win11. I should do a fresh win11 install to see if that makes it more stable.

yeah I waited years for this to

AMD Ryzen 7 5700G - Ryzen 7 5000 G-Series Cezanne (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.8 GHz Socket AM4 65W AMD Radeon Graphics Desktop Processor - 100-100000263BOX
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G - Ryzen 7 5000 G-Series Cezanne (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.8 GHz Socket AM4 65W AMD Radeon Graphics Desktop Processor - 100-100000263BOX

Pros: I really wanted a 35watt TDP but I gave up waiting and got this. To my surprise it's not drawing much more current @3.5Ghz than my 35w TDP 14nm Intel @2.5Ghz. I've got this inside a Asrock DESKMINI and while basic browsing and playing music in win11 the full draw on my Keces P8 fluctuates between 10 and 20watts.

Cons: they should sell this OEM. Nobody wants the garbage cooler it comes with.

Overall Review: Intel used to keep AMD on life support to prove they didn't have a monopoly on cpus. Now Intel is fighting for their life and hoped Apple's 5nm M1 would break AMD. So far this year Apple's stock climbed 15% and AMD climbed 30%.

10/29/2021

would never have thunk

RAIJINTEK METIS PLUS RED, a Alu. M-ITX Case, USB 3.0* 2, Compatible with Standard ATX Power Supply, 170mm VGA Card Length, 160mm CPU Cooler Height, 12025 White LED Fan Installed, ventilate hole on top
RAIJINTEK METIS PLUS RED, a Alu. M-ITX Case, USB 3.0* 2, Compatible with Standard ATX Power Supply, 170mm VGA Card Length, 160mm CPU Cooler Height, 12025 White LED Fan Installed, ventilate hole on top

Pros: In a state of hasty wishful thinking I ordered this and a large CPU cooler thinking the mobo would sit on the bottom plate. Obviously this case runs the mobo on the side, but just by dumb luck the ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-R 135mm is so huge that it's perimeter makes perfect contact with hard drive grommets at the bottom of the case (when seated in an ASRock B365M-ITX/ac mobo). That's 755g of cooler that won't torque/stress a vertically oriented mobo!

Cons: I love where the PSU is located, but if you do things by the book then the PSU and CPU fan work against each other. I wish these fans had direction switches so we could experiment w/o having to move stuff. The ideal PSU for this case would be fanless and then instead of dumping PSU heat down through the bottom front, that opening would be drawing cool air and the CPU+case fan would do all the work to expel out the back.

Overall Review: The case fan looks high quality to me but I don't want a 3rd fan in there so I'm removing it. Wish I got the fanless PSU.

10/17/2019

my first AMD build in 17years

ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC AM4 AMD Promontory B450 SATA 6Gb/s Mini ITX AMD Motherboard
ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC AM4 AMD Promontory B450 SATA 6Gb/s Mini ITX AMD Motherboard

Pros: The way AMD's stock CPU fan attaches is SOO much better than Intel's push and twist karap. Overall this mobo w/3400G is a workhorse. I was amazed there was no perceived hit in performance while Hyper-V was running a win7 on 2core/4gb.

Cons: I install from a very old Win10 image. Until the updates get the OS semi-current I needed to refrain from configuring the user profile as that increased chances of an explorer hang/crash. The problem vanished at some point when win10 reached 17## or 18##. Running win10 1903 now w/o issue. ASRock H310CM-ITX/ac was booting a Core i5-9400 faster. Also using a 90mm Arctic Cooler for comparison, the Intel quiet profile ran it quieter. Space constraints forced me to use the stock 92mm, so things only got louder.

Overall Review: I was careless to buy this for a 3400G. Nowhere does this board promise support for Picasso or Matisse. I tried to let windows supply all drivers but 2d games were very slow on the generic MS graphics driver. Before using the older Radeon drivers on AsRock's site I tried the newer version on AMD.com (August 2019). Windows wouldn't boot after installing them, and after 3 failed boots windows lets me into safe mode where I could uninstall those drivers. Now I see AMD.com has a 9-4-2019 video driver (Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.1 Optional) - perhaps that will work?